INTRODUCTIO: The eighteenth century in India was characterized by two critical

transitions which changed the structure of power and initiated important social and
economic reconfigurations:

→ The first was the transition in the first half of the century from the Mughal
political economy to regional political orders.
→ The second was the transition in the period following the battles of
Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764) in the polity, society, and economy as
the English East India Company steered its way to a position of political
prominence in north India.
→

Phase 1: The First Half of the Eighteenth Century: Dark Ages versus Economic
Prosperity

(Mughal empirical disintegration)

• The controversy regarding the political decline of the Mughals has triggered a debate
on the nature of economic and social change in the wake of imperial collapse.
• The causes of Mughal decline 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 economic prosperity.
• But if explanations regarding Mughal imperial decline were contested, so too was
the understanding of the nature of change during this period:
→ At the most basic level, historians are divided on the question of examining the
century in the shadow of empire alone;
→ a strong case has been built to view the period on its own terms.
→ Imperial socio-economic reconfiguration view:
⎯ Those who support this view see the century being characterized by
economic and social reconfigurations that resulted in the
emergence of regional political orders.
→ Imperial collapse:
⎯ Opposed to the interpretation is the argument that imperial political collapse
initiated a process of economic and social decay as well.
→ These two divergent positions form the 'Dark Ages’ versus ‘economic
prosperity’ debate on the eighteenth century.
 • The early historians of Mughal India viewed the events of the eighteenth century as
being integral to political developments in the Mughal empire.
• Since the ‘big event’ of the century was the political collapse of the empire, it was
only logical that the historiography of the period was linked of that of imperial
decline.

Colonial and Nationalist view

• The early historiography of decline focused on the administrative and religious

policies of individual rulers and their nobles.
• Both the British administrator-scholars and the Indian nationalist historians of
the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries assessed the empire in terms of the
character of the ruling élite (Irvine, repr. 1971, 16, 19, and 24).
• Sir Jadunath Sarkar:
→ the spotlight remained on Aurangzeb,
→ the emperor who oversaw the imperial downfall.
→ His religious policy, in particular, and later his Deccan campaigns were
identified as the chief dislocators
→ He characterized the peasant rebellions that ultimately destroyed Mughal
political stability
→ saw the rebellions as a ‘Hindu reaction’ to Aurangzeb’s Muslim orthodoxy
• Sri Ram Sharma and Ishwari Prasad as well:
→ Saw the religious policy of the rulers constituted the chief explanatory point
in the subsequent Mughal studies of the decline
• The eighteenth century emerged as a politically chaotic and economically crisis-
prone period.

Marxist Historian/ Economic Historians

• From the late 1950s, Marxist-oriented historians

• began to provide explanations of Mughal decline in materialist terms.
• Satish Chandra:
→ held the structural flaws in the working of the Mughal institutions of jagir
and mansab responsible for the fiscal crisis of the late seventeenth
century.
→ He argued that the efficient functioning of these two institutions
depended on the availability of revenue and its collection and
distribution.
 → The Mughal failure to ensure the smooth functioning of these institutions
became most pronounced during Aurangzeb’s reign and was to herald
the process of imperial collapse
• From the 1960s onwards, some economic historians,
• in particular Irfan Habib:
→ explained Mughal decline and the consequent political and social unrest in
fiscal terms
→ Habib argued that the high rate of land revenue demanded by Delhi
caused large-scale rural exploitation, leading to peasant migration and
rebellion.
→ This created an agrarian crisis that resulted in the weakening of the empire’s
political edifice.
• Athar M. Ali:
→ accepted Habib’s model of a fiscally centralized state, but attributed its
decline not so much to the high land revenue demand but rather to a
shortage of jagirs.
→ The deficit was created because of the political expansion of the empire
into less fertile lands, especially in the Deccan.
→ This increased the number of nobles without a corresponding
augmentation in jagir lands.
→ The shortage of jagirs generated an administrative problem, which, in its
turn, fuelled the economic crisis

• John F. Richards:
→ study of the Mughal administration in Deccan challenged the idea that
there was a shortage of usable jagirs in the region.
→ His conclusion that the Deccan was not a deficit area questioned the belief
that bejagiri (the absence of jagirs) was a major cause of the crisis of empire
• In the 1980s the later work of Satish Chandra:
→ once again shifted the focus to the economic aspects of the politico-
administrative imperial crisis.
→ He argued that as jagirs became few and relatively infertile, 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 undid Mughal
stability

As cultural failure

• The downfall of the empire is also viewed as a ‘cultural’ failure.

• Culture is seen in terms of 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 manufactures of the
world, it attracted high- value products from the traditional Eastern markets.
• This increased the cost of luxury items in India and intensified the financial
difficulties of the ruling classes.
• This was compensated through intensified agrarian exploitation.
• In addition, the intellectual and technological aridity of India did not allow towns
to emerge as ‘safety valves’ for the people.
• There was, therefore, no escape from the fiscal arm of the state.
• All these reasons made the empire politically and economically vulnerable
• The follies of imperial policy threw the empire out of gear and paved the way for its
eventual demise.
(Mughal amalgamation with the regional kingdoms)

• The predominant theme in the works surveyed in the preceding paragraphs, their
differences notwithstanding, about the withering of the royal diktats, projected the
eighteenth century as a ‘Dark Age’, its hallmark being political chaos and
economic decline.
• The fixing of the historian’s gaze on the imperial centre alone took no cognizance
of the diverse ways in which Mughal institutions were being modified and
transformed at local and regional levels so as to pave the way for a subtle shift of
power away from Delhi to the regions. Indeed, this historiography saw the
emergence of regional outfits such as:
- The Marathas,
- the Satnamis, and
- the Sikhs
- as a consequence of the support extended by the exploited peasantry to the
Maratha zamindars, to peasant leaders such as Banda Bahadur, or to religious
sects such as the Satnamis, all of whom peppered their rhetoric of political
mobilization with the monotheistic Bhakti ideology of social equality.
- In the ultimate analysis, it was argued that the emergent regional polities of the
Marathas and the Sikhs continued the exploitative tendencies of their
predecessor, 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
• Alongside there also existed alternate views on the eighteenth-century political
economy. These moved beyond the Mughal agrarian system’ and the machinery
of ‘revenue extraction’ to other kinds of non-economic productions and
politico-economic engineering by Mughal functionaries. They can be traced in
the works of:
- Hermann Goetz:
→ on eighteenth-century music and architecture
→ Goetz documented the resilience of Mughal society as reflected in the
evolving musical and architectural styles in the wake of imperial collapse.
- Bernard S. Cohn:
→ American anthropologist
→ His study of Banares.
 → Cohn pieced together the efforts of Mughal functionaries, such as zamindars
and amildars, to manipulate both the imperial and regional-level power
structures so as to carve out independent niches for themselves.
→ It was on these carefully crafted administrative and fiscal networks that
English rule later structured itself.
- Both these studies:
→ though different in their objectives,
→ offer similar suggestive implications for understanding both the imperial
collapse as well as the emergence of regional powers.
→ They indicate the continued survival and growth of social and economic
referents of the empire even when the edifice of its revenue-extraction
structure has collapsed; architecture, music, fiscal institutions, and social
groups emerged as the new fulcrums of regional state building.
→ Such studies also provoke a reconsideration of the centralized nature of Mughal governance.
→ It is difficult to conceive of a centralized bureaucratic state model where economic and social
markers of growth outlive political decay.
- J.C. Heesterman:
→ his work argues for the ‘resilience’ and ‘durability’ of Mughal society by
explaining the overarching Indian political forms through the self-explanatory
organic scheme of the rise, decline, and fall that characterized power in Hindu
‘political theory’.
→ Thus, according to Heesterman, the Mughal empire did not fall; rather it
was simply swallowed by a larger political organism: a cyclical
realignment rather than a collapse characterized the change in the
eighteenth century.
→ But Heesterman stands alone in his explanation of eighteenth-century
society with his emphasis on the inevitability of change that derives from
the insoluble dilemma within the Indian notion of kingship: the tenuous
link between power and authority.
→ The former is represented by the king as the coordinator of social conflict and
the latter by the Brahmin in the role of the renunciator.
→ One’s order is the other’s disorder. Both stand on opposite ends from
each other, with no mediating priesthood.
→ The ‘illegitimacy’ of power in this abstract notion of kingship makes
change cyclical and inevitable
• Scholars who produced regional studies were not convinced by Heesterman’s
somewhat metaphysical (the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things,
including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space)
argument.
• In contrast, they emphasized a range of factors that fuelled imperial decline and
encouraged regional economic and political buoyancy.
• The emphasis was on different non-agricultural strands that sustained the local
economies.
• The regional economies based on shifting patterns of trade, movement of
mercantile capital from centre to periphery, war, pillage, and political
manoeuvrings by regional élites were highlighted in the works of Ashin Das Gupta,
B.R. Grover, Karen Leonard, Stewart Gordon, and Richard B. Barnett.
⎯ Ashin Das Gupta:
→ indicates that corporate mercantile institutions transcended political
boundaries for overseeing 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 suffered
relative eclipse in the face of European advances.
→ The port city of Surat in Gujarat declined around 1720, as did Masaulipatnam
