The British Raj

1762-1803: Nizam-ul-Mulk, Asaf Jah II

1803-1807: Sikandar Jah, Asaf Jah III

1807: Overthrown by British and Maharashtrian troops

1807-1834: Mubarez-ud-Daulah, Asaf Jah IV

1834-1872: Mir Farkhunda Ali Khan Nasirud-Daula, Asaf Jah V

1872-1903: Mir Mahboob Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VI

1903-1925: Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, Asaf Jah VII

1925-1941: Mir Barkat Ali Khan Bahadur, Asaf Jah VIII

1941: Hyderabad overthrown by Andhra Revolution, replaced by the Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic

The state of Hyderabad gradually fell into defeat after defeat during the Maharashtrian resurgence of the late eighteenth century. The Maharashtrians won great victories in the 1780s and, most famously, the Battle of Kharda in 1798 saw vast swathes of the state, including Aurangabad, fall under Maharashtrian rule. This led Hyderabad into an alliance with the British, who forced it to secede the coastal region in return for bringing about an alliance against Tipu Sultan's Mysore - an alliance that proved successful come the Third Anglo-Mysore War in 1790. However, at the same time Hyderabad employed a French officer, M. Raymond, which caused consternation among British authorities who feared he would influence the court into taking an anti-British stance. In 1800, the Afghan invasion of India in alliance with Mysore resulted in Hyderabad, Maharashtra, and Britain allying with one another and, after much difficulty, this alliance was able to sweep the Afghans off to Punjab, while in Mysore Anglo-Maharashtrian troops were able to put Seringapatam under siege and kill Tipu Sultan in battle, resulting in a reduced Mysore being placed under British administration, by 1802. This war, as well as the resolution of a succession dispute, brought Maharashtra into an alliance with the British, similar in character to the one with Hyderabad. But with M. Raymond leading a French battalion in Hyderabad, Britain became increasingly concerned that Hyderabad would break away and pondered moves to stop it.

With the death of Asaf Jah II in 1803 and the rise of his son to the throne, British heavy-handed attempts to force him to remove Raymond proved alienating as he believed this was a plot to kill his defences. Fearing that the British alliance with Maharashtra would lead to a sneak attack, in 1804 he assembled his troops. They forced the British battalion meant to "protect" him to flee to the Northern Circars. And though Asaf Jah III attempted to renegotiate a looser alliance with Britain, they fell through and instead the British Isles declared their intentions to depose him. The ensuing Anglo-Hyderabadi War proved a costly one for Britain despite the Maharashtrian alliance reducing costs, but it ended with British and Maharashtrian troops in Hyderabad itself, with Asaf Jah III being deposed and replaced by his brother.

The resulting administration was forced to perpetually recognize Maharashtrian rule over Aurangabad, and also accept heavy British influence. A large British cantonment was established near Hyderabad, around which formed the city of Moobaurezabad (now Andolanabad). British officers were appointed in charge of revenue, while the pro-British official Raja Chandulal was made finance minister where he embezzled great amounts of money. The ensuing financial crisis resulted in a great deal of chaos and weakened the princely state further. His successor, Asaf Jah V, was initially ruled under a regency, but upon achieving majority in 1839 he initiated a period of great economic reform to make the state more independent; with the British of the era seeking to reduce the cost of empire, they welcomed this. But at the same time, debts accumulated and resulted in him being forced to grant the British administrative control over part of his kingdom in return for them waiving off some of his debts. This aside, the modernization of the era was dramatic and largely successful. It saw the first railways and telegraph lines being laid out, as well as the creation of educational institutions, such as Hyderabad Medical College (now the Andhra Revolutionary University of Medicine). He died in 1872.

Upon his death, with the ascent of his son, the state saw further modernization attempts. However, Hyderabad was impacted quite severely by the Great Indian Famine of 1876-78, and the general British failure to provide aid also affected the state. Furthermore, as the Famine incited an era of constitutional reform in neighbouring Maharashtra, he ignored the clamour for establishing a national assembly of consultation. Nevertheless, he did issue reforms such as a ban on the practice of sati, where Hindu widows would commit suicide upon the deaths of their husbands, becoming the second princely state after Maharashtra to do so. He also continued to establish railways and educational institutes even as this threatened to empower a new class. He also saw Hyderabad's first forays into cotton production in this era, representative of a general model of aristocratic-feudalistic state driven industrialization. However, he proved unwilling to concede further reform. The next ruler, Asaf Jah VII, saw an early crisis in the form of the Great Musi Flood of 1908, which entirely flooded the city of Hyderabad. This forced him to open the doors of the palace to flood victims, and afterwards the city of Hyderabad was dramatically reconstructed according to a plan he personally approved of. It was a major success, and it made the city an extremely modern one, with room new for public institutions - today, much of its remains intact, despite the change in regime. Great reservoirs were built to keep any such flood from ever happening again. But at the same time, the brewing radical-liberal movement which advocated the establishment of a legislature was one he clamped down upon quite hard as he viewed it as disloyal and potentially republicanism. It prevented him from reforming the state as much as he could have, and feudalism remained prominent and uncontested, as power continued to be the domain of a small elite entirely separate from the peasantry - even as in neighbouring Maharashtra feudalism began to weaken under constitutional government.

