An outline, era by era

India

Mughal Empire; Maratha Empire; British East India Company expands

Early Modern Era · ~1500 – ~1800

Between about 1500 and 1800 the Indian subcontinent was shaped by several overlapping powers. The Mughal Empire, founded by Babur in 1526, ruled much of northern and central India from Delhi and Agra and reached its widest extent under Aurangzeb. The Maratha Empire grew out of a small kingdom in the western Deccan under Shivaji in the later 1600s, and after the Mughal decline it became one of the strongest powers across much of the subcontinent, especially from the mid-1700s.

The British East India Company arrived as a trading body, chartered in 1600. It gained territory and revenue rights after the Battle of Plassey (1757) and the grant of the diwani of Bengal (1765), and it spent the following decades expanding by war and treaty, alongside powerful regional states such as Mysore, Hyderabad and Awadh. By 1800 a trading company had become a ruling power, which set the stage for British rule in India in the nineteenth century.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Babur wins at Panipat

    Event

    What happened

    On 21 April 1526 Babur, a Timurid prince from Central Asia who had been driven from Samarkand and then ruled Kabul, defeats Ibrahim Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi, at Panipat. Babur's army uses field guns and matchlock firearms together with mounted archers. Ibrahim Lodi is killed in the battle, and Babur takes Delhi and Agra.

    The rest is history

    This victory founds the Mughal dynasty. Babur then defeats the Rajput leader Rana Sanga at Khanwa in 1527. He dies in 1530, and his memoir, the Baburnama, gives a detailed first-hand account of these years. His son Humayun lost the throne to Sher Shah Suri in 1540 and regained it in 1555, shortly before his own death in 1556.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBabur. Baburnama. Memoirs in Chagatai Turkish, early 16th century. Translated by Wheeler M. Thackston as The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
    2. BookDale, Stephen F. The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530). Leiden: Brill, 2004.

  2. Akbar builds the Mughal state

    Event

    What happened

    Akbar becomes emperor in 1556 as a boy of thirteen, and wins the Second Battle of Panipat in the same year under the regency of Bairam Khan. In 1560 he dismisses Bairam Khan and takes power into his own hands. Over the next decades he conquers Gujarat, Bengal and Kashmir, and he builds an administration of ranked officials called mansabdars. He abolishes the jizya tax on non-Muslims in 1564 and makes marriage alliances with Rajput families.

    The rest is history

    These steps give the empire a lasting structure of revenue and military service, and bring many Rajput nobles into its ruling class. Akbar's court historian Abu'l Fazl recorded the system in the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari. Akbar died in 1605, leaving a rich and large empire to his son Jahangir.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAbu'l Fazl. Ain-i-Akbari. Persian administrative gazetteer, c. 1595. Translated by H. Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873-1907.
    2. BookRichards, John F. The Mughal Empire. The New Cambridge History of India I.5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

  3. The East India Company is chartered

    Event

    What happened

    On 31 December 1600 Queen Elizabeth I grants a royal charter to a London group of merchants, giving them a monopoly of English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1608 the Company's ship Hector reaches Surat, and in 1612 the English win a naval fight against the Portuguese nearby. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe goes to the court of Jahangir, and in the following years the Company gets trading permission and sets up factories at Surat, Madras (1639) and Bombay, which came to it from the English crown in 1668.

    The rest is history

    The Company at first depended on Mughal goodwill and traded in cotton textiles, indigo, saltpetre and pepper. Its fortified posts at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta (founded 1690) became centres from which it later grew. A French rival, the Compagnie des Indes, also set up bases, notably at Pondicherry.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryCharter of the East India Company. Royal charter of Elizabeth I, 31 December 1600.
    2. BookKeay, John. The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company. London: HarperCollins, 1991.