in Madras and Dhaka in Bengal, whereas colonial port cities such as
Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta rose to prominence
⎯ B.R. Grover:
→ Grover maps a general picture of rural commerce in eighteenth-century
north India.
→ He concludes that the vicissitudes (a change of circumstances or fortune,
typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant) caused by foreign invasions,
European and English competition in trade, and the ruination of the
Mughal nobility and aristocracy notwithstanding, local rural commercial
production found new avenues in the provincial markets within the
subcontinent.
→ This greatly compensated for the comparative loss of foreign trade with
respect to handicrafts and cottage industries
⎯ Karen Leonard
→ Moving from trade to the potential of merchant capital
→ Leonard emphasizes the movement of mercantile from Delhi to the
regional centres as being critical to the buoyancy of the latter’s political
economy and the relative decline of the former.
 → The shift of credit and trade of the great banking firms to the regional centres
was accompanied by the emergence of a mobile service class with multiple
functions: trade, accounting, as well as revenue collection.
→ Here the space for capital mobilization at regional level is clearly
suggested
⎯ Stewart Gordon and Burton Stein:
→ War and pillage, and their links with the regional economies form the crux of
arguments put forward by Stewart Gordon and Burton Stein regarding the
eighteenth-century transition.
→ Stein formulates the notion of military fiscalism as a revenue extractive
and distributive process involving the military.
→ His argument is that in the context of war, large military establishments
need to be maintained, which make the regularity of revenue collection
an even more pressing necessity.
→ This is ensured, in many parts of south India, by the active involvement of
the military in revenue collection.
→ Thus war and military mobilization constitute the fulcrum (the point on which
a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots) of change
→ Gordon advances a model of state building in the Malwa territory that
hinges on an economy sustained by the ‘marauding’ and ‘pillaging’ by the
Marathas as they integrate the region into their commercialized polity
⎯ Frank Perlin
→ Further elaborates on the complexity of the Maratha state building
process
→ by showing that its characteristic feature was high commercial activity
and that commercialization was not a function of state demand alone
→ Barnett charts an entirely different trajectory of state formation in the
Awadh region, where the economy is sustained also by the sophistication
with which the nawabs bluff the British about their revenue resources
• Studies highlighting regional-level changes in the period of transition provoked a
reconsideration among historians working on Mughal India as well.
⎯ They are now making a strong case for studying the eighteenth century on its
own terms, as a phase which saw the emergence of regional political orders.
⎯ In these region-based studies, the dissociation of the region from the centre
has been studied with a view to understanding the nature of the political
transformation in the eighteenth century.
⎯ The emphasis is that the nature of the eighteenth-century changes is rooted in
the fluid, conflict-prone functioning of empire where Delhi, rather than
exercising centralized control, plays a mere coordinating role between the
regions and social groups.
⎯ As the spotlight is fixed on the regions, both the interpretation of the nature of
eighteenth-century changes and the characterization of the functioning of
empire are substantially revised.
⎯ Both phenomena are explained in terms of the increasing assertiveness of
regional powers rather than in terms of Mughal fiscal and administrative lapses
alone.
⎯ Here the works of Muzaffar Alam and Chetan Singh, on the Awadh and Punjab
subhas of the empire respectively, are pioneering studies.
⎯ Both concentrate largely on the agrarian economies of the regions; the
themes addressed include land, production, revenue rights, and the tribal
economies on the fringes of empire.
o Muzaffar Alam’s
→ study of early-eighteenth-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 the monetization of the economy that was
initiated in the heyday of the Mughals.
→ The wealthy zamindars took advantages of their newly acquired
assets and refused to comply with Mughal commands.
→ As they rose in rebellion, the Mughal subedar (governor) in the region
enhanced his power by using the unrest as his bargaining chip with
the emperor.
→ It is under his aegis that regional assertion ultimately buoyed the suba
to political autonomy
→ In a later article on eighteenth-century Bihar, Alam reinforces his fiscal
growth argument with evidence from both regional and imperial Persian
literature and Urdu poetry; this material, unlike the court chronicles,
touches on the lives of a multitude of social groups.
→ Based on this material, Alam concludes that the eighteenth-century
‘crisis’ is a far more complex issue than the Delhi-centred administrative
and fiscal studies of empire have so far projected.
 → For the varied voices of different social groups as captured in the regional
Persian sources suggest that one’s order was another’s disorder.
→ Even within Delhi, the experiences of the ‘crisis’ were varied (Alam, 1991).
⎯ Chetan Singh
→ following the general region-centric trend laid out by Alam
→ suggests that the political unrest in some provinces, such as the
Punjab, was linked to tensions generated between the agrarian
economy of the Mughal plains, on the one hand, 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 eighteenth century were rooted in the economic
processes that shaped the functioning of empire from its very inception

