(1764) and formalised by the Treaty of Allahabad (1765).

The policy reached its most systematic form under Richard Wellesley, Governor-General of India from 1798 to 1805. In a dispatch dated February 1801 to the East India Company Resident at Hyderabad, Wellesley outlined the strategic objectives of subsidiary alliances:

"His Excellency the Governor-General's policy in establishing subsidiary alliances with the principal states of India is to place those states in such a degree of dependence on the British power as may deprive them of the means of forming any confederacy hazardous to the security of the British empire, and may enable us to preserve the tranquillity of India by exercising a general control over those states..."
-- Richard Wellesley, 4 February 1801

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