INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth century in India was characterised as a century of transition

which changed the structure of power and initiated important social and economic

reconfigurations.

The factors regarding the political decline of the Mughal Empire has

triggered a debate on the nature of economic and social change in the wake of

imperial collapse. The political disintegration of the empire is the most important

development of the first half of the 18* century. The cataclysmic event has

attracted the attention of generation of historians who continue to debate the

causes of decline of Mughal empire, opinions are sharply divided between those

who view the decline as a consequence of economic crisis and exploitation by the

ruling classes and those who regard the political turmoil in terms of regional

assertiveness triggered by certain degree of economic prosperity. The interest in

the study of imperial decline had brought the economy and society of the 18"'

century under sharper historical scrutiny. The explanations regarding the Imperial

decline are contested, so too was the understanding of change during this period.

The historians are divided on the matter of examining the century in the shadow of

empire alone. A strong case has been built to view, the period on its own term.

Those who support this view see the century being characterised by economic and

social reconfigurations that resulted in the emergence of regional political order.

The argument in opposition to interpretation is that the imperial political collapse

initiated debates on 18"" century in the determining of. Dark Age versus Economic

Prosperity.

Second set of arguments around the late 18* century transition in the polity,

society, and economy of India as the English East India Company acquired

political supremacy. The third important consideration is the state and governance.

Lastly, the detailed exploration of regional histories of the period opened new

dimensions.

The early historiography of the decline/disintegration of Mughal Empire

was around administrative and religious policies of the individual rulers and their

nobles. Both the British administrator Scholars and Indian nationalist historians of

late 19* and 20* centuries assessed the empire in terms of the character of the

ruling elite.' Whereas Jadunath Sarkar focused on Aurangzeb and his religious

policy in particular and later his Deccan campaign were identified as instrumental

for the Mughal decline. In the later years he revised his argument and identified

the peasant rebellions (that destroyed the Mughal political stability) as a 'Hindu

reaction' to Aurangzeb's Muslim orthodoxy. The religious policy of the rulers

constituted the chief explanatory points in the subsequent works on Mughals by

William Irvine, Later Mughals, edited and augmented with The History of Nadir Shah 's
Invasion, by Jadunath Sarkar, reprint, New Delhi, 1971.
^ Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. iv, Calcutta, 1932-50, reprint, Bombay, 1971-
75, and History of Aurangzeb, based on original sources, vol. v, Calcutta, 1924-30, 1973,
(reprint).
Sri Ram Sharma and Ishwari Prasad.^ From the late 1950s, Marxist historians

started to look at Mughal Empire from objective and scientific point of view.

Satish Chandra writes in his book, that structural flaws in the working of the

Mughal institutions of jagir and mansab were responsible for the fiscal crisis of

the late 17* century. He argued that the efficient functioning of these two

institutions depended upon the availability of revenues its collection and

distribution. The Mughal failed to maintain the smooth functioning of these two

institutions which became vulnerable during the last days of Aurangzeb which led

the decline of the Mughal Empire."*

From the 1960s onwards some economic historians particularly, Irfan

Habib looked Mughal decline from political and social unrest in fiscal terms. ^ He

argued that high rate of land revenue demand by Mughal authority which caused

rural exploitation leading to peasant migration and rebellions. This facilitated an

agrarian crisis that resulted in the weakening of the empires political foundation.

M. Athar Ali followed Irfan Habib's model of fiscally centralized state, but

attributed its decline not so much to the high rate of revenue demand but rather a

shortage of jagirs. This shortage was created due to geo-political expansion of

empire in Deccan which was considered a less fertile track. This increased the

number of nobles with no jagir land to be assigned. This lack of jagir created an

' Sri Ram Sharma, JTie Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Oxford, 1940, and Ishwari
Prasad, The Mughal Empire, Allahabad, 1974.
* Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707-40, Aligarh, 1959 and review of
the crisis of the Jagirdari System in Satish Chandra, Medieval India: Society the Jagirdari
Crisis and the Village, New Delhi, 1982, pp. 61-75.
^ Irfan Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, New Delhi, 1963.
administrative problem, resulting economic crisis.^ John F. Richard, refuted the

idea that there was lack of useable yag/r^ in Deccan. He argued that Deccan was

not a deficit area, that bejagiri (the absence of jagirs) was a major factor of the

economic crisis of empire.