• The much-neglected cultural dimension of both the empire’s functioning as

well as its eventual demise is also now centre stage central to the field of
eighteenth-century studies.
⎯ Central to discussions is the cultural interface between regions and empire.
⎯ In this context the essay by John F. Richards and V. Narayana Rao on the
Mughal Deccan is pioneering:
→ They emphasize the need to juxtapose (place or deal with close together for
contrasting effect) Persian with vernacular source material and oral with
written tradition to understand the complexity of Mughal functioning at the
lowest level.
→ Their study brings to light the centrality of ‘community’ in interaction with an
interventionist state apparatus, as a powerful analytical premise for
explaining the working of the Mughal state.
⎯ The linguistic component of this critical cultural interface between regions and
empire is elaborated upon by Alam:
→ in a more recent essay on the making of Persian as the ‘imperial
language’.
→ He shows that the tensions between region and empire were also
expressed as friction between Persian and the vernaculars.
→ Thus, like Richards and Rao, Alam also suggests that evidence of
resistance of Mughal rule may not be available in the Persian material,
 but may lie instead in vernacular texts and oral traditions generated in
the regions.
• Yet Persian documentation alone, both court chronicles and revenue records,
continue to constitute the research base of those who postulate a centralized
fiscal state model.
• Even though the cultural dimension of empire in the early eighteenth century needs
further exploration and the studies are few and sketchy, a rich corpus of studies is
available on both agricultural and non-agricultural production systems and patterns
of trade.
• These explain variously the mushrooming of regional polities in the period: Awadh,
Bengal, and Hyderabad steered to autonomy by Mughal provincial officials, and the
Sikhs, Marathas, and Satnamis by ‘rebel’ peasant leaders.
• Explanations are also proffered for the emergence of the Rohilkhand and
Farrukhabad nawabis, as well as for the crystallization of the south Indian polities of
Tipu Sultan and those on the south-west coast of Malabar which had no or only
indirect Mughal influence.
• The evidence from most of these regions indicates economic realignments that
ensured the dissociation of the regions from imperial control.
• These studies thus considerably alter the notion of the eighteenth century as a 'Dark
Age'.
• At the same time, these new studies also indicate that the trajectories of regional
dissociation from the centre were diverse, even though some general features
can be identified across the board.
• The common attributes are articulated most clearly in the studies of C.A. Bayly:
→ His richly textured social history, particularly Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars,
suggests that regional political crystallization was a consequence of three
important developments:
→ First, the emergence of a vibrant cross-caste mercantile organization and its
involvement in politics-the proliferation of the Mughal practice of revenue
farming meant a coalescing of merchant and agrarian interests, resulting in the
emergence of a new class of intermediaries.
→ Second, 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
qasbahs.
→ Finally, the practice of military fiscalism, which meant the maintenance of large
armies and their deployment in revenue collection.
→ The emphasis in Bayly’s work is 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 power from a
variety of portfolios (a collection of financial assets and investment tools that
are held by an individual, a financial institution or an investment firm) and who
disappeared in the face of the English Company onslaught later in the
decade, are categorized by C.A. Bayly and Sanjay Subrahmanyam as ‘portfolio
capitalists’
→ In his more recent work, Bayly shows the increased local control exercised on
the ‘Indian information order’ by regional polities, which resulted in the
increasing bureaucratization of its formal and informal networks
→ But more importantly, Bayly’s studies indicate that the developments of
eighteenth-century India were not exclusive to India.
→ They were part of a larger global picture, where regional powers in North
Africa, South America, and Russia were similarly poised on the eve of their
colonial takeover by France, Spain, and Czarist Russia respectively.
→ In each of these regions, ‘agrarian patriotism’ and ‘universal benevolence’
became the guarantees of long-term stability.
⎯ The former generated information on the economic, social, and cultural
aspects of societies; and the latter was the language which benefited some
landholders to the disadvantage of the others, thus structuring a power
relation in a society.
⎯ Second, the metropolitan context of imperialism was matched by non-
European empire building as well. Between 1760 and 1830, the interaction
of these two forms of colonization was central to the development of
imperialism.
→ Bayly’s writings triggered a range of studies on the non- European state-building
exercises in the eighteenth century.
→ The builders were regional élites who acted often in anticipation of and in
interaction with the forces of British imperialism.
→ The latter began to be seen as deriving from these indigenous state forms.
→ Studies influenced by this new trend in history writing are often collectively
referred at as ‘revisionist’ writings.
→ They have earned this general epithet since they piece together a picture of
vibrant political economies of regional polities and thus considerably revise the
issue of ‘crisis’ posited by historians working on the Mughal empire.
 → Alongside, they also considerably qualify the metropolitan-centred
understanding of British imperialism by underlining the centrality of the regional
political economics in sustaining British power.
⎯ However, the revisionist position is far from coherent or monologous.
⎯ As different points of emphasis emerge in this position, a clearer picture of landed
interests, merchants, and trading communities and their relationship with political
power is now available.
⎯ This has prompted Bayly to fine-tune his argument about the centrality of
intermediary groups in the eighteenth-century transition (Bayly, 1992).
⎯ The study of landed magnates in Rajasthan and Awadh, in particular, has enabled.
Him to more clearly show the sources of gentry strength.
⎯ It is now more than evident that their power was linked to increasing consolidation of
landed power.
⎯ The latter was being expanded and strengthened as more and more people
converted their state- derived prebendal rights to private inheritable wealth (Singh,
1990; Bajekal, 1990).
⎯ A quick survey of some regions will be undertaken to see how political power
crystallized and the kinds of interests- landed and others-that it represented.
⎯ It will be clear that the shift to regional power centres occurred differently in different
areas, and a variety of explanations are proffered to describe these critical changes.
⎯ At one level, these explanations indicate the different points of emphasis in the so-
called ‘revisionist’ position.
⎯ At another level, these studies have critically altered our understanding of the
political and economic profiles of the regions.
Phase 2:

• The second set of debates centres around:

→ the late-eighteenth- century transition in the polity, society, and economy of
India as the English East India Company acquired political supremacy.
• Here historians have engaged with the following themes:
→ First, the Company’s transition from a commercial to a political entity has
been variously explained.
⎯ Earlier explanations stressed the primacy of trade as the driving force behind
political power,
⎯ while later works emphasized the political imperative that pushed trading
interests.
→ Second, the theme of Company state and the economy has generated
conflicting viewpoints. Under this rubric, historians have dealt with the
following issues:
⎯ the emergence of regional economies;
⎯ European trade and bullion imports into India;
⎯ the position of labour, merchants, and weavers;
⎯ revenue settlements and the introduction of agrarian capitalism.
⎯ Opinions are sharply split over
✓ the roots of early colonial rule in the indigenous economy
and society.
✓ Some economic historians argue that colonial rule was a
determining economic as well as political disjunction.
✓ This view is contested by regional studies based on local
records which show that the English Company was sucked
into the vibrant indigenous political economies. (that our
Indian society always had what is needed to build the new
economic state, the new economy is not something brought or
imposed on us by the Britishers but somethings that Indians
welcomed themselves):
 o In these studies, the Company's success is attributed to its
ability to structure itself on indigenous trade and fiscal
networks, which continued to sustain it until the early
nineteenth century.
→ The third Important theme deals with the state and governance:
⎯ Here, issues regarding the making of the English Company’s
administrative, military, and legal spheres are discussed.
⎯ New studies on these issues question the earlier understanding that
saw the Company’s political sovereignty as being carved in
isolation from Indian society.

→ Finally:
⎯ in view of the vast number of detailed regional histories of the period
now available and the opening up of the non-economic dimensions
of Company rule to historical scrutiny,
⎯ the ideological underpinnings of early colonial power have been
considerably revised.
⎯ Here historians also join issue with historiography influenced by
Edward Said’s notion of ‘orientalism’, which suggests a binary polarity
between a monological mindset that supposedly shaped colonial
power and a homogeneously constructed Indian society. Tissues are
discussed in the concluding section of this Introduction.