Harshita

B.A. (hons.) History

IIIrd Year
0327
Daulat Ram College

Recent writings on 18th century have

considerably altered our understanding of
the period. Elaborate.
INTRODUCTION:
The eighteenth century in Indian history marks it relevance by two crucial
developments-the decline of Mughal Empire and the expansion of
British Empire, which changed the social, economic and political
structure. An extensive study of these two phases has resulted in
diverging views. There is the traditional view of a period of Dark
Age which is of decline and stagnation, and the recent view of
economic prosperity. Moreover, historians stress on the changing
and evolutionary pattern and also a substantial continuity.
Aurangzebs death in 1707 marks the beginning of Mughal decline, but his
territorial expansions that put a huge dent on the financial structure
of the state are also contributing.
The break-up of the Mughal State was followed by the emergency of large
number of independent and semi-independent smaller units. These
were of three-distinct types- firstly, the warrior states established by
Sikhs, Jats and Marathas in the course of rebellions against the
Mughals, who adopted military fiscalism; secondly, independent
kingdoms where subedars asserted their independence, e.g.
Nawabs of Bengal, Nizams of Hyderabad; and thirdly, local kingdoms
whose sovereignty acquired more substance in the 18 th century, e.g.
the Rajput states, Mysore etc., which resorted to military fiscalism
within compact domains, achieving varying degrees of success in
extracting revenues from trade and production.
Initially, the nationalist and colonialist writers focused on the weaknesses
of individual Mughal rulers for the decline of the empire. Marxist and
Annaliste historians dominated the revisionist work about the eighteenth
century in the 1980s and 1990s and tried to uncover the structural
transformations that were rooted deep in the Indian society under the

political history of empires. David Washbrook and Prasannan Parthasarthi

have made interesting interventions about the status of labour in South
India during the 18th century.
Meanwhile, British historians like C.A. Bayly and David Washbrook,
working on the local and provincial origins of Indian nationalism in
the late nineteenth century, looked back to explore deep social
histories of the Indian elites and middle classes who lead the later
nationalist politics. This contradicted the view that the Mughal
Empire collapsed due to rebellions by resentful and oppressed
landlords and peasants. Muzaffar Alam and Andre Wink, expressed
Mughal centralized powers decline as a process in which local elites
who under the patronage of Mughal started gaining more symbols
and substance of sovereignty.
Most of the revisionist work questioned the economic decline theory that
both imperialist and nationalist histories posed. They speculated
regional variations that showed significant economic growth and
with increased monetization, agricultural and commercial expansion
as evidence. They did not just focus on the decline of the Mughal
imperial centre but on the dynamism of regional and local polities.
Robert Travers talks about how social history was pitted against cultural
history as the eighteenth century revisionists were said to be rivals
of the cultural and linguistic leaning Subaltern studies. This was
emphasized upon in South Asian history by postcolonial theory
politics and critics. The disputes started losing their edges as both
the debates settled down and it became clear that both of them had
a different approach, different time periods, different social groups
etc. These debates raise many contests such as collaboration versus
resistance, Indian agency versus colonial intervention, continuity
versus change, social history versus cultural history.
Bernard S. Cohn, one of the revisionist historian talks about the existence
and interaction of multiple levels of power, from villages and local
land controllers to kings, provincial governors and emperors.

NATIONALIST AND COLONIALIST SCHOOL:

Influential historians of the early-twentieth century like Jadunath Sarkar
claimed that the Maratha, Jat and Sikh resistance was evidence of a
strong Hindu opposition against Aurangzebs religiously bigot
policies and they were the reason for the ultimate collapse of the
Mughal empire. The nationalists further argue that Hindu rulers such

