Princely State - Other Princely States

Other Princely States

• British Empire: Princely states existed elsewhere in the British Empire. Some of these were considered by the Colonial Office (or earlier by the BHEIC) as satellites of, and usually points of support on the naval routes to, British India, some important enough to be raised to the status of salute states.
  • A number of Arab states around the Persian Gulf, including Oman, the present-day United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, were British protectorates under native rulers.
  • On the Malay peninsula a number of states, known as the Malay states, were administered by local rulers, who recognized British sovereignty; they still reign, but now constitutionally, in most constitutive states of modern Malaysia.

• Netherlands: Indirect rule through princely states (or even mere tribal chieftaincies) was also practiced in other European nations' colonial empires. An example is the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), which had dozens of local rulers (mainly Malay and Muslim, others tribal, Hindu or animist). The colonial term in Dutch was regentschap 'regency', but did not apply to lower-level fiefs. Some rulers were also given precedence amongst others such as the Susuhunan of Surakarta and the Sultan of Yogyakarta (direct successors to the old Mataram Empire, which all the regencies in Java belonged to), which were recognized through their Vorstenlanden kingdoms and enjoyed a degree of autonomy and power amongst other regions. The state of Yogyakarta survives to this day as a special region, with its Sultan recognized as the hereditary local Governor.