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Climate of Conquest
Climate of Conquest
War, Environment, and Empire
in Mughal North India

Pratyay Nath

1
 1
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ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-949555-9

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For my parents, my first teachers—
Sanghamitra Nath
&
Late Subhendu Bikas Nath
MAPS

1.1 The Arid Zone of Afro-Eurasia 6

1.2 The Punjab Basin 12
1.3 The Upper Ganga Basin and the Western
Part of Middle Ganga Basin 18
1.4 The Eastern Part of the Middle Ganga
Basin 19
1.5 Central India 23
1.6 Western India 29

2.1 The Ganga–Brahmaputra Delta 59

2.2 The Brahmaputra Basin in Assam 70
2.3 The Lower Indus Basin 75
2.4 Kashmir and the Western Himalayas 84
2.5 Qandahar 92
2.6 Balkh and Badakhshan 100
 ABBREVIATIONS

AA Abul Fazl, Ā’īn-i Akbarī, ed. H. Blochmann, 3 vols

(Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1869–72);
Abul Fazl, The Ā’īn-i Akbarī, by Abu ’l-Faẓl ‘Allāmī, trans.
H. Blochmann (Vol. 1) and H.S. Jarrett (Vols 2 and 3),
3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1948–9).
AB Ahom Buranji, ed. Surya Kumar Bhuyan (Guwahati:
Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2010).
AD Ahom Buranji, (1648–1681 AD), ed. Sharat Kumar Datta
(Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian
Studies, 2010).
AG Ahom-Buranji, from the Earliest Time to the End of Ahom
Rule, ed. and trans. Golap Chandra Barua (Guwahati:
Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1985).
AJ Jani Muhammad Asad, Akhlāq-i Jalālī, ed. Hafiz Shabir
Ahmad Haidari (Delhi: Urdu Book Review, 2007);
Jani Muhammad Asad, Practical Philosophy of the
Muhammadan People, Exhibited in its Professed Connection
with the European, so as to Render either an Introduction
to the Other; Being a Translation of the Akhlak-i Jalaly, the
Most Esteemed Ethical Work of Middle Asia from the Persian
of Fakir Jany Muhammad Asaad, trans. W.F. Thompson,
(London: The Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain
and Ireland, 1839).
xii Abbreviations

AK Muhammad Kazim, ‘Ālamgīr-nāma, ed. Maulvi Khadim

Husain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1868).
AN Abul Fazl, Akbar-nāma, ed. Maulawi Abdur Rahim, 3 vols
(Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1876); Abul Fazl, The
Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, trans. Henry Beveridge, 3 vols
(Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1904).
AS Muhammad Salih Kambu, ‘Amal-i Ṣāliḥ, ed. Ghulam
Yazdani, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1923).
BG Mirza Nathan, Bahāristān-i Ghā’ibī, transcribed copy of
the original Persian manuscript preserved in Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris, JS 60–2, Jadunath Sarkar Collection,
National Library, Kolkata; Mirza Nathan, Bahāristān-i
Ghaybī: A History of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch
Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the Reigns of Jahangir
and Shah Jahan, trans. M.I. Borah, 2 vols (Guwahati:
Department of History and Antiquarian Studies, 1992).
BL Abdul Hamid Lahori, Bādshāh-nāma, ed. Maulawis
Kabiruddin and Abdul Rahim, 2 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic
Society of Bengal, 1867–8).
BN Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Bāburnāma: Memoirs of
Bābur, trans. Annette Susannah Beveridge, 2 vols (New
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998).
DB Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Deodhai Ahom Buranji
(Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian
Studies, 2001).
FA Ishwardas Nagar, Futuhat-i Alamgiri, trans. and ed.
Tasneem Ahmad (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1978).
FI Shihabuddin Talish, Fathiyyah-i Ibriyyah, trans. Jadunath
Sarkar, in Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib’s Reign
(Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1989), 115–47.
HN Gulbadan Begum, The History of Humāyūn or Humāyūn-
Nāma, trans. A.S. Beveridge (Delhi: Low Price
Publications, 2006).
IJ Motamad Khan, Iqbālnāma-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Maulawis Abd
al-Haii and Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal,
1865).
KB Surya Kumar Bhuyan, ed. Kamrupar Buranji (Guwahati:
Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 1987).
 Abbreviations xiii

MT Abdul Qadir Badaoni, Muntakhabu-t-Tawārīkh by ‘Abdu-l-

Qādir ibn-i-Mulūk Shāh known as al-Badāoni, trans. W.H.
Lowe and B.P. Ambashthya, 3 vols (Delhi: Renaissance
Publishing House, 1986).
MA Abul Fazl, Mukātabāt-i-‘Allāmī (Inshā’i Abu’l Faẓl), Daftar I,
ed. and trans. Mansura Haidar (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1998).
MJ Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī of
Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani: An Indo-Persian Mirror
for Princes, trans. Sajida Sultana Alvi (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1989).
MK Khwaja Kamgar Husaini Ghairat Khan, Ma’ās̤ir-i Jahāngīrī,
ed. Azra Alavi (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1978).
ML Khafi Khan, Muntakhabu ’l-Lubāb, ed. Maulawi Kabir
al-Din Ahmad, 2 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal,
1874); Khafi Khan, Aurangzeb in Muntakhab al-Lubab,
trans. Anees Jahan Syed (Bombay: Somaiya Publications
Pvt. Ltd, 1977).
MM Saqi Mustaid Khan, Ma’ās̤ir-i ‘Ālamgīrī, ed. Maulavi Agha
Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1871);
Saqi Mustaid Khan, Maāsir-i-‘Ālamgiri: A History of the
Emperor Aurangzib ‘Ālamgir (Reign 1658–1707 A.D.) of
Sāqi Must‘ad Khan, trans. Jadunath Sarkar (Calcutta:
Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1947).
NT Nasiruddin Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, ed. Mojtaba Minavi
and Ali Riza Haidari (Tehran: Shirka Sahami Intisharat-i
Khwarizmi, 1976); Nasiruddin Tusi, The Nasirean Ethics,
trans. G.M. Wickens (London: George Allen and Unwin
Ltd, 1964).
SN Inayat Khan, Mulakhkhaṣ-i Shāhjahān-nāma, ed. Jameel-
ur-Rehman (New Delhi: Embassy of Islamic Republic
of Iran, 2009); Shah Jahan Nama of ‘Inayat Khan: An
Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan,
Compiled by His Royal Librarian, trans. A.R. Fuller, ed.
W.E. Begley and Z.A. Desai (Delhi, Oxford, and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990).
TA Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad, T̤abaqāt-i Akbarī, ed.
Brajendranath De, 3 vols (Calcutta: Asiatic Society
xiv Abbreviations

of Bengal, 1931); The Ṭabaqāt-i Akbarī of Khwājah

Niẓāmuddīn Aḥmad, trans. Brajendranath De, ed. Baini
Prasad, 3 vols (Delhi: Low Price Publication, 1992).
TB Zain Khan, T̤abaqāt-i Bāburī, trans. Sayed Hasan Askari
(Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1982).
TF Muhammad Qasim Firishta, History of the Rise of the
Mahomedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612 or
Tarikh-i Firishta, trans. John Briggs, 4 vols (London:
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829).
TJ Nuruddin Jahangir, Tūzak-i Jahāngīrī, ed. Syed Ahmed
Khan, 2 vols (Ghazipur: Private Press, 1863); Nuruddin
Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or the Memoirs of Jahangir,
trans. Alexander Rogers, ed. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols
(Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2006).
TQ Muhammad Arif Qandahari, Ta’rīkh-i Akbarī, ed. Haji
Syed Muinuddin Nadwi, Syed Azhar Ali, and Imtiaz
Ali Arshi (Rampur: Hindustan Printing Works, 1962);
Ta’rīkh-i Akbarī, trans. Tasneem Ahmad (Delhi: Pragati
Publications, 1993).
TV Jouher, Tezkereh al Vakiat or Private Memoirs of the Moghul
Emperor Humayun, trans. Charles Stewart (London:
Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland,
1832).
TS Mir Masum, History of the Arghuns and Tarkhans of Sind
(1507–1593), an Annotated Translation of the Relevant Parts
of Mir Ma‘sum’s Ta’rikh-i-Sind, trans. Mahmudul Hasan
Siddiqi (Sind: University of Sind, 1972).
TT Shihabuddin Talish, Tarikh-i Aasham, trans. Mazhar Asif,
complied by Akdas Ali Mir (Guwahati: Department of
Historical and Antiquarian Studies, 2009).
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

I have transliterated the Persian and Arabic words used in this book
according to F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary
(New Delhi: Manohar, [1892] 2007). I have transliterated Bengali words
according to the romanization guidelines of the American Library
Association, Library of Congress, USA. I have not used diacritical
marks in the names of people and places for the ease of reading.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on my doctoral thesis submitted to Jawaharlal

Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, in 2015. It contains the fruits
of my thoughts—developed over more than a decade—about an
empire that first captured my interest during my undergraduate days
in Kolkata. Yet, the book is still far from a finished product; I would
rather like to see it as a work in progress. It is not entirely original
either; it contains the knowledge produced by generations of histori-
ans who have researched this field before me. The arguments of many
of them are radically different from mine. Yet, each one of them has
contributed to my understanding of the empire and enabled me to say
a few new things about it. Hence, in many ways, this book is merely
the continuation of this long-standing collective intellectual journey
to get to know one of the most complex and intriguing empires of the
world better.
The list of people who have contributed directly and indirectly
to the intellectual journey that has produced this book is very long.
Unfortunately, the lack of space will allow me to name only a few of them.
Partha Pratim Roy, my physics teacher at South Point High School,
Kolkata, inspired me to study history in the first place. He changed the
course of my life forever at a stage when I was all set to devote myself
to the study of chemistry. I learnt the basics of the discipline from
Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty and Rajat Kanta Ray during the heady
xviii Acknowledgements

days at Presidency College, Kolkata. At the University of Calcutta,

West Bengal, the classes of and discussions with Amit Dey, Suchandra
Ghosh, and Shireen Maswood inspired me to proceed toward the
blissful world of academic research. Kaushik Roy opened the doors of
his personal library and taught me military history with great patience
and rigour. He also pushed me to study South Asian history using
global comparative frameworks.
At JNU, Rajat Datta supervised my research over seven long
years. During this time, he shaped my academic growth through his
constant support, insightful comments, and understated encourage-
ment. Over and above the most valuable lessons in the history of
early modern South Asia, I also learnt from him the virtues of a strict
work regime and steadfast punctuality, and the necessity of respect-
ing deadlines. The academic discussions with Neeladri Bhattacharya,
Kunal Chakraborty, Pius Malekandathil, the late MSS Pandian, and
late Nandita Prasad Sahai at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU,
gave direction to the trajectories of my analytical thinking. Collectively,
JNU indulged my interest in the history of war, but also taught me
the value of connecting it with wider questions and debates about
state, society, economy, and culture. Chetan Singh and Farhat Hasan
evaluated my work repeatedly during my research years and gave
me important suggestions about how to improve its quality. Their
feedback as well as their own research has fundamentally shaped
my understanding of the Mughal Empire. Ravi Ahuja and Lakshmi
Subramanian read several of my papers and gave me valuable com-
ments on my arguments about military labour and imperial frontiers.
The third and fourth chapters of this book have benefitted especially
from their suggestions. Raziuddin Aquil, Ranabir Chakravarti,
Mahesh Rangarajan, and Tanika Sarkar served as constant sources of
education and encouragement over the years.
In the course of the research undertaken for this book, I have
moved on from being a student to a faculty member. I am grateful
to my colleagues at Ashoka University, Haryana, and Miranda
House, University of Delhi, for helping me through this shift both
emotionally and intellectually. Srimanjari, Radhika Chadha, Bharati
Jagannathan, and Snigdha Singh helped me learn the ropes of
teaching in the initial phase of my career. My present colleagues,
especially Sanjukta Datta, Nayanjot Lahiri, Pratap Bhanu Mehta,
 Acknowledgements xix

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Mahesh Rangarajan, Malabika Sarkar,

Vanita Shastri, Upinder Singh, and Aparna Vaidik, have extended
unfailing support and encouragement. I have also constantly learnt
from my students. Their curiosity, comments, and criticism in
the classroom have compelled me to engage with my own research
material in greater depth and sharpen my arguments. I owe a lot to
each one of them.
A research fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) enabled me to spend a very productive year (2013–14) conducting
research at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), Georg-
August Universität, Göttingen, Germany. The library and general
staff of the CeMIS; Departmental Special Assistance library of the
CHS, JNU; the Central Library of JNU; the Asiatic Society, Kolkata; the
National Library, Kolkata; the Indian Council of Historical Research,
New Delhi; the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Göttingen, Germany; and Bereichsbibliothek Kulturwissenschaften,
Göttingen, allowed me to access their resources. My present employ-
ers at Ashoka University have provided constant support to facilitate
my research. Atiq ur-Rahman taught me Persian at Ramakrishna
Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata. Zohra Khatun, Muhammad
Amir Khan, and Zeyaul Haque helped me continue that education in
JNU. I gratefully acknowledge the valuable contribution of all these
people and institutions towards my research over the years.
The team at Oxford University Press has been a constant source of
support and encouragement during the last three years. Irfan Habib
gave me his permission to use his An Atlas of the Mughal Empire for
creating the maps of this book. Pravin Mishra designed all of these
maps. Four anonymous reviewers of Oxford University Press read my
manuscript and gave me their valuable feedback. I am forever grate-
ful to all these people. Without the contribution of each one of them,
this book would not have materialized.
I have also been extremely lucky to have enjoyed the constant
support and encouragement of some incredible friends. Akash
Bhattacharya, Gaurav Churiwala Garg, Kashshaf Ghani, Anwesha
Ghosh, Sushmita Pati, and Kaustubh Mani Sengupta took time out
to read portions of my work and give me their valuable feedback.
Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Atig Ghosh,
Rohan Deb Roy, Anwesha Sengupta, and Santanu Sengupta have
xx Acknowledgements

shared my intellectual journey at various stages and inspired me

constantly. Sambuddha Bishee, Piya Chakraborty, Sandip Chatterjee,
Sebanti Chatterjee, Swargajyoti Gohain, Preeti Gulati, Jeena Sarah
Jacob, Imroze Khan, Kanupriya Sharma, and Tulsi Srinivasan
have showered me with love, care, and indulgence over the years.
Collectively, they have seen me through many good and bad times.
Their combined contribution to my personal life and my academic
growth is enormous. I am eternally grateful to each one of them.
This book is dedicated to my parents. My father, late Subhendu
Bikas Nath—author, chemist, and teacher—honed my mind and
thought throughout my childhood and teenage years with unending
patience, love, and encouragement. I wish he had witnessed the
publication of this book. My mother, Sanghamitra Nath—teacher
and vocalist—taught me life’s most valuable lessons through her
personal example. She continues to be my favourite teacher and
greatest inspiration. My brother, Pratyush Nath, a mathematician,
has been my greatest supporter and my harshest critic since our
most fondly remembered childhood. I have no words to express my
gratitude toward them. Finally, I am forever indebted to my partner,
Maria-Daniela Pomohaci, a fellow researcher of South Asian history,
for her unfailing love, friendship, and intellectual support through
the years.
 INTRODUCTION

To those who seek an empire, the best dress is a coat of mail, and the best
crown is a helmet, the most pleasant lodging is the battlefield, the tasti-
est wine is the enemies’ blood, and the charming beloved is the sword.

(t̤ālibān-i mulk rā khūb-tarīn libās-hā zirih ast wa bihtarīn tāj-hā-i khūd

wa khẉush-tarīn manzil-hā ma‘ar ki ḥarb wa zībā-tarīn sharāb-hā khūn-i
khaṣm wa khūb-tarīn maḥbūbān shamshīr)
Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī 1

A prince, therefore, must not have any other object nor any other
thought, nor must he adopt anything as his art but war, its institutions,
its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands …
The most important reason why you lose it [the throne] is by neglecting
this art, while the way to acquire it is to be well-versed in this art.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince2

1 These lines are followed up by a couplet: ‘Only that person who kisses
the lip of the sword/Can embrace in a leap the bride of dominion (‘arūs-i
mulk kasī dar kinār gīrad chust/kasī bos bar lab-i shamshīr āb-dār zanad).’ (MJ,
48,151.)
2 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Peter Bondanella (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2005), 50.

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay
Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.001.0001
xxii Introduction

The Mughals fought ceaselessly. Even a cursory glance at the politi-

cal timeline of the empire makes this evident. Be it campaigns for
territorial expansion, counter-insurgency operations against those
who resisted imperial authority, or expeditions to suppress rebellions
within the official ranks—military conflict was a constant preoccupa-
tion of the Mughal state throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The administrative organization of the empire reflected
this clearly. Almost a century back, Jadunath Sarkar, the doyen of
Mughal studies, observed that the imperial government was ‘military
in its origin, and though in time it became rooted to the soil it retained
its military character to the last’.3 More recently, John Richards has
made a similar point. He has called the empire a ‘war state’ and that
the Mughals ‘needed little excuse to attack their neighbours’.4 The
rich historiography of the bureaucratic machinery responsible for
assessing and extracting agrarian revenue—the most important fis-
cal resource of the empire—bears out the military nature of Mughal
administration. The works of Irfan Habib, Shireen Moosvi, Ahsan Jan
Qaisar, and others show that this machinery meticulously appropri-
ated the bulk of the agrarian surplus from a large part of South Asia
throughout the regnal period of Akbar through Aurangzeb. It then
concentrated this resource in the hands of the manṣabdārs—imperi-
ally appointed military officers of the state.5 Since the primary social

3 Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration (Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar & Sons,