  4. Shivaji and the Maratha kingdom

    Event

    What happened

    Shivaji Bhonsle, born in 1630, takes hill forts in the western Deccan from the 1640s, challenging the Sultanate of Bijapur and then the Mughals. In 1664 he sacks the Mughal port of Surat, and in 1665 he signs the Treaty of Purandar with the Mughal general Jai Singh. In 1666 he visits Aurangzeb's court at Agra, is held there, and escapes. He is crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in 1674.

    The rest is history

    Shivaji created a state with its own administration and a navy. He died in 1680. His successors fought Aurangzeb for a quarter of a century in the Deccan, a war that drained Mughal resources. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the Maratha leadership passed to the Peshwas, who were hereditary chief ministers based at Pune.

    Sources

    1. BookGordon, Stewart. The Marathas 1600-1818. The New Cambridge History of India II.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
    2. BookSarkar, Jadunath. Shivaji and His Times. Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar and Sons, 1919.

  5. Aurangzeb's long reign and the Deccan wars

    Event

    What happened

    Aurangzeb takes the throne in 1658 after a war of succession with his brothers and imprisons his father Shah Jahan. He reimposes the jizya in 1679 and spends the last twenty-six years of his reign in the Deccan. He conquers Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687, and he executes Shivaji's son Sambhaji in 1689. The Marathas keep fighting under other leaders.

    The rest is history

    The Mughal Empire reached its greatest size in these years, but the long campaigns strained its finances and its officials. After Aurangzeb died in 1707, a series of weak rulers, rival nobles and breakaway regional rulers such as the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawabs of Bengal and Awadh reduced central power. Historians debate how far his policies, as opposed to wider economic and political changes, caused the decline.

    Sources

    1. BookRichards, John F. The Mughal Empire. The New Cambridge History of India I.5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
    2. BookAlam, Muzaffar. The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707-48. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  6. Nadir Shah sacks Delhi

    Event

    What happened

    In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia defeats the Mughal army at Karnal in February and enters Delhi in March. After a rising in the city, his troops carry out a massacre. He leaves in May with great treasure, including the Peacock Throne, and the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah keeps his title.

    The rest is history

    The invasion showed how weak Mughal military power had become, and it damaged the emperor's prestige. Afghan forces under Ahmad Shah Durrani raided India repeatedly after 1747. At Panipat in January 1761 he defeated a large Maratha army, a heavy blow to Maratha ambitions in the north, though they recovered much of their influence within a decade and remained a major power until 1818.

    Sources

    1. BookAxworthy, Michael. The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.
    2. BookGordon, Stewart. The Marathas 1600-1818. The New Cambridge History of India II.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

  7. Plassey and the diwani of Bengal

    Event

    What happened

    On 23 June 1757 Robert Clive's Company army defeats the forces of Siraj ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal, at Plassey, helped by the defection of the commander Mir Jafar, who becomes Nawab. In 1764 the Company beats the combined armies of Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal emperor at Buxar. In 1765 the emperor Shah Alam II grants the Company the diwani, the right to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

    The rest is history

    The Company now controlled the revenue of one of India's richest provinces and could pay for a large army from it. The Bengal famine of 1769 to 1770 killed a very large number of people, and the Company's policies are among the debated causes. The British Parliament responded with the Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt's India Act of 1784, which increased state oversight of the Company.

    Sources

    1. BookMarshall, P. J. Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Eastern India 1740-1828. The New Cambridge History of India II.2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
    2. BookDalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

  8. The Anglo-Mysore wars

    Event

    What happened

    Hyder Ali of Mysore and his son Tipu Sultan fight the Company in four Anglo-Mysore wars between 1767 and 1799. In the first Anglo-Maratha War (1775 to 1782), the Company also fights the Marathas, and it ends with the Treaty of Salbai. Tipu is killed when Seringapatam falls on 4 May 1799.

    The rest is history

    The fall of Seringapatam removed the Company's main southern rival. Governor-General Richard Wellesley (1798 to 1805) used subsidiary alliances, under which rulers paid for Company troops and accepted a British resident. In the aftermath, further wars with the Marathas followed in 1803 to 1805 and 1817 to 1818, which belong to the nineteenth century and left the Company the dominant power in the subcontinent.

