SST NOTES HISTORY

By 1765, the British had captured major chunks of Indian territory in eastern India. The
boundaries of the Mughal Empire were reshaped by the emergence of a number of independent
kingdoms.

With Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, many new states emerged in India.

The Crisis of the Empire and the Later Mughals:

(i) After reaching its zenith, the Mughal empire started declining under Emperor Aurangzeb. This
was because of Aurangzeb’s military and religious policy which depleted the financial resources
of the Mughals by fighting a long war in the Deccan.

(ii) Under his successors, the efficiency of the imperial administration broke down. It became
difficult to check governors and mansabdars. Nobles appointed as governors (subadars) often
controlled the offices of revenue and military administration (diwani and faujdari) as well.

(iii) This gave them extraordinary political, economic and military powers over vast regions of
the Mughal Empire. As the governors consolidated their control over the provinces, the periodic
remission of revenue to the capital declined.

(iv) Peasant and zamindari rebellions in many parts of northern and western India added to
these problems. These revolts were sometimes caused by the pressures of mounting taxes. The
Mughal emperors after Aurangzeb were unable to stop the gradual shifting of political and
economic authority into the hands of provincial governors, local chieftains and other groups.

(v) In the midst of this crisis, Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1739 and invasions of Afghan ruler Ahmed
Shah Abdali between 1748-1761, weakened the Mughal empire.

(vi) The nobility was divided into two major groups- Iranis and Turanis. For a long time, the later
Mughal emperors were puppets in the hands of either one or the other of these two powerful
groups. The worst humiliation came when two Mughal emperors, Farrukh Siyar (1713-1719) and
Alamgir II (1754-1759) were assassinated, and two others Ahmad Shah (1748-1754) and Shah
Alam II (1759-1816) were blinded by their nobles.

Emergence of New States:

(i) With the decline of Mughal authority, the governors of large provinces, subadars, and the
great zamindars consolidated their authority.

(ii) Broadly speaking, the states were divided into three overlapping groups:

(1) Old Mughal provinces like Awadh, Bengal and Hyderabad

(3) the last group included states ruled by the Marathas, the Sikhs and the Jats. These were of
differing sizes and had seized their independence from the Mughals after a long-drawn armed
struggle.The Watan Jagirs of the Rajputs:

(i) Many Rajput Kings, particularly those belonging to Amber and Jodhpur had served under the
Mughals with distinction. They got considerable autonomy and thus were called watan jagir. In
exchange, they were permitted to enjoy considerable autonomy in their watan jagirs.

(ii) Ajit Singh, the ruler of Jodhpur, was also involved in the factional politics at the Mughal court.

(iii) The Rajput kings tried to extend their territories by seizing portions of imperial territories
neighbouring their watans. Nagaur was conquered and annexed to the house of Jodhpur,
while Amber seized large portions of Bundi. Sawai Raja Jai Singh founded his new capital at
Jaipur and was given the subadari of Agra in 1722.

(iv) Maratha expansion after 1740s put restriction on growth of Rajput expansion.

Seizing Independence:

The Sikhs:

(i) The Sikhs arose as a power under Guru Gobind Singh who inspired the Khalsa with the belief
that their destiny was to rule.

(ii) Several battles were fought by Guru Gobind Singh against the Rajput and Mughal rulers, both
before and after the institution of the Khalsa in 1699. After his death in 1708, the
Khalsa rose in revolt against the Mughal authority under Banda Bahadur’s leadership, declared
their sovereign rule by striking coins in the name of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, and
established their own administration between the Sutlej and the Jamuna.

(iii) The Sikhs organized themselves into a number of bands called jathas, and later on misls.
Their combined forces were known as the grand army (dal khalsa). The entire body used to
meet at Amritsar at the time of Baisakhi and Diwali to take collective decisions known as
“resolutions of the Guru (gurmatas)”.

(iv) A system called rakhi was introduced, offering protection to cultivators on the payment of a
tax of 20 per cent of the produce.