In 1980s Satish Chandra revised, his notion and shifted to the economic

aspects of the politico administrative imperial crisis. He argued that the quantum

of land to be given as jagirs became few and relatively infertile. Therefore, the

discrepancy between the estimated revenue (Jama) and actual yields (hasil)

intensified. This had an adverse impact on the ability of state functionaries to

ensure the regularity of revenue collection. A jagirdari crisis with distinct

economic undertones finally ended Mughal stability.

Besides these, the downfall of the Mughal Empire is also viewed as a

cultural failure. Here 'cultural' represents technological, intellectual and economic

referents. Here the economic crisis that underlined the decline is attributed to the

relative economic, technological and intellectual rise of Europe in the period 1500-

1700 as a centre of world commerce. As Europe emerged as the principal market

for luxurious crafts manufacture of the world and it attracted high value products

from its traditional Eastern markets. This was compensable through intensified

agrarian exploitation. The intellectual and technological aridity of India did not

allow towns to emerge as 'safety valve' for the people. These were therefore, no
^ M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Aligarh, 1966.
John F. Richard, Mughal Administration in Golconda, Oxford, 1975.
Satish Chanadra, Medieval India: Society, the Jagirdari crisis and the Village, review of the
crisis of the jagirdari crisis. New Delhi, 1982, pp. 61-75.
escape from fiscal arm of the state. All these reasons made the empire politically

and economically vulnerable.^ Even agrahan/jagirdari crisis could be taken as an

explanation. It may be argued that this crisis was not sought to be confused with

diversification of economy through overseas trade on a big scale, for which some

identifiable potentials were certainly there.

Above surveyed literature identify the 18'^ century as a 'Dark Age'. The

historians were occupied with the notion of the imperial centre alone but they did

not pay attention to the Mughal institutions which were being modified and

transformed at local and regional level which paved the way for shift of power

from centre to periphery. The emergence of the Marathas, the Sikhs and the

Satnamis was due to the exploitative policy of the state to peasantry. It was argued

that the emergence of regional politics the Marathas, the Sikhs continued the

exploitative tendencies of their predecessors, the Mughals. Thus, regional political

realignments were explained within the framework of the functioning of the

Mughal 'agrarian system' alone. The focus remained on the structures of revenue

extraction and not so much on other forms of production or trade."

Apart from these some scholars look from different angle. This can be

traced in the work of Herman Goetz on eighteenth century music and architecture

and Bemand S. Cohn's study of Banaras. Goetz argued the resilience of Mughal

M. Athar AH, The Passing of Empire: The Mughal Case, Modem Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 3,
1975, pp. 385-96.
Irfan Habib, Potentialities of the Capitalistic Developments in the Economy ofMughal India, in
Irfan Habib (ed.) Essays in Indian History: Towards A Marxists Perception, New Delhi, 1997.
M. Athar Ali, The Eighteenth Century: an interpretation, Indian Historical Review, vol. 5, nos.
1-2, 1978-79, pp. 175-86.
society as reflected in the involving musical and architectural style in the wake of
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imperial collapse.

Scholars, who engaged regional study, emphasize a range of factors that

fuelled the imperial decline and encouraged regional economic and political

buoyancy. The emphasis was on different non-agricultural strands that sustained

the local economy. The regional economy based on shifting patterns of trade,

movement of mercantile capital from centre to periphery, war, pillage and political

maneouvering by regional elites were tapped in the works of Ashin Das Gupta,

B.R. Grover, Steward Gordon and Richard B. Bamett.

Ashin Dan Gupta displays that the corporate mercantile institutions

transcended political boundaries for over seeing the transportation of goods and

the provision of credit and insurance services in the period of decline. Even though

inland trade increased, export trade and port cities of Surat in Gujarat declined

around 1720, as did Masaulipatam in Madras and Dhaka in Bengal, whereas

colonial port cities such as Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta rose to prominence.'^

Karen Leonard argues that "indigenous banking firms were indispensable allies of

the Mughal sate" and the great nobles "were more likely to be directly dependent

upon these firms when in period 1650-1750, these banking firms began the

redirection of their economic and political support" towards regional politics and

rulers, including the English East India Company in Bengal, this led to

Herman Goetz, The Crisis of Indian Civilization in the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries:
The Genesis ofIndo-Muslim Civilization, Calcutta, 1938.
'^ Ashin Das Dupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, C. 1700-1750, Weisbaden, 1979.
bankruptcy, a series of political crises and downfall of the Empire. M.N. Pearson

gave some evidence of merchant's participation in politics.'^ However, Pearson

refrains from suggesting that the Mughal finance system was dependent on

merchant's credit.

