Beginning in the 1840s, high-ranking officials within the East India Company began a concerted effort to confiscate and annex princely states, citing misrule or a default of blood heirs. In response, metropolitan reformers and their Indian allies orchestrated a sustained legalistic defense of native sovereignty in the public sphere and emerged as vocal opponents of colonial expansionism. Adapting concepts put forth by both law of nations theorists and contemporary jurists, they sought to preserve longstanding treaties and defend the princes' exercise of internal sovereignty. The colonial government's failure to adequately define the basis of its modern “paramountcy” invited such creative maneuvering. Reformist opposition to the annexation of Awadh, the dispossession of the Nawab of the Carnatic, and the confiscation of Mysore demonstrates that international law did not simply function as a Eurocentric tool of subordination, but could also provide a bulwark against colonial depredations.

中文翻译：

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万国法理论与殖民地印度的土著主权辩论

从 1840 年代开始，东印度公司的高级官员开始齐心协力没收和吞并诸侯国，理由是暴政或没有血统继承人。作为回应，大都市改革者及其印度盟友在公共领域精心策划了对本土主权的持续合法捍卫，并成为殖民扩张主义的直言不讳的反对者。他们采纳了国际法理论家和当代法学家提出的概念，试图维护长期存在的条约并捍卫王子行使国内主权。殖民政府未能充分定义其现代“至高无上”的基础，从而引发了这种创造性的操纵。改革派反对吞并阿瓦德，剥夺卡纳蒂克的纳瓦布，