Maharajas

Maharajas surveys the rulers of India's princely states, from ancient ideas of kingship and regional dynasties to the courts of maharajas, nizams, nawabs, rajas and raos under British paramountcy. Charles Allen describes the symbols through which royal authority was displayed: forts and palaces, weapons, jewels, processions, religious ceremonies, hunting and elaborate systems of rank and salute.

Lavishly illustrated, the book also follows the political fortunes of princely India through Mughal expansion, the rise of the East India Company and the British Raj. By the twentieth century the princes occupied an uneasy position between hereditary sovereignty and colonial supervision, and independence brought the absorption of their states into new nations. The photographs preserve a striking visual record of that vanished political world.