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The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom of southern India, which was founded about 1400 by the Wodeyar dynasty, who ruled the state until Indian independence in 1947, when the kingdom became Mysore state of India, later renamed Karnataka.
The kingdom has its origins as a small state, based in the city of Mysore, which was established around 1400 by the brothers Vijaya and Krisha Wodeyar as a tributary kingdom of the Vijayanagara empire. This empire collapsed after a severe military defeat at the Battle of Talikota in 1565, and soon after the Wodeyar dynasty asserted Mysore's independence. The Kingdom grew to include most of the southern part of modern-day Karnataka. From the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, Mysore was the chief city, but nearby Srirangapatna (Seringapatam) was the capital after Hyder Ali took control of the kingdom in 1755 during the incumbent king's minority. His son Tipu Sultan inherited in 1782 with the title of Padshah.
Hyder and Tipu brought in many technological innovations, modernizing the Mysorean army and expanding Mysore's foreign trade. They also aligned themselves by and large with the French, whose East India Company was politically very active in southern India at the time.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the Mysore Kingdom found itself in a series of wars with the British East India Company, which was then expanding its control in India. After the final defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the British annexed part of the state and installed the five-year-old Wodeyar heir on the throne, and Mysore became a princely state in British India. The capital was moved to Bangalore after 1830. Charging financial mismanagement on the part of the Wodeyars, the British took direct control of Mysore in 1831 and retained it for half a century. After 1881, the house of Wodeyar was restored to the throne and Mysore became once more the highest-ranking Indian princely state ruled by a Hindu. For the next seventy years, Mysore enjoyed the reputation of being a model state.
After India's independence in 1947, the last Wodeyar Maharaja acceded to the Indian Government, and the kingdom became India's Mysore state. The former Maharaja was appointed rajpramukh, or governor, by the Indian Government until 1956, when the state was enlarged, and the former Rajpramukh became the state's first elected governor.
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