as the Marathas should have been the legitimate successors of

Mughals.
Colonialists, on the other hand, believed that the British East India
Company of occidental origin with its rule of law, governance model
and the gift of civilization were the legitimate heir to the decadent
Muslims. They wanted to civilize the barbaric, oriental despots of
east.
The British colonialists kept trying to portray India as a timeless and
stagnant land in contrast to their progress and dynamic traits, while
the Indian nationalists claimed the antiquity of their cultural and
political ideals.
ALIGARH SCHOOL OF MARXIST HISTORIANS:
The Aligarh School of Marxist historians focused on state-formation
process and on the important role of bankers, merchants and elites
who held lands in forming pre-colonial and colonial states. These
historians took economy as the base with politics, society and
culture as the super-structure.
Irfan Habib argues for an agrarian crisis, he broadly accepts the
centralized nature of Mughal polity and the large amount of surplus
that the land-tax represented. He asserts that, 'the peculiar feature
of the state in Mughal India was that it served not merely as
the protective arm of the exploiting classes, but was itself the
principal instrument of exploitation'. He insists that the centralized
Mughal rule coexisted and collaborated with the localized hereditary
junior ruling class i.e. the Zamindars who shared in the surplus as
well. The view that Mughal agrarian system was a relationship
between the state and the peasantry was replaced by the idea of a
three-tier structure of the imperial ruling class, the zamindars and
the peasants.
The rotational allotment of land to mansabdars led to increasing pressure
on the peasantry for extraction of revenue. This compromised the
fertility of the land and also the rising illegal demands pushed the
peasantry to poverty and rebellion which weakened the Mughal
authority. Muzaffar Alams study of Awadh shows that it was the
landlords who were refusing to pay revenue to the state-treasury
and hence asserting their supremacy instead of the peasants. Even
with the difference between Jama and Hasil, the estimated land
revenue and the actual revenue collected, the peasants were not
benefitting.

Satish Chandra offers an excellent synthesis on sources of Mughal political

history and administration in his works. He propounds the theory of
a Jagirdari as well as a Mansabdari crisis. He talks about Jama and
Hasil where Jama is the estimated revenue and Hasil is the actual
revenue extracted in case of the Jagirdars and Zat and Sawa in case
of the Mansabdars. Zat was the rank allotted to the Mansabdar and
Sawa was the number of horses that he had to maintain.
M. Athar Ali supports Chandras theory, except, he asserts that the
reckless expansion and expeditions of Aurangzeb compromised the
land revenue payments of the officials who maintained a ready
supply of troops, thus decreasing their number. He also criticizes the
elementary error of historians to assume that if the Mughal Empire
was centralized and had administrative unity then it was same as
the Post-Reformation European Enlightened Despotism. He is one of
the harshest critics of the various revisionist projects and insists that
the breakdown of the Mughal empire into mutually conflicting small
political units, collectively less strong than centralized empire
paved the way for European expansion. J.F. Richards criticises him,
his study of Deccan shows that Aurangzebs Deccan policy did not
lead to Bejagiri as there was enough land to be granted as Jagirs to
Mansabdars.

CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL:
The traditional views have been challenged by the Cambridge school that
see the arrival of colonialism as a long-drawn historical process.
C.A. Bayly initiates the revisionist approach to the analysis of Mughal
polity, he emphasizes that the key note of Mughal rule had been
size and centralization. He sees the decline of the Mughal empire in
a positive light, where Corporate groups or social classes played
their role through the commercialization and decentralization of
Mughal polity in extending agriculture and intensifying commerce,
and later shifting their allegiance to the British for beneficial power.
Baylys continuity thesis assesses the performance of the regional
elites, forming the 18th century transition states. His thesis is
supported by Muzaffar Alam who believes that the glorification of
the permanent Jagir and revenue farming (ijara) were indices of
regionalization, commercialization and growth, not of collapse of
government and equity.

