Environmental Status: Princely Power and Royal Sport in Colonial India

Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Rajput princes suspected that the characteristic landscapes of their individual territories influenced the nature and worth of state residents, particularly those like themselves who habitually engaged in royal hunts. Difficult terrain and impressive game gave rulers opportunities to master environmental challenges and to shape themselves into formidable sovereigns and admirable men. Superior hills, forests, and grasslands allegedly produced larger and stronger animals that, in turn, required bigger, better, and braver Rajputs to hunt them. Intimate association with undemanding topography, flora, and fauna, however, could make princes soft, leading to losses in power and status. In this paper, I explore how select game species and hunting landscapes reflected and produced the “natural” identity, character, and status of states and their rulers. How did (locally) powerful elites manipulate their territories so that state environments would communicate appropriate messages to domestic and foreign viewers, and so that their grounds would produce desirable effects in human and non-human inhabitants? Considering that erstwhile royal hunting grounds form the core of many wildlife preserves in post-colonial India, what repercussions might princely values have had on modern definitions of authentic or natural environments? I draw on a wide range of sources in English, Hindi, and Mewari produced in the princely states, including administrative records, miniature paintings, photographs, game books, shooting diaries, and memoirs. These sources are supplemented by Government of India records and by personal accounts written by Europeans who visited and hunted in the regions under consideration. I conducted research for the larger project from which this paper derives in India with the support of an AIIS Junior Research Fellowship, and in the UK with a Dora Bonham Research Grant and with Mellon Foundation Research Funds provided by the Environmental Studies Program, Vassar College.