The Rajputs are a group of non-Brahmin Hindu warrior clans who established their domination over several kingdoms in Northwest India from ad 720 onwards, after warring with Arab invaders from Sindh. The main Rajput dynasties have their seats at Udaipur (kingdom of Mewar), Jodhpur (kingdom of Marwar), Jaisalmer, Bundi and Kotah. The British waged several wars on the Rajputs under the Governor-Generalship of the Marquess of Hastings (1813–23), who imposed British supremacy on Rajputana (the pre-1949 name of the present-day Rajasthan) in 1818, through a protective British alliance that allowed the Rajput rajas to continue to rule their kingdoms under the strict supervision of British Residents, aided by British troops. Of Scottish descent, James Tod was the first political agent of the British Governor-General in the western Rajput states, from 1818 to 1822. Tod was also among the many British officers of the East India Company who in the course of the nineteenth century carried out land surveys in India with the help of Indian teams, and took advantage of the situation to gather information about the local ruling families, while collecting artefacts as well as ethnographic data. His Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, published in two volumes in 1829 and 1832, thus constitutes a major contribution to a European history and ethnographic description of Rajputana.

That Tod was a complete pioneer among Europeans ever to set foot among the Rajputs is evident from his own declarations about the unprecedented nature of his experiences there. For example, before setting out on his trip to Bundi and Kotah in January 1820, he underlines the unique opportunity that this provided him with: