Chapter 5 investigates the Indian government’s anomalous accession to “paramountcy,” which led it to pursue the territorial annexation of princely states. Controversially, this process often necessitated the violation of Britain’s celebrated “rule of law” and brought the nation’s reputation for fair play into question. Seeking to check this expansionism, reformers amalgamated classical law of nations theories with the findings of contemporary international law treatises to defend the rights of native rulers in Awadh, Tanjore, the Carnatic, and Mysore. If India’s princely states were protected, reformers anticipated that their sovereigns would internalize constitutionalist values and provide employment for educated Indians who struggled to find positions in the exclusive colonial bureaucracy.