Alwar's copper coinage of this period occupies an awkward political moment: the state had only recently been brought under tighter British paramountcy following the 1857 uprising, during which Alwar's ruler nominally supported the Crown but whose population's loyalties were considerably less certain. Sheodan Singh, who ruled from 1857 until his death in 1874, issued this takka under his own name — a privilege the British permitted selectively, and one that would be progressively curtailed for smaller princely states as the Raj consolidated administrative control through the 1860s.
Alwar's copper coinage of this period occupies an awkward political moment: the state had only recently been brought under tighter British paramountcy following the 1857 uprising, during which Alwar's ruler nominally supported the Crown but whose population's loyalties were considerably less certain. Sheodan Singh, who ruled from 1857 until his death in 1874, issued this takka under his own name — a privilege the British permitted selectively, and one that would be progressively curtailed for smaller princely states as the Raj consolidated administrative control through the 1860s.