The studies highlighted regional level changes in the period of transition,

provoked reconsideration among historians working on Mughal India as well.

They are now making a strong case for studying the IS"' century on its own terms

as a phase which saw the emergence of regional political orders. The studies are

significant in that they throw new light on both the nature of the Mughal Empire

as well as the process of its weakening and eventual decline in the 1?"' and early

18* century.

Viewing the Mughal state from the perspective of the regional literature of

the Mughal subah of Awadh, Muzaffar Alam Suggests that the Mughal Empire

signified a coordinating agency between conflicting communities and various

indigenous socio-political system at different levels. Muzaffar Alam's study of

early 18* century Awadh provides evidence of the remarkable economic growth

and prosperity which resulted in zamindari unrest in the region. Economic

prosperity was a consequence of increased commercialization and monetization of

the economy that was initiated in the heyday of the Mughals. The affluent

zamindars took advantage of their newly accumulated assets and disobeyed the

Karen Leonard, The Great Firm Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, vol. 21, no. 2, April, 1979, pp. 161-67.
'^ M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat, California, 1976.
order of the Mughal commands. As they rose in rebeUions the Mughal subedar

(governor) in the region enhanced his power by using the unrest as bargaining chip

with the emperor. It is under his patronage that regional assertion ultimately

buoyed the suba to political autonomy.'^ In a later article on 18* century Bihar,

Alam reiterates his fiscal growth argument with evidence from both regional and

imperial Persian literature and Urdu poetry. This material, unlike the court

chronicle, touches on the life of different social groups. On the basis of this

material, Alam infers that 18* century "crisis" is a more complex issue than the

Delhi centered administrative and fiscal studies of empire have so far done. For

the numerous voices of different social groups as tapped in the regional Persian

sources suggest that one's order was another's disorder. The experiences of the
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crisis were felt differently in Delhi also.

Following the general region-centric trend laid out by Alam, Chetan Singh

indicates that the political unrest in some provinces such as Punjab was linked to

tensions generated between the agrarian economy of the Mughal plains on the one

had and fringe tribal societies as they moved towards a sedentary existence on the

other. The latter process altered the structure of tribal societies and increased

pressure on the agrarian economy which was already under stress. Thus the events

of the 18* century were rooted in the economic processes that shaped the

'* Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and Punjab, 1707-48,
New Delhi, 1986.
^ Muzaffar Alam, Eastern India in the Early Eighteenth Century "Crisis " some evidence from
Bihar, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 28, no. 1, 1991, pp. 43-71.
functioning of the empire from its very inception.'^ The evidence from most of

these regions indicates economic realignments that ensured the dissociation of the

regions from imperial control. These studies thus considerably altar the notion of

the 18* centur>' as a "Dark Age".

These new studies also find that the trajectories of regional dissociation

from the centre were varied even though some general features can be identified

across the board. C.A Bayly has articulated these features in his studies. He argues

that regional political crystallization was a consequence of three important

developments, (a) the emergence of a vibrant cross-caste mercantile organisation

and its development in politics. The proliferation of the Mughal practice of

revenue farming meant a coalescing of merchant and agrarian interest resulting in

the emergence of new class of intermediaries (b) the gentrification process, which

brought together a class of scribes, accountants and other Mughal service groups

that served the new powers locally and sank their feet deep into society, investing

in the small towns or qasbas, (c) the practice of military fiscalism , which meat the

maintenance of large armies and their deployment in revenue collection. Bayly

gave emphasis on the rise of intermediaries, complete with the trappings of royal

power drawing on Mughal military and fiscal institutions and their emergence as

new power centres. These revenue collecting intermediaries, who derived their

Chetan Singh, Region and Empire: Punjab in the Seventeenth Century, Delhi, 1991 and
Interaction between Divergent Social Formation: A Possible Explanation for some instances of
Unrest in 77"' century, Punjab History Congress, 1980, pp. 80-86.
power from a variety of portfolios, have been categorized by C.A. Bayly and

Sanjay Subrahmanyan as 'portfolio capitalists'.'*^

The 'revisionists' seem to be more coherent in their explanation. As

different point of emphasis emerge in this direction with clarity of landed interests,

merchants and trading communities and their relationship with political power is

now available. This helped Bayly to come out with this argument about the

centrality of intermediary groups in the 18* century transition. There are

indications that this growth was maintained over much of India in the first half of

the 18* century as well.

