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Haider Ali, a skillful 18th century military commander, managed to depose the ruling Wadiyar rajas of Mysore. He then established an enlightened Muslim rule across the land. His son, Tipu Sultan, "The Tiger of Mysore", tried, with some early success, to rid India of the hated British. (The French, also in India at the time, were all too willing to help him.)

But the British were not about to lose this outpost as they had the Americas just a decade earlier, and Tipu was finally defeated and killed by the future Duke of Wellington in 1799 in a decisive battle on the tiny island of Srirangapatnam, just a few kilometers east of Mysore.

The victors soon brought back the puppet Wadiyar maharajas and the door was open to 150 years of British domination in Southern India. Tipu's exquisitely decorated summer palace, built in the late 1700s of teak, is a gem of Indo-Saracenic architecture.