ESSAY Benjamin Cohen n January 2015, U.S. Presi- dent Barack Obama visited India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After landing in India, Obama descended the steps of Air Force One, and in an unprec- edented gesture, Modi greeted him on the tarmac and embraced the American President. At another point during the three-day visit, an image showed the President and Prime Minister in deep conversa- tion while having tea on the lawn of Hyderabad House. These “bro- ments” received no small amount of attention in the press, and indeed, the media reported widely on the theme of the two men’s face-to-face meetings and personal chemistry. Yet, such visits and the per- sonal politics between leaders is nothing new. 1 Indeed, a century earlier in India during the period of British rule such visits between British officialdom and India’s princely state rulers played an impor- tant role in imperial politics. By the late nineteenth century, the British Empire in India consisted primarily of two types of political regions: areas directly administered by the British, and India’s princely states that were indirectly ruled. The latter comprised about one-third of the subcontinent. Visits to the princely states, their capital cities, and meetings with their rulers by British Viceroys, Governors, British royalty and other officials constituted an important I Visiting Hyderabad: Real “face time” in a Princely State, 1915-1938 Courtesy Benjamin Cohen