The doctrine of lapsation was a policy of annexation initiated by the East India Company in the Indian subcontinent for the princely states, and applied until the year 1858, the year after Company rule was succeeded by the British Raj under the British Crown.
The policy was initiated by James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie.
According to the doctrine, any Indian princely state under the suzerainty of the East India Company, the dominant imperial power in the Indian system of subsidiary alliances, would have its princely status abolished, and therefore be annexed into directly ruled British India, if the ruler was either “manifestly incompetent or died without a male heir”. This supplanted the long-established right of an Indian sovereign without an heir to choose a successor.
The policy is most commonly associated with Dalhousie, who was the East India Company’s Governor General of British India between 1848 and 1856. However, the doctrine was articulated by the Court of Directors of the Company as early as 1834, and several smaller states had already been annexed under this doctrine before Dalhousie took over the post of Governor-General
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