Tipu Sultan's Srirangapatna

Srirangapatna, set on a long island in the Kaveri river in the south of the Indian peninsula, was the fortress-capital of the Muslim sultanate of Mysore and the seat of Tipu Sultan (reigned 1782-1799), remembered as the Tiger of Mysore. Tipu and his father Haidar Ali had built Mysore into one of the strongest of the regional powers that rose as the Mughal empire decayed, and Tipu became one of the most determined Indian opponents of the British East India Company as it advanced across the subcontinent in the later eighteenth century. He reformed and modernised his army on European lines, developed the use of iron-cased war rockets that struck and unsettled British troops, sought alliances with other powers against the company, and fought a long series of Anglo-Mysore wars from his island stronghold. The fortress, ringed by the two channels of the river and holding a palace, a great mosque and gardens within its ramparts, was the heart of his resistance. The contest ended only in 1799, when a British-led army stormed Srirangapatna and Tipu was killed in its defence, opening the south of India to colonial control; he is remembered across the Muslim world and in India as an emblem of armed resistance to colonial conquest. This scene depicts the island fortress around 1790, at the height of that resistance: the ramparts and bastions ringed by the river, the cannon and the distinctive rocket-racks on the walls, the palace and gardens within, a regional Muslim sultanate standing against the rising tide of British power in the green south. In keeping with the project's ethics any figures are anonymous and at a distance.