The extremely rare Hyderabad edition of the official British papers relating to the so-called Hyderabad debt crisis, during which Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India, and General James Stuart Fraser, the British Resident in Hyderabad, orchestrated a "shakedown" of the Nizam of Hyderabad, whom they claimed owed the British an astounding 7.4 million rupees. This resulted in the Nizam of Hyderabad having to cede the wealthy cotton-growing province of Berar to the British to clear his debts. The first edition of this account appeared at London in 1854 as part of the serial publication of parliamentary papers, and the present Hyderabad edition probably later in the same year, the first separate publication. It was printed and published by the Columbian Press in Secunderabad "by the request and permission of His Excellency Nawab Salar Jung Bahadoor", the Prime Minister of the Hyderabad State, who believed that the papers portrayed Dalhousie and Fraser in a bad light. Nawab Sir Mir Turab Ali Khan, Salar Jung I (1829-1883), also known as Salar Jung I, was an Indian nobleman who served as Prime Minister of Hyderabad State between 1853 and 1883 and was also the regent for the sixth Nizam, Asaf Jah VI from 1869 to 1883.
The present work is the ultimate insiders account, from the British perspective, of the crisis surrounding the Nizam's staggering debt to the British government, featuring transcriptions or summaries of all the official correspondence and documents of Lord Dalhousie, General Fraser and other colonial senior officials.
The present work is extremely rare in this Indian (Secunderabad/Hyderabad) edition, we have not been able to trace any other copy on the market or institutionally. Supposedly, the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad holds a copy of the same edition, but we were not able to verify it.
With an owner's inscription "Margaret D. Stubbs" and an orange printer's label "Secunderabad, Columbian Press, R. Hudson", both on the front paste-down. The binding is somewhat worn, without affecting its structural integrity, the outer margin of 6 leaves (between pp. 52-69, and pp. 83-84) are folded in. With a minor tear in the foot margin of the title-page (near the gutter) and occasionally very slight staining. Otherwise in good condition. Cf. WorldCat 941776603 (electronic version of the first ed.); for the background: H.G. Briggs, The Nizam, his history and relations with the British Government (London 1861); Kumari Sarjini Regani, The cession of Berar, in: Indian History Congress, 20 (1957), pp. 525-259.