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A new kind of cultural system emerged under the (Mughal) Successor State of Awadh that shaped especially its capital-city of Lucknow. The inclusiveness essential to claiming legitimacy by a Successor State not only helps to explain how this new Janus-faced kingdom could succeed, but enabled it to bequeath flexible strategies that worked for local urban dwellers under British imperial rule, and provided models of creativity for responding to altered contexts of life in contemporary India. This distinctive modality provides a range of socio-political, cultural, and economic attributes that are approached in complementary if distinctive ways by the disciplines of history and anthropology, as this collection of essays demonstrates very intriguingly. We treat here the emergence over time of key strategies, in their changing contexts, to chart characteristic practices and dynamics essential for this urban place.