In 1849, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the British East India Company dissolved the Sikh Empire and annexed the Punjab. It was the last major region of the Indian subcontinent to come under British control — a bare decade after the empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh had stood as the subcontinent's most formidable independent power. The sequence of events is Well-established.

Chromolithograph of the young Maharaja Duleep Singh, seated in court dress with jewels and an aigrette.
Maharaja Duleep Singh, chromolithograph, London, Maclure & Macdonald, c. 1859 — the last ruler of the Sikh Empire, deposed at eleven and exiled to Britain. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Causes

After Maharaja Ranjit Singh died in 1839, the empire he had built fell into succession disputes, court intrigue, and instability — four rulers in six years, several by assassination. The First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–46) ended in a British-imposed settlement: a British Resident at Lahore, a reduced Sikh army, the cession of territory (including Kashmir, sold on to the Dogra ruler Gulab Singh), and the child Maharaja Duleep Singh left on the throne under British control. Resentment among Sikh nobles and soldiers ran high.

The war and annexation

In 1848 the killing of two British officers at Multan triggered a revolt that spread into a second war. The decisive British victory came at the Battle of Gujrat on 21 February 1849. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie then proclaimed the annexation — the formal steps fell between 29 March and 2 April 1849. At a durbar (court assembly) in Lahore, the eleven-year-old Duleep Singh signed away his sovereignty and forfeited the Koh-i-Noor diamond to the British Crown. He was later separated from his mother, converted to Christianity, and exiled to Britain.

1839

Death of Ranjit Singh

The empire passes into a decade of succession crises and court violence.

1845–46

First Anglo-Sikh War

British Resident installed at Lahore; territory ceded; the child Duleep Singh kept on the throne.

1848–49

Second Anglo-Sikh War

Revolt at Multan spreads; the decisive battle is fought at Gujrat, 21 February 1849.

March–April 1849

Annexation

Dalhousie proclaims annexation; Duleep Singh signs away sovereignty and the Koh-i-Noor at Lahore.

Consequences

The Punjab became a British province administered from Lahore. British rule reorganised revenue, the army, and administration, drove canal-colony irrigation across the western doabs, and made Punjab the major recruiting ground of the British Indian Army — the same army whose troops would fire at Jallianwala Bagh seventy years on. The Koh-i-Noor remains in the British Crown Jewels, and its return is still contested between several states — a live political question outside this article's scope.

Modern place-names

Lahore, Multan, and Gujrat are in Punjab, Pakistan; Amritsar and the eastern districts in Punjab, India — the province the British annexed whole was split at Partition in 1947.