and bring together a variety of perspectives and research in this field in one comprehensive work.  
Drawing on the theme of African migrants who went on to govern small princely states in India, this chapter focuses specifically on the kingdom of Janjira, located on the west coast of India, south of Mumbai. Apart from Janjira and the princely state of Sachin in the Indian state of Gujarat, there was only a brief spell of African rule, in the region of Bengal in eastern India. There were, however, several instances of Africans who played prominent roles in the politics of other princely states in India, such as Ahmadnagar and Hyderabad. For example, Malik Ambar, who was of African descent, was the regent of the minor Ahmadnagar king and de facto ruler of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar from 1607 to 1626 . He was responsible for increasing the power of the Ahmadnagar dynasty and is also associated with the establishment of the city of Aurangabad (Robbins and McLeod, 2006, pp. 44-106, 128-138). In addition, in 1621, it was Malik Ambar who granted his capable African administrative officer, Sidi Ambar Sainak, the island off the coast of the village of Danda-Rajpuri on the west coast of India, which resulted in the establishment of the princely state of Janjira (Damad, c.1920, pp. 16-21). The African Sidis managed to rule over this region until it was eventually merged into the Indian Union in 1948. The etymon of Sidi is the Arabic word sayyidi meaning 'my lord'. In this chapter, Sidis refer to the sub-Saharan Africans who settled in India.