That antique land of Awadh

In 1856, when the last king, Wajed Ali Shah, refused to sign a ridiculous treaty, the British annexed his kingdom and kept him under house arrest in a suburb of Calcutta. This would be the last territorial acquisition by the Company in India. In 1877, the British, in a bid to trim their budget, merged Awadh with its neighbour, calling the new province the United Provinces of North-West Provinces and Awadh, with Allahabad as the capital. This infelicitous arrangement, with its clunky name persisted, though Sir Harcourt Butler, the chief commissioner, ordered the capital back to Lucknow in 1920. Lucknow became a slightly larger dot on the map of British India.

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