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The Afghans hold Sindh and Punjab during the latter half of the 18th century.

In 1799, a young and crafty Sikh, Ranjit Singh, is granted governorship of Lahore.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most of present Pakistan is under independent rulers.

The Mughal Empire had fallen apart after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, and had declined in its ability to tax or govern most of the Indian subcontinent.

In the northwestern region, particularly the Punjab, the creation of the Khalsa community of Sikh warriors by Guru Gobind Singh had accelerated the decay and fragmentation of the Mughal power in the region.

Raiding Afghans have attacked the Indus river valleys but met resistance from both organized armies of the Khalsa Sikhs as well as irregular Khalsa militias based in villages.

The Sikhs had appointed their own zamindars, replacing the previous Muslim revenue collectors, which provide resources to feed and strengthen the warriors aligned with Sikh interests.

Meanwhile, colonial traders and the East India Company had begun operations in India on its eastern and western coasts.

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan and parts of north India) are a collection of fourteen small warring regions.

Of the fourteen, twelve are Sikh-controlled misls (confederacies), one named Kasur (near Lahore) is Muslim controlled, and one in the southeast is led by an Englishman named George Thomas.

This region constitutes the fertile and productive valleys of the five rivers—Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Bias and Sutlej.

The Sikh misls were all under the control of the Khalsa fraternity of Sikh warriors, but they are not united and constantly war with each other over revenue collection, disagreements, and local priorities; however, in the event of external invasion such as from the Muslim armies of Ahmed Shah Abdali from Afghanistan, they usually unite.

Towards the end of eighteenth century, the five most powerful misls are those of the Sukkarchakkia, Kanhayas, Nakkais, Ahluwalias and Bhangi Sikhs.

Ranjit Singh belongsto the first, and through marriage has a reliable alliance with Kanhayas and Nakkais.

Among the smaller misls, some, such as the Phulkias misl, switch loyalties in the late eighteenth century and support the Afghan army invasion against their Khalsa brethren.

The Kasur region, ruled by a Pathan-Muslim, always supports the Afghan invasion forces and joins them in plundering Sikh misls during the war.

Ranjit Singh's fame grows in 1797, at age seventeen, when the Afghan Muslim ruler Shah Zaman, of the Ahmad Shah Abdali dynasty, attempts to annex Panjab region into his control through his general Shahanchi Khan and twelve thousand soldiers.

The battle is fought in the territory that falls in Ranjit Singh controlled misl, whose regional knowledge and warrior expertise help resist the invading army.

This victory gains him recognition.

The Afghan ruler sends in another army, which Ranjit Singh does not resist, in 1798.

He lets them enter Lahore, then encircles them with his army, blocks off all food and supplies, and burns all crops and food sources that could support the Afghan army.

Much of the Afghan army retreats back to Afghanistan.

Raja Ranjit Singh's army of twenty-five thousand Khalsa, supported by another twenty-five thousand Khalsa led by his mother-in-law Rani Sada Kaur of Kanhaiya misl, in a joint operation in July 1799, attack the region controlled by Bhangi Sikhs centered around Lahore.

The rulers escape, marking Lahore as the first major conquest of Ranjit Singh, a key step in establishing the Sikh Empire, and his becoming Maharaja of the Punjab.

The Sufi Muslim and Hindu population of Lahore welcome the rule of Ranjit Singh.

Ranjit Singh is invested by Sahib Singh Bedi—a direct descendant of Guru Nanak, as the "Maharaja of Punjab" by applying a saffron mark on his forehead in a formal ceremony on April 12, 1801—the new year in the Hindu calendar.

He calls his rule "Sarkar Khalsa", and his court as "Darbar Khalsa".

The kingdom of Lahore is at its most powerful and expansive during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who extends Sikh control beyond Peshawar, adding Kashmir to his dominions in 1819.

The Rann of Kutch earthquake (7.7–8.2 Mw) kills at least fifteen hundred and forty-three people in the present Indian state of Gujarat at the Bay of Bengal on June 16, 1819, causing an eighty-to-one hundred and fifty-kilometer (fifty-to-ninety-three mile-) stretch of land to be raised as much as six meters (twenty feet), creating a natural dam, the Allahbund.

British and Presidency armies set out from Punjab in December 1838 in support of Shah Shujah Durrani's claim to the throne of Afghanistan.

Most of present-day Pakistan had been under independent rulers at the start of the nineteenth century.

Sindh is ruled by the Muslim Talpur mirs (chiefs) in three small states that are annexed by the British in 1843.

In the Punjab, the decline of the Mughal Empire had allowed the rise of the Sikhs, first as a military force and later as a political administration in Lahore.

The kingdom of Lahore is at its most powerful and expansive during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who has extended Sikh control has been beyond Peshawar, and had added Kashmir to his dominions in 1819.

After Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, political conditions in the Punjab have deteriorated, and the British fight two wars with the Sikhs.

The second of these wars, in 1849, sees the annexation of the Punjab, including the present-day North-West Frontier Province, to the company's territories.

Kashmir is transferred by sale in the Treaty of Amritsar in 1850 to the Dogra Dynasty, which will rule the area under British paramountcy until 1947.

The Punjab, annexed in 1849, is governed a group of extraordinarily able British officers, serving first the company and later the British crown.

They avoid the administrative mistakes made earlier in Bengal.

A number of reforms are introduced, although local customs are generally respected.

Irrigation projects later in the century will help the Punjab become the granary of northern India.

The respect gained by the new administration can be gauged by the fact that within ten years Punjabi troops will be fighting for the British elsewhere in India to subdue the uprising of 1857-58.

The Punjab is to become the major recruiting area for the British Indian Army, recruiting both Sikhs and Muslims.