Growth in the first half of the century in Rajasthan has been clearly

documented. Price rose faster than the level of revenue demand. This provided the

incentive for increasing the area under cultivation and for growing more valuable

crops. Both grain, taken by the state as taxation and cash crops were traded out of

the province in large quantity.

The study of craft productions of pre colonial India and their distribution by

merchants group has been attracting the attention of the historians from India and

abroad. Some of these studies are of general nature and primarily based on

European and Persian sources. The regions covered primarily by these scholars

" C.A. Bayly and Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Portfolio Capitalists and Political Economy of Early
Modern India, Indian Economic and Social History Review, lESHR, vol. 25, no. 4, 1988, pp.
401-24.
^° S.P. Gupta, The Agrarain System of the Eastern Rajasthan, C. 1650-1750, New Delhi, 1986;
Dilbagh Singh, The Peasant and the State: Eastern Rajasthan in the 18''' Century, Delhi, 1990;
Madhavi Bajekal, The State and the Rural Grain Market in 18^'' Century Eastern Rajasthan, in
Sanjay Subrahmanyan (ed.) Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modem India, Delhi,
1990, 90-120.

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are, Gujarat, South India and Bengal. However, Rajasthan could not get much

attention of scholars though it possesses a treasure house of archival and private

records of business families. This enormous material would enable us to trace the

growth and development of crafts in the different states (Jodhpur, Jaipur, Bikaner

and Kota).

Besides these, it also had a well developed trading and manufacturing unit

in town and cities. The significance of trade and commerce for some works has

been done at the regional level in which local documents were tapped appreciably.

With the growing interest in the area-specific social and economic history,

materials from regional sources acquired a new crucial importance. The study on

eastern Rajasthan by S.P. Gupta provides the picture of progress in agricultural

production in the area during the entire period 1650-1750.

These studies provided a new insight into the agrarian economy of 1 ?"' and

18* century. It paved the way for evaluating the structure and stratification of the

village society in terms of changes taking place. These studies also provided a new

dimension to the whole issue of impact of state policies on agrarian economy. But

remained confined to the rural economy ignoring the trading and manufacturing

urban centres, they were not unworthy of consideration.

Trade in crafts depended much on the merchandise produced by various

artisan groups in urban as well as rural areas. The goods produced and

^' S.P. Gupta, The Agrarian System of the Eastern Rajasthan, (C 1650-1750), New Delhi, 1986,
however Dilbagh Singh, The State, Landlords, and Peasants on 2"'' half of the IS^ century, has
a different thing to say that the economy was shattered when the Mughal administration had
declined.

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manufactured by the artisans were brought to the market for sale. Some of these

products such as earthen pot, metal utensils, ornaments, were meant either for

local consumption or distant areas. While the textile, calico-prints, indigo assumed

added importance besides satisfying the local need they were available for export.

The policy of the Rajput states in their respective regions is quite

interesting. Every Rajput state made administrative efforts to regulate the trade

and artisan production to augment their income. To achieve this, it appears that

they had established separate offices to look after trade and craft sector. Special

attention was paid to promote trade and commerce and safety and protection was

provided to traders on trade routes. Similarly the interests of the artisans were also

looked after. In return the state got appreciable income in the form of the taxes

from these two sectors. Besides these, the role of mercantile community and

involvement of some other sections in trade (including not so rudimentary banking

system) led to the emergence of cross-caste mercantile class. Many towns had

emerged as a commercial towns due to their location on the trade routes. Besides

some had become a producing units.

Rajasthan was on the Mughal highway junction connecting Agra to

Ahmadabad and to some other regions of India which facilitated the accessibility

of merchants to it. The eighteenth century Rajasthan witnessed flourishing internal

trade. Different Rajput states carried on trade by land route with other parts of the

country.

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