But it was his successor who saw this unstable order blow up. With radicals and liberals clamped down hard, instead a revolutionary associationist movement began to emerge, led by the Association of Workers and Peasants. When it began to attract a peasant following in the name of anti-feudalism and a revolutionary society, the Nizam ordered it shut down. Instead it moved underground, though the new public face of the anti-Nizam movement, the Andhra Mahasabha, brought together Associationists with other elements; it increasingly adopted the character of a movement by Telugu peasants against the Dakhni- and Hindustani-speaking court of the Nizam. Over the 1930s, tensions grew and grew. When in Hindustan the British bombardment of Patna in 1936 resulted in the Hindustani War of Independence (albeit in the name of radical-liberal ideals), peasant rebellions in Hyderabad began to increase in magnitude as it seemed aspirational. At the same time, pro-Nizam militias known as "Razakars" began to form, both under the state and adjacent to it, and they suppressed peasant revolts with heavy brutality. Finally, in 1937, following some last-ditch compromise efforts that failed, the Andhra Mahasabha declared an armed revolution against the Nizam.

These rebellions were concentrated in Telugu-speaking areas, and specifically the countryside. They proved effective in forcing the zamindars, doras and other landowners to flee to the cities, allowing for parallel village administrations to be established. They ensured radical reforms such as land redistribution and collective ownership would be enacted, and it was wholly unclear in these provisional administrations where the party ended and the embryonic state began - often the authority was simply called the "Sangham", or the Association. The purple banner of the Association of the Workers and Peasants was omnipresent, as well as the tricolour of the Andhra Mahasabha. Social revolution was afoot. But Razakars combatted them hard, massacring peasants as well as political opponents of the Nizam. And though they often claimed this was in the name of religion, they were just as willing to kill anti-regime Muslims as they were Hindus. But these massacres only had the measure of escalating the revolution, and it spread across the Telugu-speaking parts of the state of Hyderabad. Indeed, the only part not to rise up was Kalyana, where the Telugu nationalist character of the revolution meant attempts to stir up revolt in this Kannada-speaking region failed. Nevertheless, the rebellion continued to escalate further and further, and peasant rebels took over numerous cities where they often extracted bloody retribution against their former feudal lords. Many peasant heroes were created in this period, but so were peasant martyrs, as blood flowed across the nation. Arms flowed from Hindustan southwards, particularly after its independence in 1939, and Hyderabadi counterinsurgency tactics did little to stem the rebellion.

By late 1940, the revolutionaries had reached Hyderabad district. When it slowly became apparent that the state could hardly stop the march of the revolutionaries and that there were even rebel sympathies within Hyderabad city itself, the Nizam fled to Maharashtra, and from there to Turkey where he lived out the rest of his life. His flight was so hectic that he even left his Crown Jewels (now known as the Revolutionary Peoples’ Jewels) behind, though his assistants took much of the treasury with him. The Kannada-speaking Kalyana region, still under control of the Nizam's administrators, subsequently fell under British occupation, and it would be part of British plans. In Hyderabad city, the revolutionaries declared the Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic. It ratified the Constitution of 1943 after much discussion, which successfully unified the disparate village councils under a central authority, while at the same time confirming that the nation would be a one-party state. This revolution, with all its extremely radical ideals and great messiness, was both idolized and reviled by many in the Raj, as Dakhni revolutionary ghazals were sung as far north as Punjab by labour strikers, while princes and aristocrats shivered at the bloody sights of nobility murdered by their own peasants. An Anglo-Maharashtrian invasion, which sought to destroy the revolutionary state in its crib, was halted, and afterwards Maharashtra's unilateral abrogation of the Anglo-Maharashtrian alliance made such cooperation impossible. But at the same time, the Andhra revolutionary government cultivated sympathizers in the Northern Circars, now under the rule of the Dravidian Federation established by the British to keep the Associationists out, with the aim of claiming and incorporating it. Their territorial plans often included Andhraite control as far south as Madras and as far north as Jeypore, claims that stretched the very real sympathies among Coastal Telugus for the revolution for irredentist aims over Tamil- and Odia-speaking areas. Nevertheless, the government believed in a United Andhra, and this inevitably brought it into a confrontation with its neighbour.