1920), 10–11.
4 John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of

the Early Modern World (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of
California Press, 2003), 26.
5 Irfan Habib’s analysis of the administrative and bureaucratic processes

and offices through which a substantial portion of the agrarian surplus of

South Asia flowed into the Mughal coffers remains by far the most important
work on Mughal agrarian economy. (Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of
Mughal India, 1556–1707 [New Delhi: Oxford University Press, (1963) 2005].)
Ahsan Jan Qaisar has shown how the majority of this surplus production
ended up with the top tiers of the imperial aristocracy, who also formed the
military elite of the empire. (Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal
Empire c. 1595: A Statistical Study [New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
(1987) 2015]; Ahsan Jan Qaisar, ‘Distribution of the Revenue Resources of the
Mughal Empire among the Nobility’, in The Mughal State, 1526–1750, eds.
 Introduction xxiii

production of most of this class was to fight for the empire, much of
the financial resources ended up being spent on the upkeep of troops
and the making of wars. M. Athar Ali, Satish Chandra, and others
have highlighted how these imperial aristocrats increasingly vied with
each other to capture for themselves as much of this agrarian resource
as possible.6 Collectively, these historians argue that this increasing
financial appetite of the military aristocracy ultimately wrecked the
empire from within in two ways. First, it led to the over-exploitation
of the peasantry, pushing them to the point of large-scale rebellions.7
Second, it facilitated the destruction of the financial structure of the
empire and the degeneration of the imperial officialdom into ram-
pant factionalism.8
The regular bouts of war also meant that beyond actual military
performance at the front and the overall military priorities of the
administrative structure, the empire was perpetually busy attending
to the unending organizational minutiae of making war. At all times,
it had to manage the maintenance, repair, and construction of for-
tifications; the procurement, training, and deployment of diverse
types of war-animals; the production, storage, and shipping of vari-
ous kinds of weaponry; the recruitment and payment of enormous
numbers of soldiers as well as their transportation from the centres
of mobilization to the theatres of war; and so on. Consequently, war
was not something alien—some abnormality that happened away
from the regular dynamics of the empire’s daily life. It was in fact, a
social, cultural, and economic reality that comprised a fundamental
part of the quotidian life of the state. It not only moulded the behav-
iour of the empire in times of open conflict—which in any case were
extremely frequent—but also fundamentally shaped its very nature,

Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, [New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, (2001) 2005], 252–8.)
6 M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, [1966] 2001); Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the
Mughal Court, 1707–1740 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1959] 2003).
7 Habib, Agrarian System, 364–405.
8 Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb; Chandra, Parties and Politics;

Satish Chandra, Medieval India: Society, Jagirdari Crisis and the Village (Delhi:
Macmillan, 1982).
xxiv Introduction

priorities, and concerns even in times of peace. The evocative lines of

Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani—the author of a Mughal normative
text from 1612—in the epigraph reflect that the political philosophy
of the empire also appreciated and normalized the importance of
military violence in the sustenance of royal authority.9
In spite of this centrality of war in the life of the empire, research on
Mughal warfare has remained rather limited in its scope. Scholarly work
has largely focused on three areas—big battles,10 military technology,11
and army organization.12 The two recent works that have broken

9 The other epigraph—from Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532)—

points to the shared histories of such a worldview in the early modern world.
10 See B.P. Ambashthya, Decisive Battles of Ser Sah (Delhi: Janaki

Prakashan, 1977); Kaushik Roy, India's Historic Battles: From Alexander the
Great to Kargil (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004), 54–79; Jadunath Sarkar,
Military History of India (Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1970).
11 The most important contributions in this area have come from Iqtidar

Alam Khan. See Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Early Use of Cannon and Musket in
India, A.D. 1442–1526,’ Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 24,
no. 2 (1984), 146–64; Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Firearms in Central Asia and Iran
during the Fifteenth Century and the Origins and Nature of Firearms brought
by Babur,’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Calcutta, 1995), 435–446;
Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Origin and Development of Gunpowder Technology in
India, A.D. 1250–1500,’ The Indian Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1977), 20–9;
Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004). Also see Irfan Habib, ‘Akbar and
Technology,’ Social Scientist 20, no. 9–10 (1992), 3–15; Iqbal Ghani Khan,
‘Metallurgy in Medieval India—The Case of Iron Cannons,’ Proceedings of the
Indian History Congress (Annamalainagar, 1984); G.N. Pant, Mughal Weapons
in the Baburnama (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1989); Murray B. Emeneau,
‘The Composite Bow in India,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 97, no. 1 (1953), 77–87.
12 Works on Mughal army organization include Abdul Aziz, The

Mansabdari System and the Mughal Army (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli,
[1945] 1972); William Irvine, The Army of the Indian Moghuls (Delhi: Low
Price Publications, [1903] 2004); Kaushik Roy, ‘From the Mamluks to the
Mansabdars: A Social History of Military Service in South Asia, c. 1500 to
c. 1650,’ in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour
1500–2000, ed. Erik-Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2013), 81–114. For a comprehensive analysis of Mughal military techniques
 Introduction xxv

this monotony and raised a number of new questions have come

from Jos Gommans and Andrew de la Garza. Their work has widened
the scope of analysis of Mughal warfare substantially by throwing
valuable light on several new themes. Gommans studies Mughal
war-making in relation with the South Asian environment. In his
work, he opens up several new topics including the nature of the
military frontier, the importance of military logistics, the military
labour market, importance of war within the wider dynamics of
empire-formation, and so on.13 De la Garza’s research focuses on
the sixteenth century and explores issues of military tactics, strategy,
recruitment, training, and logistics.14 Collectively, this existing corpus
of literature on Mughal warfare highlights the role of two major fac-
tors in the rise of Mughal military power in South Asia—gunpowder
weaponry and cavalry.15
However, barring Gommans, the rest of the scholars mentioned
earlier have focused primarily on purely military matters. They
have seldom found it worthwhile to relate their arguments to the
broader questions about the nature of Mughal state-formation and

against the backdrop of changing military practices of early modern South

Asia, see Kaushik Roy, Warfare in Pre-British India—1500 BCE to 1740 CE
(London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 113–55.
13 Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare: Indian Frontiers and High Roads to

Empire, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

14 Andrew de la Garza, ‘The Mughal Battlefield: Personnel, Technology,

and Tactics in the Early Empire, 1500–1605,’ The Journal of Military History
78, no. 3 (2014), 927–60; Andrew de la Garza, The Mughal Empire at War:
Babur, Akbar and the Indian Military Revolution, 1500–1605 (London and New
York: Routledge, 2016).
15 For an emphasis on the role of firearms, see especially Marshall G.S.

Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization,

Vol. III: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, [1974] 1977), 59–98; William H. McNeill, The
Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982), 95. For arguments foregrounding the
importance of the cavalry, see Habib, Agrarian System, 364; Jos Gommans,
‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire in Asia, c. 1000–1800,’ Journal of Global
History 2, no. 1 (2007), 1–21; Gommans, Mughal Warfare. I return to this issue
in the first two chapters.
xxvi Introduction

empire-building. At the same time, the bulk of the scholarship on the

latter issues has tended to treat wars as moments of rupture rather
than as an integral part of the imperial being. As such, they have
concentrated more on the economic, political, or cultural processes
leading to and affected by this rupture, rather than study the actual
dynamics of military conflict.16 The result of these complimentary
historiographical tendencies has been a widening gap between the
scholarship on Mughal warfare on the one hand, and that on the
remaining aspects of the imperial experience on the other. It is this
gap my research seeks to address.
The present book offers a fresh interpretation of Mughal state-
formation and empire-building by using warfare as the point of entry.
I look into four spheres of the imperial experience. First, I explore
the world of Mughal military campaigns. The discussion indicates
that the course and dynamics of these military campaigns were
profoundly shaped by the natural environment of South Asia. Second,
I unravel how the empire negotiated the environment and harnessed
its resources in the process of supplying its military campaigns,
mobilizing human and animal labour, and producing military infra-
structure. Third, I study the making of two major military frontiers
of the empire—the Afghan region and the Bengal–Assam region. I
unravel how environmental factors as well as the empire’s ability to
accommodate local chieftains within its own imperial project shaped
the formation, defense, and expansion of these frontiers. Finally, I
investigate the relationship between war-making and imperial ide-
ology. I emphasize that the Mughal court foregrounded the idea of
justice as the ultimate logic of imperial rule and the legitimizer of
military violence. In turn, this allowed them to deploy cosmopolitan

16 The literature pertaining to the Mughal invasion of Balkh–Badakhshan

(1646–7) is a case in point. See, for instance, M. Athar Ali, ‘The Objectives
behind the Mughal Expedition into Balkh and Badakhshan, 1646–47,’ in
Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture, ed. M. Athar Ali,
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 327–33; Richard Foltz, ‘The
Mughal Occupation of Balkh 1646–1647’, Journal of Islamic Studies 7, no. 1
(1996), 49–61. Both of these fine pieces of scholarship focus squarely on the
political and diplomatic processes that went into the making of this war and
choose not to delve much into its military aspects.
 Introduction xxvii

armies to fight a variety of adversaries over the period under focus.

Through the study of these four main themes over the five chapters
of this book, I argue that looking at the Mughal Empire through the
lens of war allows us to appreciate its nature as a dynamic, flexible,
adaptive, and accommodative entity.
The location of the environment in this entire discussion is an
important one. In recent years, several historians have highlighted the
important role environment played in the rise and fall of early modern
empires in different parts of the world.17 However, the environmental
dimensions of the Mughal imperial experience have gone relatively
unexplored till now. Among the notable works, Chetan Singh’s study
of the empire’s expansion as a process of constant dialogue between
the agrarian and nomadic realms—with the Mughal state pushing
the agenda of the former—is one.18 Richard Eaton has explored the
social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of Mughal conquest
and control of the Bengal Delta in the sixteenth through eighteenth
centuries.19 Several historians have studied the engagement of
Mughal kingship with the natural environment at two main sites—
hunting and painting.20 These works have highlighted the numerous

17 Recent works that study the relationship between environment, state-

formation, and empire-building in the early modern world include Alan
Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Alan Mikhail,
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Alan
Mikhail, Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Environmental
History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2017); Sam White,
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011); John T. Wing, Roots of Empire: Forests and
State Power in Early Modern Spain, c. 1500–1750 (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2015). For a detailed analytical overview, see Richards, The Unending Frontier.
18 Chetan Singh, ‘Conformity and Conflict: Tribes and the ‘Agrarian

System’ of Mughal India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 23,
no. 3 (1988), 319–40.
19 Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, [1993] 2000).

