2008/01/01 by Alison Mackenzie Shah · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Alliance #Ancient history #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Archaeology #Art #Colonialism #Construct (python library) #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #History #Law #Modernity #Political science #Politics #Power (physics) #Ruler #Social and Economic Development in India #Throne
paper · doi:10.1163/ej.9789004162402.i-1500.156
openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
The British saw colonial cities as planned and their inhabitants orderly; Indian ones they saw as haphazard, and this dichotomy served visually to define places with political traditions and societal values that needed to be brought into a colonial modernity. An alternative methodology that focuses on the architectural patronage of a mid-nineteenth-century Hyderabadi ruler, the fifth Nizam, Afzal ud Daulah, provides a visual archive of materials linked to the pre-colonial past. This article seeks to reconstruct the dynamics of his relationship with the British. In the early nineteenth century, the Nizams themselves did not construct any new monument of their own to counter the British presence; instead, they focused on ritual enactments of power in the urban form. In 1857, when Afzal ud Daulah ascended the throne to become the fifth Nizam, Hyderabad's political geography reflected the discomfort which the unwanted alliance with the British caused his predecessors. Keywords: Afzal ud Daulah; British; Hyderabadi; nineteenth century; Nizams