(v) Guru Gobind Singh had inspired the Khalsa with the belief that their destiny was to rule (raj
karega khalsa). Their well-knit organization enabled them to put up a successful resistance to
the Mughal governors first and then to Ahmad Shah Abdali who had seized
the rich province of the Punjab and the Sarkar of Sirhind from the Mughals.
(vi) The Khalsa declared their sovereign rule by striking their own coin again in 1765.

(vii) The Sikh territories in the late eighteenth century extended from the Indus to the Jamuna
but they were divided under different rulers. One of them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, reunited these
groups and established his capital at Lahore in 1799.

The Marathas:

(i) The Maratha kingdom rose under Shivaji. After Shivaji’s death, the Peshwa led the Maratha
empire to its zenith.

(ii) Shivaji carved out a stable kingdom with the support of powerful warrior families
(deshmukhs). Groups of highly mobile, peasant pastoralists (kunbis) provided the backbone of
the Maratha army. Shivaji used these forces to challenge the Mughals in the peninsula.

(iii) After Shivaji’s death, effective power in the Maratha state was wielded by a family of
Chitpavan Brahmanas who served Shivaji’s successors as Peshwa (or principal minister). Poona
became the capital of the Maratha kingdom.

(iv) Marathas collected huge revenue from taxes of chuth and Sardshmukhi in the entire
kingdom.

(v) Maratha chiefs included Peshwa, Sindhia, Gaekwad and Bhonsle. Their territory touched near
Delhi in its peak stages.

(vi) Between 1720 and 1761, the Maratha empire expanded. It gradually overcame the authority
of the Mughal empire. Malwa and Gujarat were seized from the Mughals by the 1720s.

(v) By the 1730s, the Maratha king was recognised as the overlord of the entire Deccan
peninsula. He possessed the right to levy chauth and sardeshmukhi in the entire region.

(vi) After raiding Delhi in 1737 the frontiers of Maratha domination expanded rapidly: into
Rajasthan and the Punjab in the north; into Bengal and Orissa in the east; and into Karnataka
and the Tamil and Telugu regions in the south. These were not formally included in the Maratha
empire, but were made to pay tribute as a way of accepting Maratha sovereignty.

(vii) These military campaigns also made other rulers hostile towards the Marathas. As a
result, they were not inclined to support the Marathas during the third battle of Panipat in 1761.

(viii) Alongside endless military campaigns, the Marathas developed an effective administrative
system as well.

● Once conquest had been completed and Maratha rule was secure, revenue demands
were gradually introduced taking local conditions into account.
 ● Agriculture was encouraged and trade revived. This allowed Maratha chiefs (sardars) like
Sindhia of Gwalior, Gaekwad of Baroda and Bhonsle of Nagpur the resources to raise
powerful armies.
● Maratha campaigns into Malwa in the 1720s did not challenge the growth and prosperity
of the cities in the region.
● Ujjain expanded under Sindhia’s patronage and Indore under Holkar’s. These cities were
large and prosperous and functioned as important commercial and cultural centres.
● New trade routes emerged within the areas controlled by the Marathas.
● The silk produced in the Chanderi region now found a new outlet in Poona, the Maratha
capital.
● Burhanpur which had earlier participated in the trade between Agra and Surat now
expanded its hinterland to include Poona and Nagpur in the south and Lucknow and
Allahabad in the east.

The Jats:

(i) Like the other states the Jats consolidated their power during the late seventeenth and
eighteenth-centuries.

(ii) Under their leader, Churaman, they acquired control over territories situated to the west of the
city of Delhi, and by the 1680s they had begun dominating the region between the two imperial
cities of Delhi and Agra.

(iii) The Jats were prosperous agriculturists, and towns like Panipat and Ballabhgarh became
important trading centres in the areas dominated by them. Under Suraj Mal, the kingdom of
Bharatpur emerged as a strong state.

(iv) When Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, many of the city’s notables took refuge there. His
son Jawahir Shah had 30,000 troops of his own and hired another 20,000 Maratha and 15,000
Sikh troops to fight the Mughals.

(v) While the Bharatpur fort was built in a fairly traditional style, at Dig the Jats built an elaborate
garden palace combining styles seen at Amber and Agra. Its buildings were modelled on
architectural forms associated with royalty under Shah Jahan.