The eastern house
Raghuji Bhonsle I, of a branch of Shivaji's clan, established Maratha authority over Vidarbha and pushed east into Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bengal. The Maratha raids into Bengal in the 1740s — the bargi incursions still remembered in Bengali nursery rhyme — were mounted from Nagpur, and they extracted chauth from the Nawab of Bengal for years.
The house held Odisha until 1803, when it was ceded to the British after the Second Anglo-Maratha War, cutting the state off from the sea.
Annexation
Nagpur was defeated in the Third Anglo-Maratha War and became a subsidiary state. When Raghuji Bhonsle III died in 1853 without a natural heir, Dalhousie annexed the kingdom under the doctrine of lapse — the policy of refusing to recognise adopted heirs — along with Satara, Jhansi and others.
The doctrine was among the most cited grievances behind the rebellion of 1857. The queen of Nagpur's jewels and effects were auctioned by the Company in Calcutta, an episode that circulated widely and did the British reputation lasting damage among the Indian ruling houses.
Further reading
- Keay, John. India: A History. HarperCollins, 2000
- Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. Oxford University Press, 2009
- Brown, Judith M. Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy. Oxford University Press, 1994
- Chandra, Bipan. India's Struggle for Independence. Penguin, 1989
- Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Bloomsbury, 2019
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.