Initially, it functioned as a principality and subsequently became a princely state under a subsidiary alliance with the British India starting in 1892 and continuing until August 1947.

For a brief period of three months, it remained unaligned after gaining independence, and then from November 1947 until 1974, it retained its status as a princely state within Pakistan.

[6] In the late 19th century Hunza became embroiled in the Great Game, the rivalry between Britain and Russia for control of the northern approaches to India.

Younghusband formed a low opinion of the ruler, Safdar Ali, describing him as "a cur at heart and unworthy of ruling so fine a race as the people of Hunza".

However, due to the war of 1947 in Kashmir, the Mir of Hunza changed his mind and acceded to Pakistan, after a coup against India in Gilgit.

[15] According to Kanjuti traditions, as related by McMahon, the Mir's eighth ancestor, Shah Salim Khan, pursued nomadic Khirghiz thieves to Tashkurghan and defeated them.

He "asserts that forts were built by the Hunza people without any objection or interference from the Chinese at Dafdar, Qurghan, Ujadhbhai, Azar on the Yarkand River and at three or four other places in Raskam.

Starting from Aghil Dewan or pass, in the Karakoram range, the dividing line ran north-east to Bazar Dara, where it met the Yarkand River.

From there the line ran "along the northern watershed of the Raskam valley to Dafdar in the Taghdumbash Pamir, to the north of the mills at that place, and thence to the Baiyik peak.

South of Azgar "many ruins of houses, old irrigation channels and fields now no longer tilled, testify to Raskam having formerly been inhabited and cultivated".

Anyone familiar with the care with which the Kanjuts cultivate every available strip of land in Hunza would have no hesitation in regarding this as proof of long standing Kanjuti occupation.

Before they lost southern parts of the province to Yakub Beg in 1863, their practical authority, as Ney Elias and Younghusband consistently maintained, had never extended south of their outposts at Sanju and Kilian along the northern foothills of the Kun Lun range.

[19] Ney Elias, who had been Joint Commissioner in Ladakh for several years, noted on 21 September 1889 that he had met the Chinese in 1879 and 1880 when he visited Kashgar.

"They told me that they considered their line of 'chatze', or posts, as their frontier – viz., Kugiar, Kilian, Sanju, Kiria, etc.- and that they had no concern with what lay beyond the mountains" i.e. the Kun Lun range in northern Kashmir.

According to Emma Nicholson, "All the evidence points to the fact that Gilgit and Baltistan region were constituent parts of Jammu and Kashmir by 1877".

They were under the sovereignty of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and remained in this princely domain until the date of accession "in its entirety to the new Dominion of India" on 26 October 1947.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had also made a similar statement that "Jammu and Kashmir's Northern frontiers, as you are aware, run in common with those of three countries, Afghanistan, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and China".