The Source Book On Sikhism

In the British Hands

With a young and inexperienced king at the head of state, the Sikh nobles and Sardars, instead of rallying round their monarch and coming to the rescue of their tottering kingdom which Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji had built up with his might and wisdom, began to grind their own axes. Everyone of them was anxious for power and endeavoured by hook or crook to establish his own over-lordship. The result was that the mighty Sikh Empire which had struck terror into the hearts of Afghan warriors across the Indus came down with a crash. Jealousies within the ranks of Sikh nobility and treacherous British diplomacy led to the two Anglo-Sikh wars, the last of which resulted in the annexation of Punjab to the British Indian Empire.

The treaty with which the second Anglo-Sikh war ended was that the gem Koh-i-Noor should be surrendered by the Maharaja of Lahore to the Queen of England.