The Mughal Empire had controlled much of India for centuries, but it went into decline in the 18th century. From the mid-18th century, the EIC steadily took more and more control of the subcontinent, but it faced competition from other European trading companies. A princely state was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British crown. Before the Partition of India in 1947, about 584 princely states, also called “native states”, existed in India, which were not fully and formally part of British India, Upon Independence, they were given the choice of either joining India or Pakistan or remaining independent.
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