20 Chavada Divyabhanusinh, ‘The Great Mughals Go Hunting Lions,’ in

Environmental Issues in India: A Reader, ed. Mahesh Rangarajan (New Delhi:

Dorling Kindersley [India] Pvt. Ltd, 2009), 49–69; Ebba Koch, Dara Shikoh
xxviii Introduction

ways in which the processes of Mughal empire-building interacted

with the environment. Like its contemporaries, the Mughal Empire
also shaped and got shaped by the natural environment of the region
where it unfolded. Warfare was one of the most important sites where
this complex relationship played out. I will argue in this book that
Mughal warfare transpired through constant negotiations with the
environment—through the procurement and use of various animals,
bridging rivers, cutting down forests to create roads, and so on. At the
same time, terrain, ecology, and climate of the different theatres of
war also profoundly influenced various facets of military campaigns.
Taken together, the unceasing interplay among war, environment,
and empire is something that deeply moulded the Mughal imperial
project. This is something this book brings out using diverse registers
such as strategy, logistics, and frontier.

Hunting Neel-Gais: Hunt and Landscape in Mughal Painting, Occasional

Papers 1 (Washington DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution,
1998); Mahesh Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History: An Introduction (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2001), 11–21; Som Prakash Verma, Flora and Fauna in
Mughal Art (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1999). Other important works—
not only about the Mughal Empire but on early modern South Asia in
general—include Abhimanyu Singh Arha, ‘Hoofprint of Empire: An
Environmental History of Fodder in Mughal India (1650–1850),’ Studies
in History 32, no. 2 (2016), 186–208; Meena Bhargava, State, Society and
Ecology: Gorakhpur in Transition, 1750–1830 (New Delhi: Primus Books,
2014); Frontiers of Environment: Issues in Medieval and Early Modern India, ed.
Meena Bhargava (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2017); Jos Gommans, ‘The
Silent Frontier of South Asia, c.1200–1800’, Journal of World History 9, no. 1
(1998), 1–23.; Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Tanuja
Kothiyal, Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great
Indian Desert (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Mayank Kumar,
Monsoon Ecologies: Irrigation, Agriculture and Settlement Patterns in Rajasthan
during the Pre-colonial Period (Delhi: Manohar, 2013); Murari Kumar Jha,
‘Migration, Settlement, and State Formation in the Ganga Plain: A Historical
Geographic Perspective,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the
Orient 57, no. 4 (2014), 587–627; Thomas B. Trautmann, Elephants and
Kings: An Environmental History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 2015).
 Introduction xxix

In using war as an analytical category to study state and empire,

my research draws upon the work of two historians in particular—
Douglas Streusand and Jos Gommans. Streusand’s first book studies
the foundation of the Mughal Empire under Akbar. It assesses the role
war played in the process.21 His research identifies the main factors
that contributed to Mughal military success in South Asia. Moving
away from the explanations foregrounding the role of either firearms
or cavalry, Streusand highlights the importance of the Mughal ability
to simultaneously deploy handguns, artillery, heavy cavalry, and mounted
archers in pitched battles. This lent them what he calls a ‘definite
but limited margin of military superiority’ over their adversaries.22
He continues that another factor that went in their favour was their
ability to take forts, although through lengthy and painstaking
sieges.23 According to Streusand, it was this peculiar nature of
military superiority—definite, but limited—that lent a certain specificity
to the process of Mughal territorial expansion in comparison with
other early modern empires.24 In his more recent work, he has
developed these arguments further while locating the Mughal case
within a broader history of early modern Islamic empires.25
Streusand’s explanation of Mughal military success in terms of its
‘limited military superiority’ is a very sophisticated one. It is especially
valuable for understanding the course of the early Mughal victories
under Akbar in the Indo-Gangetic Basin and the forested highlands
of central and western India. However, as the Mughal armies started
venturing into more distant and diverse regions since the 1570s, the
dynamics of military campaigns became increasingly complex. Here,
we need new insights to explain imperial military triumphs and fail-
ures. This is something I have attempted in this book.

21 Douglas E. Streusand, The Formation of the Mughal Empire (New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1989).

22 Streusand, Formation, 69.
23 Streusand, Formation, 66–7; Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder

Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,

2011), 256–7.
24 Streusand, Formation, 51–69. In his recent comparative study of the

Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires, Streusand has developed this idea
further. (Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 254–64.)
25 Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires.
xxx Introduction

More recently, Jos Gommans has written the most comprehensive

and provocative survey of Mughal warfare in recent times.26 His work
analyses the Mughal Empire through the analytical category of post-
nomadism. He locates the factors behind Mughal military success in
the empire’s sustained ability to import, maintain, and deploy first-
grade warhorses. He also points out that the empire was located at the
frontier of nomadic and sedentary societies and displayed a remark-
able capability to harness the best military and economic resources
of both the worlds.27 The importance of his work also lies in the fact
that by introducing the category of post-nomadism into Mughal stud-
ies, Gommans has linked up the latter with ongoing research on the
interaction between nomadic and sedentary societies in other parts of
the world.28 This has also liberated the Mughal Empire from the older
triad of Asiatic Islamic empires, whereby the Mughals would usually
be compared only with the Ottomans and the Safavids.29 The category
of post-nomadism broadens the horizon for writing comparative
histories by enabling us to juxtapose the South Asian dynasty with

26 Gommans, Mughal Warfare. Gommans’ work is particularly valuable

for raising several new questions in the context of the historiography of early
modern South Asia, including, but not limited to, the influence of ecology on
warfare, military logistics, and the political functions of royal mobility. Also
see Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire’.
27 Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire,’ 21; Gommans,

Mughal Warfare, 39–64.

28 Important recent works in this field include Reuven Amitai and Michal

Biran, eds., Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary
World (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic
Empires and China (Massachusetts and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Anatoly
M. Khazanov and Andre Wink, eds., Nomads in the Sedentary World (Surrey:
Curzon Press, 2001).
29 The triad of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals was originally

conceptualized by early modern European travellers, who were completely

in awe of the domains of the three great Asiatic Muslim emperors—the
Sultan, the Sufi, and the Turk respectively. In recent times, several historians
have used this triad to write comparative histories of these empires. See, for
example, Stephen P. Blake, Time in Early Modern Islam: Calendar, Ceremony,
and Chronology in the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman Empires (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013); Stephen Dale, The Muslim Empires of the
 Introduction xxxi

empires from similar backgrounds, including those of the Ottomans,

Muscovites, and the Qing.30
My engagement with Gommans’ work is a variegated one. I bor-
row several analytical concepts from him. For instance, I find his
understanding of the Eurasian geographical structure in terms of arid
and humid zones, the idea of the inner frontier of South Asia, and the
emphasis on the constant interactions between war and environment
extremely useful. At the same time, I feel that some of the concepts—
such as post-nomadism—that he uses could be nuanced further in
view of new evidence. Gommans does not allow much scope for
evolution within his framework of post-nomadism. For instance, he
argues that one way in which the legacy of their distant nomadic mili-
tary heritage continued into their South Asian empire right down to
the eighteenth century was the sustained centrality of the warhorse
as the main driving force of Mughal warfare.31 However, while this was
the case for the flat open plains of the Indo-Gangetic Basin, various
other factors were responsible for their military success in other
parts. Among the rivers of Bengal, for example, equestrian mobility
was highly restricted and other agents such as war-boats and elephants
took the front seat. In this way, the historical contingencies of building
an empire in South Asia meant that Mughal post-nomadism operated
as a highly dynamic condition, and not a static one. Finally, there are
some arguments of Gommans that I find problematic. For instance,
he argues that Mughal state-formation relied far more on alliance-
building than on warfare. According to him, big military triumphs
played the role of trump cards in the dominant game of political
negotiations.32 In this book, I argue that while forming alliance was

Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (New York: Cambridge University Press,

[2010] 2014); Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires; Hodgson, The Venture
of Islam, Vol. III.
30 Gommans is the first historian to compare the Mughal Empire with the

Qing Empire using the category of post-nomadism. (Gommans, ‘Warhorse

and Post-Nomadic Empire’.)
31 Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Post-Nomadic Empire’.
32 Jos Gommans, ‘Warhorse and Gunpowder in India, c. 1000–1850,’ in

War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815, ed. Jeremy Black (London and
New York: Routledge, 1999), 105–28, see 109.
xxxii Introduction

indeed a crucial part of empire-building, on the basis of contemporary

evidence it is difficult to establish that it was more important than
warfare. Instead, I argue that war and diplomacy were complimentary
processes that contributed equally to the rise of Mughal power.
In the last few years, several historians have used trans-regional
frameworks to study Mughal war-making practices. Kaushik Roy and
Peter Lorge have done this in terms of the larger framework of mili-
tary histories of early modern Asia. Both have invoked the Military
Revolution hypothesis while analysing the Mughal military experi-
ence and have related the latter to historical tendencies of the early
modern world.33 In doing so, they have connected the Mughal case to
the global historiographical debate on the Military Revolution. Over
the last several decades, this debate has been central to the scholarly
understanding of a military early modernity. The Military Revolution
hypothesis was propounded by Michael Roberts in 1955.34 In later
years, it has been developed further by Geoffrey Parker, Christopher
Duffy, and others. The hypothesis conceptualizes the transforma-
tions in the field of warfare in early modern western Europe in terms
of one big revolution that spanned over decades, even centuries.35
Over the last sixty years, these propositions have elicited a diversity
of responses. Several historians such as Michael Paul, Brian Davies,

