Kerajaan-kerajaan kecil yang ada dalam India British (princely states) terdiri daripada kerajaan naungan[1] pemerintah setempat atau kawasan yang bersekutu dengan Raj British. Walaupun kerajaan sebegini telah wujud dari sekurang-kurangnya zaman klasik sejarah India, istilah kerajaan kecil khusus merujuk ke kerajaan dalam benua kecil India sewaktu zaman Raj British yang separa berdaulat diperintah secara tidak langsung oleh British tetapi lebih daripada pemerintah setempat dan tertakluk kepada suatu pemerintahan tidak langsung atau perkara lainnya. Hal ini membenarkan kerajaan British campur tangan dalam hal ehwal dalam kerajaa-kerajaan ini serta menggubal undang-undang yang dikuatkuasakan ke atas sepelusuk India jika perlu.
Kerajaan-kerajaan ini tiba di penghujungnya apabila jajahan India merdeka pada tahun 1947. Pada tahun 1950, hampir semua kerajaan-kerajaan ini telah bersetuju menyertai baik negara pecahan India mahupun Pakistan.[2] Penyatuan politik ini sebahagian besarnya dilakukan secara aman, kecuali beberapa kes tertentu seperti Kashmir (memerdekakan diri, namun memilih bergabung dengan India setelah diserang tentera Pakistan),[3]Hyderabad (memerdekakan diri pada tahun 1947, kemudiannya diserang pasukan polis dan diilhak India), Junagadh (kerajaannya bersetuju bergabung dengan Pakistan, tetapi diilhak India dalam suatu pungutan suara)[4] dan Kalat (memerdekakan diri tahun 1947, diilhak pada tahun berikutnya).[5][6][7]
Para penguasa kerajaan-kerajaan ini mempunyai berbagai gelaran tersendiri tanpa mengira asal-usul kerajaan yang dibentuk sebelum tibanya pihak British. Antara gelaran ini termasuklah:
Suatu sistem didasarkan bilangan tembakan hormatmeriam turut digunakan untuk membezakan antara para pembesar semasa berhadapan Syarikat Hindia Timur British, das tembakan ini sering dalam bilangan ganjil antara 3 hingga 21 das. "Kerajaan-kerajaan hormat" (salute states) ini sering mendapat keistimewaan tertentu daripada pihak British berbanding kerajaan-kerajaan biasa dalam India.
Kerajaan kecil utama pada tahun 1947
Yang berhubung dengan Pemerintah Pusat
Lima kerajaan kecil berhubungan politik terus dengan Kerajaan Pusat India[10][11][12][13]
Nama kerajaan
Keluasan (batu persegi)
Populasi pada tahun 1941
Pendapatan kerajaan dianggarkan (dalam ratus ribu Rupee)
^Ramusack 2004, halaman 85 Quote: "The British did not create the Indian princes. Before and during the European penetration of India, indigenous rulers achieved dominance through the military protection they provided to dependents and their skill in acquiring revenues to maintain their military and administrative organisations. Major Indian rulers exercised varying degrees and types of sovereign powers before they entered treaty relations with the British. What changed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is that the British increasingly restricted the sovereignty of Indian rulers. The [[Syarikat Hindia Timur InggerisCompany] set boundaries; it extracted resources in the form of military personnel, subsidies or tribute payments, and the purchase of commercial goods at favourable prices, and limited opportunities for other alliances. From the 1810s onwards as the British expanded and consolidated their power, their centralised military despotism dramatically reduced the political options of Indian rulers." (p. 85)
"Equally notorious was his high-handed treatment of the state of Kalat, whose ruler was made to accede to Pakistan on threat of punitive military action."
^Samad, Yunas (2014). "Understanding the insurgency in Balochistan". Commonwealth & Comparative Politics. 52 (2): 293–320. doi:10.1080/14662043.2014.894280.: "When Mir Ahmed Yar Khan dithered over acceding the Baloch-Brauhi confederacy to Pakistan in 1947 the centre’s response was to initiate processes that would coerce the state joining Pakistan. By recognising the feudatory states of Las Bela, Kharan and the district of Mekran as independent states, which promptly merged with Pakistan, the State of Kalat became land locked and reduced to a fraction of its size. Thus Ahmed Yar Khan was forced to sign the instrument of accession on 27 March 1948, which immediately led to the brother of the Khan, Prince Abdul Karim raising the banner of revolt in July 1948, starting the first of the Baloch insurgencies."
^Harrison, Selig S. (1981), In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ISBN978-0-87003-029-1More than one of |ISBN= dan |isbn= specified (bantuan): "Pakistani leaders summarily rejected this declaration, touching off a nine-month diplomatic tug of war that came to a climax in the forcible annexation of Kalat.... it is clear that Baluch leaders, including the Khan, were bitterly opposed to what happened."
^Great Britain. Indian Statutory Commission; Viscount John Allsebrook Simon Simon (1930). Report of the Indian Statutory Commission ... H.M. Stationery Office. Dicapai pada 9 June 2012.
^"Mysore," Indian States and Agencies, The Statesman's Year Book 1947, pg 173, Macmillan & Co.
^"Jammu and Kashmir," Indian States and Agencies, The Statesman's Year Book 1947, pg 171, Macmillan & Co.
^"Hyderabad," Indian States and Agencies, The Statesman's Year Book 1947, pg 170, Macmillan & Co.
Bibliografi
Bhagavan, Manu. "Princely States and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India" Journal of Asian Studies, (Aug 2008) 67#3 pp 881–915 in JSTOR
Bhagavan, Manu. Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education and Empire in Colonial India (2003)
von Pochhammer, Wilhelm (1973), India's Road to Nationhood: A Political History of the SubcontinentUnknown parameter |chpater= ignored (bantuan)excerpt
Zutshi, Chitralekha (2009), "Re-visioning princely states in South Asian historiography: A review", Indian Economic & Social History Review', 3 (46), m/s. 301–313, doi:10.1177/001946460904600302
Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III (1907), The Indian Empire, Economic (Chapter X: Famine, pp. 475–502, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxxvi, 1 map, 520. talian
Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. IV (1907), The Indian Empire, Administrative, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxx, 1 map, 552. talian
The Golden Book of India: A Genealogical and Biographical Dictionary of the Ruling Princes, Chiefs, Nobles, and Other Personages, Titled or Decorated, of the Indian Empire (Full text)
Last name
Sir Roper Lethbridge
Publisher
Macmillan And Co., New York
Year of publication
1893
Author link
Roper Lethbridge
Senarai panjang raja dan ketua kerajaan bersertakan biografi tertentu.
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