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The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
Most historians of the Mughal empire currently emphasize economic factors in their attempts to locate and measure the causes of imperial decline in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India. Recent articles reiterate a standard set of tensions: those between monarch, military and service nobles (mansabdars), landholders (zamindars), and peasants. Existing theories attribute the Mughal decline to the nature of the monarchy, the breakdown of the mansabdari administrative system, and the challenges from newly established regional rulers. One influential analysis points to the increasing burden of taxation and consequent zamindar-peasant rebellions throughout the empire as the fundamental cause of decline. The nobility and the mansabdari system have received most attention, however. Historians have emphasized the strains caused by numerical expansion, inflation of noble ranks, and the ‘aristocratization’ of the mansabdars through conspicuous consumption and hereditary control of positions.
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- Business and Government in Preindustrial Economies
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- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1979
References
A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Seminar on ‘Decline of the Mughals’ at the University of Pennsylvania, May 1974; criticism from the other participants, but even more from Dr. John G. Leonard, has helped improve that version.
1 Peter Hardy has referred to this standard ‘diagram of tensions’ in his commentary upon two of the most recent articles: Hardy, P., ‘Commentary and Critique,’ Journal of Asian Studies, XXXV: 2 (02 1976), 257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The articles upon which he is commenting are Pearson, M. N., ‘Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal empire,’ 221–35,Google Scholar and Richards, J. F., ‘The Imperial Crisis in the Deccan,’ 237–56, both in the same issue.Google Scholar
2 Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India (Bombay, 1963),Google Scholar argues for oppression and revolt. Two often-cited views focusing upon factions among the nobility are Chandra, Satish, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707–1740 (Aligarh, 1959),Google Scholar and Ali, M. Athar, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb (Aligarh, 1966).Google Scholar Two regional perspectives are given by Calkins, Philip, ‘The Formation of a Regionally Oriented Ruling Group in Bengal, 170O-1740,’ Journal of Asian Studies. XXIX: 4 (08 1970),Google Scholar and Leonard, Karen, ‘The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants,’ Journal of Asian Studies, XX: 3 (05, 1971), 569–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See the two articles cited in footnote 1; Pearson argues that military efforts in the south and the defeats inflicted by Shivaji decisively affected the loyalty of the nobles, and Richards argues that policy miscalculations led to artificial jagir shortages and inattention to newly incorporated warrior elites in the south.
4 Useful discussions are by Eisenstadt, S. N., The Political Systems of Empires (New York, 1963),Google Scholar and The Decline of Empires (New Jersey, 1967).Google Scholar
5 The generalization has interesting implications for scholars of cultural and intellectual movements in medieval and early modern India, such as the bhakti movements, the development of vernacular poetry, the shifts of artistic patronage to regional courts, and those political movements led by Shivaji or the Sikh gurus.
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41 Pearson argues that the impact upon the nobility was crucial: ‘Shivaji and the Decline,’ op. cit.
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68 Ibid., pp. 77–78.
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72 Both Panikkar, (Asia and Western Dominance, p. 99)Google Scholar and Gupta, (Sirajuddallah and the East India Company, p. 32)Google Scholar compare the Indian mercantile class to ‘Shangahi compradors,’ but they do not investigate this comparison further. For China, see the following: Balazs, E., ‘The Birth of Capitalism in China,’ in Eisenstadt, , (ed.) Decline of Empires, p. 109;Google ScholarYang, Lien-sheng, Money and Credit in China, A Short History (Cambridge, 1952);CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Economic Aspects of Public Works in Imperial China,’ in Excursions in Sinology (Cambridge, 1969);Google Scholar and ‘Government Control of Urban Merchants in Traditional China,’ in the Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, new series (2nd) 8, 08 1970, 186–206.Google ScholarSee also Elvin, Mark, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London, 1973), particularly pp. 155, 161–62, 215–25, and 285–97.Google Scholar
73 For example, Lehmann, F., ‘Shah Ayat Allah “Jauhri” and his Shahr Ashob,’ in Abdul Karim Sahitya-Visarad Commemoration Volume (Dacca, 1972), and other writing on the eighteenth-century cultural laments.Google Scholar
74 Timberg discusses the problem of sources in ‘A “Great” Marwari Firm.’ In an unpublished paper, ‘Speculative Gains and Primitive Accumulation’ which deals only with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Timberg's problem is the theoretical one of entrepreneurial values; he had no problems with sources. Morris D. Morris, in a recent unpublished paper, ‘South Asian Entrepreneurship and the Rashomon Effect,’ also deals with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and emphasizes the significance of indigenous banking and entrepreneurial activities and how little we still know about them (paper presented at a Conference on Colonial Port Cities in Berkeley, June 1976).
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