The native states of India, also known as feudatory or princely states, were typically vassals under a local or regional ruler who owed allegiance to the British Raj. There were about 675 native states in all but many were not parts of British India proper because they never become possessions of the British Crown; rather, they were tied to it in a system of subsidiary alliances. Following the Partition of India in 1947, the suzerainty of the Raj was terminated and native states had to choose between independence or formal accession by either India or Pakistan. In practice, all of the native states had acceded or been annexed by the end of 1949.
For postal purposes, many native states ran their own services and their stamp issues have been termed feudatory by the main catalogues such as Stanley Gibbons Ltd.[a] There were exceptions in the form of six convention states who made separate postal arrangements with the Raj and used British India stamps that were overprinted with the state's name.
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