General view of Poona, near Bombay.--Photographer: Unknown Medium: Photographic print Date: 1860

This photograph of the city of Pune was taken by an unknown photographer in the 1860s to from part of an album entitled 'Photographs of India and Overland Route'. Pune was the eighteenth-century capital of Raja Shivaji, the Maratha king who defied the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. In 1802 Jaswant Rao Holkar defeated the combined armies of the Peshwa and Scindia. As a result of this defeat the Peshwa invited British assistance and Pune was occupied by troops under Wellesley in 1803. After the battle of Kirkee in November 1817 it was surrendered to the British who based the summer headquarters of the Government of Bombay here and established a large military cantonment.