Annexation of the Punjab
Lahore Fort, Punjab (Pakistan)
After the second Anglo-Sikh war Dalhousie annexes Ranjit Singh's kingdom on 29 March; the boy Maharaja Duleep Singh is made to give up the Koh-i-Noor.
Ranjit Singh's death in 1839 left the strongest Indian state of its day to a run of short reigns and an army that made and unmade ministers. The first Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-46 cost the kingdom the Jalandhar doab and Kashmir, which the Company sold to Gulab Singh of Jammu. A revolt at Multan in 1848 became the second war; after the bloody stalemate at Chillianwala in January 1849 and defeat at Gujrat on 21 February, the Punjab was annexed by proclamation on 29 March.
Annexation brought the Company's frontier to the Khyber and the Afghan hills, the line the Raj would garrison for a century. The Punjab's new administrators built canals and recruited the regiments that helped retake Delhi in 1857.
Duleep Singh, then ten, was sent to England; he later returned to Sikhism and tried to go back to India. The Koh-i-Noor, surrendered under the last treaty of Lahore, has been in the British crown jewels since 1850. India has asked for it back since 1947, and Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have also claimed it.
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- colonial
- political