[British India - Baroda (Vadodara)]. Correspondence With Respect to Proposed Reforms in the Administration of Baroda (Baroda No. 4).

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Records of the Baroda Crisis, a political crisis that took place in British India between 1872 and 1876 in Baroda, a Gujarati princely state. The crisis began when Colonel Robert Phayre was appointed as the British Resident of Baroda. An increasingly negative relationship with Malhar Rao Gaekwad, the Gaekwar of Baroda, culminated in the Baroda Enquiry which found "serious misgovernment" in the state. The present work comprises official correspondence between the Resident at Baroda, the Government of Bombay, and the Government of India discussing necessary reforms in the state of Baroda, a process considered "barbarous" by the Gaekwar. The situation came to a head in November 1874: Phayre sent the Viceroy a damning report detailing the failings of the governance of the state; on the same day, the Gaekwar sent an urgent request to the Viceroy that Phayre be removed. The Viceroy was sympathetic to Gaekwad, and on 12 November sent word to Bombay that Phayre should be replaced. However, this action was taken too late as, on 9 March, an attempt was made to poison Phayre with a compound of arsenic. This led to the Gaekwar being convicted of high treason, a possible miscarriage of justice. By order of the Secretary of State for India, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Malhar Rao was deposed on 10 April 1875 and exiled to Madras, where he died in obscurity in 1882.