33 Peter Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 112–32;
Kaushik Roy, Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750: Cavalry,
Guns, Government and Ships (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic,
2014). Jos Gommans has also contributed to this debate and argued that
South Asia experienced a Military Revolution only in the eighteenth century
comprising a Europeanization of the armies of the various states that rose
following the decline of the Mughal Empire. See Gommans, ‘Warhorse and
Gunpowder in India.’
34 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast: Marjory

Boyd, 1956).
35 Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern

World, 1494–1660 (London: Routledge, 1979); Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Military

Revolution”, 1560–1660—A Myth?,’ The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2
(1976), 195–214; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation
and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996).
 Introduction xxxiii

and Günhan Börekçi, have investigated the nature of military change

in this period for various non-European empires using the analytical
framework of the Military Revolution.36 Many of them have discov-
ered similar Military Revolutions in other parts of the world.37 Others
such as John Lynn, Clifford Rogers, and David Parrott have contested
the validity of the very idea of such a revolution in Europe.38 Jeremy
Black—especially in his recent works—has strongly argued in favour
of moving beyond this Eurocentric framework altogether and using
new categories to write histories of early modern warfare.39 Instead
of using any unifying concept such as the Military Revolution, he has
called for the mapping of ‘variations, both chronological and geo-
graphical, alongside similarities’, and the ‘causes, nature and conse-
quences of these variations’ in the history of early modern warfare.40
He suggests that such an approach will be able to incorporate some of
the concerns thrown up by the cultural turn in social sciences, without

36 Günhan Börekçi, ‘A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate:

The Janissaries use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman–Habsburg
War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins,’ Acta Orientalia Academiae
Scientiarum Hungaricae 59, no. 4 (2006), 407–38; Brian Davies, Empire and
Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russia’s Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth
Century (London and New York: Continuum, 2011); Michael C. Paul, ‘The
Military Revolution in Russia, 1550–1682,’ The Journal of Military History 68,
no. 1 (2004), 9–45.
37 See, for example, Paul, ‘Military Revolution in Russia’; Matthew Stavros,

‘Military Revolution in Early Modern Japan,’ Japanese Studies 33, no. 3 (2013),
243–61.
38 John A. Lynn, ‘The Trace Italienne and the Growth of Armies: The

French Case,’ Journal of Military History 55, no. 3 (1991), 297–330; David
A. Parrott, ‘Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years’ War: The “Military
Revolution”’, Militiirgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 2 (1985), 7–25; Clifford J.
Rogers, ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War,’ Journal of
Military History 57, no. 2 (1993), 241–78. Also see Jeremy Black, A Military
Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1991).
39 Jeremy Black, Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth

Century World (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 199.
40 Jeremy Black, War and the Cultural Turn (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2011), 45.
xxxiv Introduction

slipping into the culturalist trap of associating different polities with

different ‘ways of war’.41
Black’s intervention breaks new ground in the historiography
of early modern warfare. In the present book, I respond to his new
scholarly agenda. Instead of asking whether or not the Mughal
Empire experienced a military revolution or looking to identify a
Mughal way of war, I study Mughal warfare through the lens of diver-
sity and heterogeneity. I argue, especially in the first two chapters,
that Mughal military techniques varied widely across the time and
space, especially in terms of the deployment of technology, use of
war-animals, and military strategy. I show that a number of factors
contributed to this variation, including the natural environment, the
nature of adversaries, and the distance from the main imperial bases
of military mobilization. In other words, I look at Mughal war-making
and its relationship with empire-building not in terms of universal
and timeless structures. Rather, I find them to be a dynamic set of
practices, something that constantly evolved and changed in response
to the realities unfolding around it.
In doing so, I connect with some of the recent tendencies within the
historiography of the Mughal state. In 1992, Sanjay Subrahmanyam
pointed out that the dominant way in which historians had studied
this entity till then was through the lens of structures and systems.
Pointing out the limitations of this approach, he gave a call for a
radical revision of our collective understanding of Mughal history.
He underlined the necessity of looking at the empire in terms of
ceaseless negotiations and constantly unfolding processes, instead of
mature structures frozen in time.42 Similar arguments were made by
Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam in the introduction of a collection
of essays on the Mughal state that they co-edited.43 More recently,
two scholars have followed them up on this endeavour. Focusing on
Gujarat, Farhat Hasan argues that Mughal empire-building in the
region was a complex and multilateral process. Here, imperial power

41 Also see Black, Beyond the Military Revolution, 188–9, 196.

42 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘The Mughal State—Structure of Process?
Reflections on Recent Western Historiography,’ Indian Economic and Social
History Review 29, no. 3 (1992), 291–321.
43 Alam and Subrahmanyam, eds., The Mughal State, 6, 17–18.
 Introduction xxxv

had to constantly negotiate local factors and political processes. It could

convert military conquest into administrative control only by taking
into account the interests of various local groups and by co-sharing its
sovereignty with them. In turn, this made imperial expansion a highly
accommodative, participatory, and dynamic phenomenon.44 Munis
Faruqui, on the other hand, analyses how the empire repeatedly cre-
ated and recreated itself through its numerous wars of succession,
where the different political loyalties and patronage networks would
be tested, altered, and reaffirmed.45 More specifically, he investigates
how the households of imperial princes functioned as the focal points
of the constant politics of alliance-building involving various social,
political, military, and religious groups. My own understanding of
the Mughal Empire, as presented in this book, has convergences
with the main arguments of Hasan and Faruqui. Like them, I too find
the Mughal state as what Faruqui calls ‘a dynamic and continuously
evolving entity’.46
Let me briefly lay down some basic premises of this book at this
point. I begin with the title; there are several reasons behind it.47 First,
one of the central arguments of this book is that the dynamics of
Mughal war-making and empire-building was profoundly shaped by
the natural environment of South Asia. The environment comprises

44 Farhat Hasan, State and Locality in Mughal India: Power Relations in

Western India, c. 1572–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
45 Munis D. Faruqui, The Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

46 Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 6. Azfar Moin makes a similar

point about the flexible, adaptive, and inclusive nature of the Mughal state in
his study of the fashioning of Timurid imperial ideology, especially between
Timur and Akbar. He shows that this political ideology developed through
constant interaction with and borrowing from myths, beliefs, traditions,
and lived experiences of the various subject populations. (A. Azfar Moin,
The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam [New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012.])
47 In part, the title is inspired by that of Sam White’s fascinating recent

study of the impact of the Little Ice Age on the society and economy of the
Ottoman Empire. In this book, I draw upon White’s analysis in focusing on
the relationship between the natural environment and the building of the
Mughal Empire in early modern North India. White, Climate of Rebellion.
xxxvi Introduction

of different factors and I have pointed out repeatedly that climate was
one of the most important among them. Climatic factors, including
rainfall, snowfall, low temperatures, and heavy showers, profoundly
shaped the conduct of warfare in regions as diverse as Assam, Bengal,
Sindh, Kashmir, Qandahar, and Balkh. The title of the book refers to
this very important role played by climate in moulding the processes
of Mughal war-making. However, even more than this specific use,
the term signifies the wide range of environmental factors in general.
Apart from climate, several other forces played very important roles
in influencing the course of military expansion. They included terrain,
ecology, and so on. In this second instance, the reference to climate
is meant to remind the reader about this enduring and intricate
relationship between environmental factors, in general, and Mughal
territorial conquest. Finally, I have used the word figuratively as well,
to refer to the ideological paradigm of war at the Mughal court. This
encompasses the realm of military culture, legitimization of war,
narratives of military conflict, military ethics, and so on.48
Next, it is important to understand the meaning of the term
‘early modern’, that I use throughout this book. The great amount
of scholarly output in the last few years has firmly established the
usefulness of this new periodization.49 John Richards, Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, Rosalind O’Hanlon, and Sheldon Pollock have
discussed from various perspectives the merits of using this fresh
category for writing South Asian history from the sixteenth through the
eighteenth centuries.50 In this collective imagination, early modernity

48 The inspiration for this figurative use of the term ‘climate’ comes from
W.H. Auden’s description of Sigmund Freud in the following words: ‘to us
he is no more a person/now but a whole climate of opinion/under whom we
conduct our different lives’. I am thankful to Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay for
attracting my attention to this poem. (Source: https://www.poets.org/poet-
sorg/poem/memory-sigmund-freud, accessed on 3 March 2018. Emphasis
mine.)
49 For an example of a voice of dissent, see Jack Gladstone, ‘The Problem

of the “Early Modern” World,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the
Orient 41, no. 3 (1998), 249–84.
50 John F. Richards, ‘Early Modern India and World History,’ Journal of

World History 8, no. 2 (1997), 197–209; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected

Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,’ Modern
 Introduction xxxvii

is seen as a global form of modernity, which is at once diverse and

regionally specific as well as shared through certain broad global
tendencies. Richards delineates the latter in terms of the forging
of maritime routes across the world, the advent of a true global
economy, the rise of large and stable polities, the steady increase of
world population, intensified use of land for primary production, and
the dissemination of new technologies.51 Subrahmanyam highlights
cultural and ideological trends such as the vocal articulation of the
idea of universal sovereignty, increased appropriation of the legends
of conquerors such as Alexander, and the circulation of eschatological
belief and motifs across the world.52 O’Hanlon points towards the
tendency of big states and empires across the globe to promote the
circulation and migration of elite personnel—bureaucrats, ambassadors,
military professionals, artisans, and men of letters. She argues that,
during this period this was accompanied by the rise of a scribal
culture, the emergence of new scribal elites, and the emergence of
transformative discourses in various intellectual and technological
fields. With this, occurred a disenchantment about and distancing from
earlier forms of knowledge. There was also a strong emergence of
vernacular languages and cultures, in turn bolstering the process of the
rise of strong regional identities. Artistic genres produced a distinct and
self-conscious voice of the individual, be it in fiction, autobiographies,
or travelogues. Helped by the large-scale adoption of new technolo-
gies such as print and paper, these fostered the growth of thriving
public spheres.53 Based on recent scholarship across the world, it is
possible to add more points to this already long list. This may include
a growing engagement with firearms, increasing preoccupation with
cartography to aid increasingly intrusive and bureaucratic states gov-
ern and project their power beyond their immediate realms, vigorous
pursuit and circulation of ‘exotic’ items as a part of an expanding
gift-economy, increasing politicization of the oceanic space and the

Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735–62; Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Contested

Conjunctures: Brahman Communities and “Early Modernity” in India,’ The
American Historical Review 118, no. 3 (2013), 765–87.
51 Richards, ‘Early Modern India and World History’.
52 Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories,’ 737–9, 746–54.
53 O’Hanlon, ‘Contested Conjunctures,’ 771, 786–7.
xxxviii Introduction

rise of European naval power therein, and the development of a new

strategic consciousness among empires and nation states. It is this
complex, dynamic, and transforming world the term ‘early modern’
signifies in this book.
Spatially, I have focused on the part of South Asia that lies to the
north of the Narmada river and the Vindhya hills—the traditional
divides between the northern and southern parts of the subcontinent.
For the sake of convenience as well as simplicity of terminology, I
call this entire landmass ‘North India’. Technically, it comprises the
various western, northern, and eastern federal states of the modern
republic of India—Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana,
Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Assam. It also
includes the modern republics of Pakistan and Bangladesh. South of
this landmass, Mughal armies fought a protracted and difficult war of
expansion over more than a century since the 1590s. However, owing
to my interest primarily in the imperial experience in the northern
half of South Asian subcontinent, I consciously leave these wars in
South India out of this book.
I primarily focus on the period between the 1550s and the 1680s.
The 1550s marked the return of the second Mughal emperor,
Nasiruddin Muhammad Humayun (r. 1530–40, 1555–56) to North
India with Safavid reinforcements to reclaim the empire that he lost
to the Afghans in 1540. He occupied Delhi in 1555. Following his
sudden demise the very next year, his son Jalaluddin Muhammad
Akbar (r. 1556–1605) succeeded him. He began the process of the
Mughal reconquest of North India. This is the juncture at which
the timeframe of this book commences. At the other end, the 1680s
marked the decisive shift of Mughal power away from North India.
In 1681, the sixth emperor, Muhiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir
(r. 1658–1707) journeyed to the Deccan to personally direct the ongoing
military operations there. He never returned to North India. The
empire also lost Kamrup in the Brahmaputra Basin in 1682, mark-
ing the end of its prolonged north-eastward expansionist drive. In
the following decades, various regional powers—including the Jats,
Satnamis, and Sikhs—took advantage of the absence of the emperor
in North India and increasingly undermined Mughal political
authority here. In a sense, hence, the 1680s marked the beginning
 Introduction xxxix

of the demise of imperial power in this region. This is when this

study ends.
As for primary sources, this book is based on literary texts from
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These are of three main
types—imperial autobiographies and dynastic chronicles; accounts
by European travellers who visited South Asia during this period; and
vernacular texts mainly in Bengali and Assamese, which provide an
alternate window into the dynamics of Mughal campaigns in eastern
India. Most of these texts have already been studied by historians
before me. My attempt is to take a fresh look at them and read them
closely with a new set of questions.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part comprises of
the first two chapters. It closely explores the dynamics of imperial
military campaigns in different parts of North India. Existing histo-
riography gives us the impression that these campaigns unfolded in
a geographical vacuum. I will point out that this is far from the real
picture. We will see how they transpired in constant engagement with
the natural environment and various other material factors. In turn,
this made warfare itself a fundamentally heterogeneous process. The
first chapter studies the Mughal conquest of the heart of North India.
I argue that the heterogeneous geography of this landmass shaped
the course and nature of military engagements. The vast open plains
of the Punjab and the Gangetic Basin allowed large-scale cavalry
manoeuvres. Hence, the Mughals were able to engage their adver-
saries in a number of battles and skirmishes here. In contrast, the
broken terrain of the forested highlands of central India restricted
free movement of troops and encouraged fortress warfare. For this
reason, Mughal expansion entailed a greater number of sieges here.
This environmental heterogeneity also made it impossible for either
cavalry or firearms to spearhead Mughal military conquests uniformly
or single-handedly. Thus, even within the fairly contiguous region
that was to eventually comprise the political heartland of the Mughal
Empire, the natural environment left a deep imprint on the conduct
of warfare and the course of empire-formation.
The second chapter carries forward this analysis of military cam-
paigns. Here I look into the ones that took Mughal armies beyond this
imperial heartland that they had created by 1569. I explore Mughal
wars of expansion in six different theatres of war—the Bengal Delta,
xl Introduction

the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam, the Lower Indus Basin, Kashmir

and the Himalayan foothills, Balkh–Badakhshan, and Qandahar.
Across these regions, Mughal armies had to negotiate great diversities
in terms of climate, terrain, ecology, as well as the military techniques
of local polities. Their substantial distance from imperial bases of
military mobilization also made fighting here very different from that
within the North Indian heartland. Owing to the great diversity of
fighting conditions, the nature of military campaigns greatly varie-
gated across these regions in terms of tactics, strategy, and deploy-
ment. All of this made the imperial military experience a deeply
heterogeneous one, denying the possibility of a standardized Mughal
‘way of war’.
The second part of the book comprises of the next three chapters.
It dissects the relation between warfare and state-formation using
three registers—logistics, frontier, and ideology. Going beyond the
traditional tendency of analysing war in isolation, the chapters of this
part locate war within the larger processes of empire-formation. In
the third chapter, I delve into the organizational world of Mughal war-
making using three categories—labour, animals, and infrastructure.
I look into the participation of quasi-military labourers in fulfilling a
variety of war-related tasks. I also explore the process of mobilization
of horses, elephants, mules, camels, and cattle. Next, I study how the
Mughals kept their armies supplied with food and water, how they
constructed bridges across rivers, transmitted military intelligence,
gathered boats for their war-fleet, and so on during military cam-
paigns. The larger argument is that once we shift our gaze away from
the historiographically popular issues of technology and combat, it
becomes clear that Mughal war-making involved an enormous array
of organizational activities. These required the participation of a very
large part of the non-elite, non-combatant population of the empire.
This helps us appreciate Mughal warfare—and in turn, imperial
expansion—less in terms of the victorious march of a single tech-
nology or a single social group, and more in terms of a broad-based
enterprise that involved a large part of South Asian society.
I study the dynamics of the formation of imperial frontiers in
the Mughal Empire in the fourth chapter. Eschewing the idea that
frontiers were simply areas far away from the political heartland, the
chapter argues that frontiers of Mughal power emerged due to the
 Introduction xli

conjuncture of several processes. These included failures to control

routes of communication, cope with environmental conditions,
negotiate the military techniques of their adversaries, and co-opt
local zamīndārs (chieftain) into the imperial project. It shows how
two regions—the Afghan belt and Bengal–Assam—emerged as long-
standing imperial frontiers through these processes. In effect, frontiers
signified zones of fading imperial authority and increasing scope of
personal agency and ambition of military commanders. Physically,
they did not resemble the closed, enveloping borders of modern
times; rather, they were embodied by forts that commanded routes
of communication that emanated radially outward from within the
imperial domain. These were areas that signified the fading away of
imperial authority, rather than simply the outermost limits of the empire.
The final chapter investigates the cultural climate of conquest at
the Mughal court. I begin by discussing how the Mughals conceptual-
ized the nature and meaning of kingship. I then go on to probe the
location of war and conquest within this ruling ideology. I argue that
inspired by Nasirean akhlāq, the Mughals conceptualized the sover-
eign as a divinely mandated instrument for establishing equilibrium,
order, and, above all, justice across the world. They looked upon war
as an unavoidable means of achieving this. This conceptualization
of war in terms of the vague concept of justice allowed the empire a
great degree of flexibility in terms of applying and legitimizing mili-
tary violence. By studying different imperial narratives of war from
the period under study, the chapter argues that this flexibility in turn
fed a particular approach to war, whereby the empire expanded more
by defeating and co-opting its adversaries than by eliminating them
completely.
Finally, in the conclusion, I sum up the main arguments that
emerge from this study and highlight their implications for our gen-
eral understanding of Mughal war-making and state-formation in a
comparative global context.
In many cases I have cited both a Persian text and its English
translation at the same time. Such citations typically begin with the
abbreviation for the text, followed by the volume number (in any), and
then the page numbers of the Persian and English texts respectively
separated by a slash, for example, AN, 2:316/467 (for Akbar-nāma).
 CHAPTER ONE

Environment and the

Heterogeneous Conquest
of North India

The Mughals conquered North India twice. The first time, Zahiruddin
Muhammad Babur (r. 1526–1530), a young Turkish prince, marched
in from Kabul against the Afghan sultanate of the Lodis. He was
a Timurid prince dispossessed of his paternal inheritances in
Transoxiana by bitter fraternal rivalry and an ascendant Uzbeg
Khanate. Based in his modest domain in Kabul and its surround-
ings to the south of Transoxiana, he tried his luck to get hold of
Hindustan—the fabled land of riches—several times since 1519. It
was in 1525–6 that fortune finally smiled upon him. Spectacular vic-
tories in two battles fought in quick succession near Delhi and Agra
gave him the control over these two imperial cities and an opportunity
to establish his dynastic power in this new land. However, as it turned

Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India. Pratyay
Nath, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199495559.003.0001
4 Climate of Conquest

out, Babur could enjoy the fruits of his long-drawn efforts only for
four more years.1
Upon his death, his eldest son Nasiruddin Muhammad Humayun
(r. 1530–1540, 1555–1556) inherited his father’s North Indian pos-
sessions in 1530. His rule started well with rapid military advances
towards the west and the east. However, his fortune quickly reversed
with successive defeats against a brilliant Afghan military general
from Bihar—Sher Khan Sur.2 As the latter styled himself as Sher
Shah to celebrate his victories over Humayun and proclaim him-
self an independent ruler, the first Mughal attempt at building
an empire in South Asia came to a sudden halt in 1540.3 It took
Humayun a decade and a half, which included a brief sojourn at his
rival Shah Tahmasp Safavi’s court in Iran and a bitter war against his
own brothers, to re-enter North India. When he did manage to lead a
Mughal army to retake the city of Delhi, he met with an accident and
died an untimely death soon after.4 It was under his son and succes-
sor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that the Mughals
defeated yet another Afghan army on the fields of Panipat in 1556

1 The best political biography of Babur is by Stephen F. Dale, The

Garden of Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia,
Afghanistan and India (1483–1530) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). Also
see Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern
South and Central Asia (New Delhi: Viva Books Pvt. Ltd, 2013); A. Azfar Moin,
The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012), 56–93. For the Battle of Panipat, see BN,
1:468–75; TB, 64–90; AN, 1:95–8/242–4; Dale, Garden of Eight Paradises,
321–35; William Erskine, History of India under Baber (New Delhi: Atlantic
Publishers and Distributors, 1994), 427–41. For the battle of Khanua, see
BN, 1:547–74; AN, 1:105–11/259–65; TA, 2:24–6/35–8; Dale, Garden of Eight
Paradises, 345–52; Erskine, History of India under Baber, 463–74.
2 B.P. Ambashthya, Decisive Battles of Ser Sah (Delhi: Janaki Prakashan,

1977).
3 For a recent analysis of this Mughal–Afghan face-off and the rise of Sher

Shah Sur, see Raziuddin Aquil, Sufism, Culture and Politics: Afghans and Islam
in Medieval North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
4 For a study of Humayun’s political career with an emphasis on his king-

ship, see Moin, The Millennial Sovereign, 94–129. Also see Faruqui, Princes of
the Mughal Empire, 46–65.
 Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India 5

and thereby sealed their control over Delhi and Agra once again.
This began the second chapter of Mughal history in early modern
South Asia.5
Over the next decade and a half, armies of the young emperor
expanded their territory and consolidated Mughal territorial power
in North India.6 By 1569, they established control over much of the
land that would eventually constitute the heartland of their empire.
This area mainly comprised the modern Indian federal states of
Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan
as well as eastern parts of Pakistan. It was based on their hold over
this area that Mughal armies invaded more distant lands, including
Sind and Gujarat in the west and Bihar and Bengal in the east—all
in the early 1570s. The story of this second wave of expansion is
something I will discuss in the next chapter. The dynamics of the
initial campaigns that created the Mughal heartland under Akbar
is what the present chapter unravels. Douglas Streusand studied
this process around three decades back.7 I build on his arguments
and take the inquiry forward. More specifically, I probe the kind of
negotiations with the natural environment these initial campaigns
under Akbar entailed. In the process, I also revisit the formula-
tions of two different groups of historians, who argue that Mughal
military conquests were spearheaded by the imperial cavalry and
firearms respectively. I will argue that while both of these made
valuable contributions to the overall process of military expansion,
environmental diversity of the region under study prevented either
of them from actually driving imperial conquests single-handedly
everywhere.

5 Andre Wink and Douglas Streusand have carried out the most recent
and critical analysis of this early phase of the second chapter of Mughal
expansion. (Streusand, Formation; Andre Wink, Makers of the Muslim World:
Akbar [Oxford: Oneworld, 2009].)
6 Akbar was only fourteen years old when he succeeded his father to the

Mughal throne. From 1556 to 1560, Bairam Khan, a Mughal nobleman of

Iranian origins, acted as his regent.
7 Streusand, Formation. Streusand’s insights are very valuable and rel-

evant for my work. I will refer to them from time to time in the relevant
sections.
6 Climate of Conquest

EURASIAN GEOGRAPHY AND THE POSITION OF SOUTH ASIA

In order to discuss the specifics of Mughal military engagement with

the environment of early modern North India, one needs to begin by
locating South Asia within a broad geographical framework. Several
historians have pointed out that a roughly Z-shaped arid zone occupies
the heart of the interconnected landmass of Afro-Eurasia (see Map
1.1). Its northern arm stretches across Central Eurasia from Mongolia
in the east to Poland in the west, mostly comprising vast swathes of
steppes grasslands and cold deserts such as the Gobi and Taklamakan.
Its southern arm stretches from the Thar Desert in the east to the
Atlantic Ocean in the west. It consists of several dry plateaus and hot
deserts that spread over Iran, Arabia, North Africa, and Spain. Taken
together, this entire arid zone has always been a low-fertility region
housing primarily nomadic people of different sorts. The low level
of agriculture meant that historically, towns were relatively rare and
population sparse and migratory. Animal husbandry and long-distance
trade comprised the principal form of economic activity. With extreme
temperatures and low level of rainfall, climate is inclement in general.8

Map 1.1 The Arid Zone of Afro-Eurasia

Source: Courtesy of the author.
Note: Map for respresentational purpose only.

8Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2009), 8–15; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’,
4–10; Gommans, Mughal Warfare, 8–10.
 Environment and the Heterogeneous Conquest of North India 7

This arid zone is surrounded by the fertile lands of the agrarianate

zone. This mainly comprises South and East Asia as well as Europe.
Vast river basins drain these lands, rendering them fertile. Thanks
to the prosperity of agriculture, population in this zone is dense and
there is an abundance of big cities which can be supported by the
surplus production from the countryside. Climate is moderate on the
whole and rainfall abundant. Beyond this agrarianate region, once
again lie zones of extreme climate. A classic case of this is Southeast
Asia—a region of hot weather, extremely heavy rainfall, settled agri-
culture, and very dense vegetation.9
Jos Gommans points out that South Asia enjoys a unique posi-
tion in this geographical framework. It comprises a good chunk of
the agrarianate zone. However, at the same time, it also serves as
a transitory region between the arid zone of Central Eurasia to the
north-west and the subtropical monsoon region of Southeast Asia to
its south-east.10 Across South Asia, climate is generally moderate. Its
river basins create fertile plains that have been cultivated extensively
for many centuries. The surplus production from these plains feed
populous cities. These have also functioned as nodal points of manu-
facture and commercial exchange over centuries. Towards the north-
west, climate becomes increasingly harsh and dry, till one crosses the
Afghan region to enter the Central Eurasian arid zone. Similarly, rain-
fall increases within South Asia as one proceeds in a southern and
eastern direction. Mawsynram in the modern Indian federal state of
Meghalaya in eastern India is one of the wettest places on the planet.
Rainfall and tropical conditions steadily increase towards the south-
east and eventually transition towards the rather extreme conditions
of Southeast Asia.
There is one more crucial observation that Gommans makes.
He highlights that for China, the frontier between the arid zone and