    Sources

    1. BookBayly, C. A. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire. The New Cambridge History of India II.1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
    2. BookGordon, Stewart. The Marathas 1600-1818. The New Cambridge History of India II.4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

  9. The Black Hole of Calcutta

    Popular belief

    The legend

    In June 1756 Siraj ud-Daulah captures Fort William at Calcutta. The story goes that he has 146 British prisoners locked overnight in a tiny guardroom, and that only 23 are alive in the morning, the rest dying of suffocation in the heat.

    The rest is history

    The account comes from John Zephaniah Holwell, a Company surgeon who survived and wrote about it in 1758. Some prisoners almost certainly did die in the cell. Historians regard Holwell's figures as unreliable and probably exaggerated, and have suggested a smaller total, perhaps a few dozen deaths. There is no evidence that the Nawab ordered the confinement. The story was used in Britain to justify the revenge taken at Plassey, and in the 1900s Indian nationalists opposed the memorial to the victims, which was removed in 1940.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHolwell, J. Z. A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and Others, who were suffocated in the Black-Hole. London, 1758.
    2. BookDalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

  10. Akbar and Birbal

    Folk tale

    The legend

    In popular tales, the Mughal emperor Akbar has a witty Hindu minister named Birbal. Birbal solves riddles and wins every contest of wits with the emperor and the court, and the stories are told to children across northern India.

    The rest is history

    Birbal was a real man. Born Mahesh Das, he was a poet and courtier who received the title of raja and served Akbar, and he died in 1586 fighting a Yusufzai force in the northwest. The tales of his clever sayings are found in popular collections made long after his death, and they have no basis in the court chronicles. Abu'l Fazl's Akbarnama does record his death and the emperor's grief.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAbu'l Fazl. Akbarnama. Persian court chronicle of Akbar's reign, c. 1590s. Translated by H. Beveridge. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1897-1939.
    2. BookRichards, John F. The Mughal Empire. The New Cambridge History of India I.5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

  11. The Taj Mahal and the cut hands

    Popular belief

    The legend

    It is often said that Shah Jahan had the hands of the Taj Mahal's builders cut off, or that they were blinded, so that nobody could build anything as beautiful again. A related claim is that he planned a black Taj Mahal as a twin across the river.

    The rest is history

    No Mughal source mentions the mutilation of workers, and the story first appears in later tourist guide accounts. Shah Jahan began the tomb after the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal in 1631, and it was largely finished by about 1648, with a complex of buildings completed by 1653. The architect is usually named as Ustad Ahmad Lahori. The black Taj claim comes from the French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who said he had heard of the plan. Excavations at Mehtab Bagh across the river found a garden, not a second tomb.

    Sources

    1. BookKoch, Ebba. The Complete Taj Mahal and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
    2. PrimaryTavernier, Jean-Baptiste. Les Six Voyages. French travel account, Paris, 1676. English translation by V. Ball, Travels in India. London: Macmillan, 1889.

  12. The Koh-i-Noor curse

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Koh-i-Noor diamond is said to carry a curse, bringing misfortune to any man who owns it, while women may wear it safely. The story is repeated in books and on television.

    The rest is history

    The diamond passed from the Mughals to Nadir Shah, who took it from Delhi in 1739, and then to the Durrani and Sikh rulers, before the British annexed the Punjab in 1849 and gave it to Queen Victoria. The curse is often traced to a note in a 1900s book, and no early source for it is known. The stone has changed hands by war and conquest, which is the source of many troubles for its owners. It was re-cut in 1852 and is set in a crown in the British Crown Jewels. India and other states have claimed it.

    Sources

    1. BookDalrymple, William, and Anita Anand. Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
    2. BookAxworthy, Michael. The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.

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