Political integration of India Political integration of India At the time of Indian independence in 1947, India was divided into two sets of territories, one under direct British rule, and the other under the suzerainty of the British Crown, with control over their internal affairs remaining in the hands of their hereditary rulers. The latter included 554 princely states, having different types of revenue sharing arrangements with the British, often depending on their size, population and local conditions. In addition, there were several colonial enclaves controlled by France and Portugal. The political integration of these territories into India was a declared objective of the
Famine in India of publications in the 1870s and beyond. Evidence suggests that there may have been large famines in south India every forty years in pre-colonial India, and that the frequency might have been higher after the 12th century. These famines still did not approach the incidence of famines of the 18th and 19th centuries under British rule. Florence Nightingale pointed out that the famines in British India were not caused by the lack of food in a particular geographical area. They were instead caused by inadequate transportation of food, which in turn was caused due to an absence of a political