Andre Winks approach is somewhere along the line of Baylys argument,

he assumes that Mughal sources consist of only a few chronicles
which merely hide behind a faade of moralistic or religious
condemnation.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam has suggested a global approach by speculating
the increased connectivity of the local and the supra-local, through
travel, commerce, conflict, and intellectual/cultural exchange, as a
critical and widespread feature of early modernity. He suggested the
term portfolio Capitalist for the groups that were simultaneously
involved in both commerce and politics like traders, bankers and
merchants.
CASE STUDY OF AWADH AND DECCAN:
According to Muzaffar Alam, the decline of centralization of Mughal power
must have been a complex process of decentralization, in which
local elites who had prospered under the Mughal hegemony began
to appropriate more of the symbols and substance of sovereignty.
He studied Persian sources to understand aspects of agrarian
uprisings focusing on the regions of Awadh, Banaras etc.; he showed
that various castes and communities held Zamindari rights in these
regions. He argues that clans often fought against each other and in
some cases the Mughal state came to aid and eventually played one
clan against another to overcome the threat of rebellion. He says
that often peasants resisted Zamindars since the rural population
was a victim of Zamindar revolts. He argues for a context of
economic prosperity which led to Zamindar ascendency and points
out that villages and zamindars had great availability of money and
agrarian prosperity was a result of basic trade carried out by
Banjaras.
J.F. Richards has challenged the idea of shortage of Jagirs in the Deccan
with his study of Mughal administration in Golconda. He concluded
that the Deccan was not deficit in land and hence be-jagiri couldnt
have been a major cause of Mughal decline.
NEO-REVISIONISTS:
Neo-revisionists like Prasannan Parthasarthi and David Washbrook have
re-questioned the revisionists argument on colonialism.
Parthasarthi shows that labourers in South India had higher earnings
and a better standard of living than their British counterparts. This
was due to the high agricultural productivity that enabled artisans to
survive on a lesser wage and gave the industry a competitive edge

in terms of cost of production and price. High demand translated

into greater power in the case of merchants. Moreover, conditions of
labour scarcity and corporate traditions within weavers meant that
they could effectively control their own labour. Finally, the lack of
any tradition of state intervention in disputes over labour worked
decisively to the advantage of the weavers as this prevented the
erection of effective structures of coercion and control. He goes on
to argue that the Industrial Revolution was in part born out of the
British desire to compete with the Indian textile industry, thereby
reducing the export of bullion to India.
Washbrook argues that the closing decades of the 18th century was a
Golden Age for low-ritual status, non-specialized working (pariahs).
The wars of the period increased demand for labour; competition
among mercantilist states for trade and cash to feed their armies
also created the spaces within which labour could negotiate better
conditions; and finally, the drain of labour away from agricultural
activities enhanced the bargaining power of those that did remain.
Thus, at least for labour in some regions, the 18th century was a
period of relative prosperity.
CONTINUITY VS. CHANGE:
Thus, we can clearly see that 18th century polity, economy and society are
characterized by trends that reflect both change and continuity. This
debate becomes more intense and pertinent for the second half of
the 18th century, which saw the beginnings of British colonial
expansion in northern India and its impact on the local society and
economy. Here again, the contention is over whether 1757 marked a
decisive break with pro-colonial past, or whether, as the Revisionists
have argued, the basis for colonialism was already present in India
and these elements were simply initiated by colonialism.
Continuity and change in the field of music, architecture, economic
systems and culture is also debatable. The artists shifted to other
regional centres as the Mughal Empire became insufficient to
support their patronage; this change was juxtaposed with an
element of continuity as the patron-client relationship remained
same. Politically, the same structure remained; the Mughal Empire
was still the head even though the same process of administration
and economic system was now followed in the regional areas
without any direct control from the Mughal throne of Delhi.
DARK AGE VS PROSPERITY:

Also, the economy of the 18th century is again a topic of dispute. The view
that dominates is that political decentralization leads to economic
decline. The increasing tendency towards systems of revenue
farming and the perception of Marathas and other groups as looters
incapable of building an administration is cited to strengthen the
idea of a Dark Age. But, although political developments do
influence the economy and society were characterized by general
buoyancy, despite some key weaknesses and contradictions. The
dynamism that had characterized many agrarian regions since 1600
had not abated in the 18th century. States exacted tribute from
systems of agricultural commodity production that tied villages to
expansive networks of commercial mobility and exchange. It was
this vibrant commercialism branching off, which made India, look
attractive to European companies. The establishment of the
Company Raj thus constituted a revolution within tributary
commercialism.
CONCLUSION:
We can conclude that evidently 18th century cannot be seen as a period of
total decline, be it politically, socially or economically. It was an
eventful period and not just a gap between two empires or a dark
period before the gift of civilization by the occidentals. It was a
period marked by change as new regional polities emerged as well
as indigenous economic and cultural elements were sucked in by
the Company Raj. The period also affirms that the correlation
assumed between decentralization and decline is baseless. Instead,
there were major developments in the field of religion, culture,
literature, music etc. The argument of a stagnant, unchanging and
backward society does not stand as well.