<Tr> <Td> Coorg (Kodagu district) </Td> <Td> 7009410000000000000 ♠ 4,100 (1,600) </Td> <Td> 181 </Td> <Td> ex officio Chief Commissioner </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> North West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) </Td> <Td> 7010410000000000000 ♠ 41,000 (16,000) </Td> <Td> 2,125 </Td> <Td> Chief Commissioner </Td> </Tr> <P> A Princely State, also called a Native State or an Indian State, was a nominally sovereign entity with an indigenous Indian ruler, subject to a subsidiary alliance . There were 565 princely states when India and Pakistan became independent from Britain in August 1947 . The princely states did not form a part of British India (i.e. the presidencies and provinces), as they were not directly under British rule . The larger ones had treaties with Britain that specified which rights the princes had; in the smaller ones the princes had few rights . Within the princely states external affairs, defence and most communications were under British control . The British also exercised a general influence over the states' internal politics, in part through the granting or withholding of recognition of individual rulers . Although there were nearly 600 princely states, the great majority were very small and contracted out the business of government to the British . Some two hundred of the states had an area of less than 25 square kilometres (10 square miles). </P> <P> The states were grouped into Agencies and Residencies . </P>

India proved to be of great importance to the british in the nineteenth century