2011.45.18
Please note that the commentaries on this wiki:world_gallery:layered_info:perspectives:museum:strangers:objects:1019073|cigarette card series discuss prevailing attitudes in Britain toward the peoples of the British Empire in 1927 and, thus, can reflect the often-racist opinions of the time. In reading them, you are invited to consider how attitudes and communication on questions of race and nationality in Britain have changed in the years since and continue to change.
Although there were peoples, such as the Baluchi (2011.45.5), who were considered as useful to the Empire, there were also a small number of non-European people who were described as almost as good as Europeans. The Indian princes and rajahs, which the card indicates are allowed to rule under British advice and sufferance, are one such example. Here, they are afforded the respect due to a monarch of similar--if subordinate--authority to that of the British monarch. According to the card, it is these rulers who supplied troops to fight in the First World War, and they are understood, here, as participants in the Empire, rather than solely subjects of it. India, and its princely states, became independent in 1948.
