Readers in the historiography of colonial south India have every reason to feel puzzled by the answers available to even the most straightforward of questions. Was the colonial conquest achieved through the imposition of ‘superior’ European arms, technology and ideology or was it more in the nature of an internal subversion of the pre-existing Indian state system? Did British rule fundamentally alter the structures of South Indian society or did it rest lightly on top of pre-existing structures and serve to sustain established elites? Did it undermine the hold of ‘indigenous’ cultures on society or did it merely scratch their surface or even did it promote their revival?