9 Chase, Firearms, 4–10; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’,

4–10.
10 Jos Gommans, ‘Burma at the Frontier of South, East and Southeast

Asia: A Geographic Perspective’, in The Maritime Frontier of Burma: Exploring

Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World,
1200–1800, eds. Jos Gommans and Jacques P. Leider (Leiden: KITLV Press,
2002), 1–8; Gommans, ‘The Silent Frontier of South Asia’, 4–5.
Another random document with
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 but it’s very rare that a white man makes that. They have
not got the right kind of tools, and they don’t know how.
Their crops are never half tended. If folks generally tended
their crops as some do, there would be more than twice as
much cotton raised as there is.”
With regard to the enlargement of estates by successful planters,
having stated what were my impressions, the same gentleman
replied that I was entirely right, and gave an instance, as follows,
from his personal knowledge:—
“J. B. moved into —— county within my recollection. He
has bought out, one after another, and mainly since 1850,
more than twenty small landowners, some of them small
slaveholders, and they have moved away from the vicinity.
I do not know how many negroes he has now, but several
hundred, certainly. His surplus must have averaged twenty
thousand dollars a year for several years, and, as far as I
know, the whole is expended in purchasing negroes or
land. He spends no money for anything else in the county,
I am sure. It is a common thing to hear a man say, ‘J. B.
has bought up next to me, and I shall have to quit soon.’
He never gets the land alongside of a man that within two
years he does not buy him out. In the last ten years I know
of but one exception, and that is a man who has shot two
of B.’s niggers who were stealing his corn. This man
swears he won’t sell at any price, and that he will shoot
any of J. B.’s niggers whom he catches coming on his
place. B.’s niggers are afraid of him, and let him alone. J.
B. will pay more for land than its worth to anybody else,
and his negroes are such thieves that nobody can live in
comfort on any place adjoining one of his. There are two
other men in the county who are constantly buying up the
land around there. The white population of the county is
diminishing, and the trade of the place [the county town] is
not so good as it was ten years ago.”
The following is an extract from a letter written by a worthy farmer of
Illinois, whose name and address is in my possession, and who is
deemed by those who have known him for many years a sound
trustworthy man:—
“What might be made of this country if the people were
free, and the labourer everywhere owned the land, one
may speculate upon; and when he sees the homes of
Yankees who go thither often with small means, and make
old worn-out places blossom and bloom, he begins to
suspect that there is something in men as well as in
climate.
“I now come to speak of the wealth of the people of the
South-western Slave States, and, for fear I may be
thought to exaggerate, I here say I will not tell the whole
truth. I’ll keep some back for another time. Now, men who
go through on boats and cars, and stop in cities and large
hotels, know nothing to what I do—I who have gone
among the people of every class, I who have stayed with
them hundreds of nights, Sundays and all, and gone to
meetings and frolics, and travelled hours in the woods,
where sometimes there was a road, and sometimes not,
trying to find a place to stay over night—and, having
visited more than a thousand plantations, and slept and
eat in I know not how many hovels, and talked with them
all, and, if I choose, can talk precisely as they do, and they
wouldn’t suspect I was born up North—I say, I think I
ought to know something about them.
“The impression which one gets on going South is the
general dilapidation or carelessness which appears, even
upon some of the best plantations. The nice white houses
so common at the North, even in the remotest agricultural
districts, with green blinds, with clean door-yards, and well
kept shrubbery, snug barns, green meadows, and corner
school-houses, are nowhere seen. The furniture of the
houses is of the commonest description; and to make
short work with it, I estimate that there are not decent
chairs enough in the whole South to give half a set to each
family. For there are to-day, and there have been for every
day for more than ten years past, more than 30,000
people in Tennessee alone, who have not a foot of land or
a bit of work to do. I am speaking of whites, and not of
negroes at all. A bushel of corn-meal, a side of bacon, and
a little coffee, will be all that a family of this class can ever
expect to get beforehand, and it is often they get neither
coffee nor bacon. If they have a cow, and she ‘comes up,’
they may have milk, but as for butter, some have heard of
it, some have seen it, few have eaten it. And the fact is,
many, yes, many who own from two to five slaves, are little
better off. I stayed with a man who had fifteen slaves and
400 acres of land, where he had lived forty years, and his
house was not worth fifty cents; what my fare was you
may guess. I have seen hundreds of families living in log
cabins, ten or twelve feet square, where the children run
around as naked as ever they were born, and a bedstead
or chair was not in the house, and never will be. I have
seen the children eat wheat and grass, growing in the
field. I have seen them eat dirt. I saw children here on my
own place, in Southern Illinois, last year, eat dirt, they
were so hungry. Southern Illinois has been a city of refuge
for the poor people of the Slave States. Folks thought
Humboldt told a big story when he gave an account of the
clay-eating Indians of South America. Of course where
poverty is so general, and where the slaves are few, the
slaves cannot fare much worse than their masters. It is
generally said by the people of the Slave States that they
prefer corn bread, but, place the two kinds before them,
and you will see which they like best. No class of people
like corn bread, and no people, as a general thing, are
worth much who can get nothing else.
“For the most part, the people of these regions
manufacture all their every-day clothing, and their
garments look as though they were made for no other
purpose than to keep them warm and to cover their
nakedness; beauty of colouring and propriety in fitting are
little regarded. Every man who is not rich is a shoemaker.
 Blacksmith-shops are innumerable, and yet I have sent a
boy over eighty miles from shop to shop, and then did not
get a horse shod. Men call themselves gunsmiths, but
they only stock guns. There are carpenters, and cabinet-
makers, and chair-makers, and all this working badly with
poor tools. The sum is, there is no real discipline of mind
among them, no real ingenuity, no education, no
comfortable houses, no good victuals, nor do they know
how to cook; and when I go among them, what troubles
me most is, they have no grass, no clover, no hay.
“And yet, as fine and well-disposed men, and as anxious
to improve, are to be found in the South-western States as
are to be found anywhere. They are as honest as men
ever are, and they will treat a stranger the best they know
how. The trouble is, the large slaveholders have got all the
good land. There can be no schools, and if the son of a
poor man rises above his condition there is no earthly
chance for him. He can only hope to be a slave-driver, for
an office is not his, or he must leave and go to a Free
State. Were there no Free States, the white people of the
South would to-day be slaves.”
I will here call upon just one more witness, whose evidence I cite at
this point, not merely because, in very few words, having reference
to the very heart of the planter’s prosperity, it practically endorses all
I have said, but for another reason which will presently appear.
First as to the non-slaveholders:—
“I am not aware that the relative number of these two
classes has ever been ascertained in any of the States,
but I am satisfied that the non-slaveholders far outnumber
the slaveholders, perhaps by three to one.[63] In the more
southern portion of this region [‘the South-west,’ of which
Mississippi is the centre], the non-slaveholders possess
generally but very small means, and the land which they
possess is almost universally poor, and so sterile that a
scanty subsistence is all that can be derived from its
 cultivation, and the more fertile soil, being in the hands of
the slaveholders, must ever remain out of the power of
those who have none. * * * And I lament to say that I have
observed of late years that an evident deterioration is
taking place in this part of the population, the younger
portion of it being less educated, less industrious, and. in
every point of view, less respectable than their
ancestors.”—J. O. B. De Bow, Resources of the South
and West, vol. ii. p. 106.
Again as to the cotton-planters and slaveholders:—
“If one unacquainted with the condition of the South-west
were told that the cotton-growing district alone had sold
the crop for fifty million dollars for the last twenty years he
would naturally conclude that this must be the richest
community in the world. * * * But what would be his
surprise when told that so far from living in palaces, many
of these planters dwell in habitations of the most primitive
construction, and these so inartificially built as to be
incapable of defending the inmates from the winds and
rains of heaven. That instead of any artistical
improvement, this rude dwelling was surrounded by cotton
fields, or probably by fields exhausted, washed into
gullies, and abandoned; that instead of canals, the
navigable streams remain unimproved, to the great
detriment of transportation; that the common roads of the
country were scarcely passable; that the edifices erected
for the purposes of learning and religion were frequently
built of logs and covered [roofed] with boards.”—J. O. B.
De Bow, Resources of the South, vol. ii. p. 113.
Do a majority of Northern working men dwell in habitations having no
more elements of comfort, even taking difference of climate into
consideration, than Mr. De Bow ascribes to the residences of the
slaves’ owners? No Northern man can for a moment hold such an
opinion. What, then, becomes of the theory by which the planters
justify slavery to themselves and recommend it to us? If the
ennobling luxuries which the institution of slavery secures to the
“superior class,” and by which it is supposed to be “qualified for the
higher duties of citizenship,” are, at the most, sugar, instead of
molasses, in its coffee; butter, with its pone; cabbage, with its bacon,
and two sheets to its bed—and the traveller who goes where I
travelled, month after month, with the same experience, cannot help
learning to regard these as luxuries indeed,—if “freedom from sordid
and petty cares,” and “leisure for intellectual pursuits,” means a
condition approaching in comfort that of the keeper of a lightship on
an outer bar, what is the exact value of such words as “hospitality,”
“generosity,” and “gallantry?” What is to be understood from phrases
in such common use as “high toned,” “well bred,” “generous,”
“hospitable,” and soon, when used in argument to prove the
beneficence of slavery and to advocate its extension?
From De Bow’s Review.
“Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, after signalizing himself by
two very wordy volumes, abounding in bitterness and
prejudice of every sort, and misrepresentations upon the
‘Seaboard Slave States,’ finding how profitable such
literature is in a pecuniary point of view, and what a run is
being made upon it thoughout the entire limits of
abolitiondom, vouchsafes us now another volume, entitled
a ‘Journey through Texas, or a Saddle-trip on the South-
western Frontier.’ Here, again, the opportunity is too
tempting to be resisted to revile and abuse the men and
the society whose open hospitality he undoubtedly
enjoyed, and whom we have no doubt, like every other of
his tribe travelling at the South, he found it convenient at
the time to flatter and approve. We have now grown
accustomed to this, and it is not at all surprising that here
and there it is producing its effect in some violent
exhibition of feeling like that displayed by our worthy old
friend Dr. Brewer, of Montgomery county, Maryland, who
persistently refuses, on all occasions, to allow a Yankee
even to cross his fields, or like that of John Randolph, who
said in the House, ‘Mr. Speaker, I would not allow one of
 my servants to buy as much as a toot-horn from one of
these people.’ * * *
“Somewhat further on, the parties rest for the night. ‘For
this the charge was $1.25 each person, including
breakfast and horse-feed.’ At the end of every page or two
our tourist repeats these growlings over the enormous
exactions. It is the refrain from one cover of the book to
the other. What a series of martyrdoms. Could such a
journey by any possibility be made ‘to pay?’ Perhaps,
friend traveller, you have heard of the lavish hospitality of
the South, and imagined that people there moved out
upon the high road for the sole purpose of sharing the
society which gentlemen, like yourself, could furnish,
believing every arrival to be an act of special providence!
When you offered to pay the woman on Red River, and
‘feared she was offended by your offering her money for
her hospitality,’ you paid the highest compliment to the
South; for heaven knows you would have had no such
apprehension on the banks of the Connecticut.”
I cannot but be gratified that so much importance should have been
attached to my earlier volumes as to induce the Superintendent of
the Census to devote to their consideration a leading article in the
first economico-political review of the country; and I can feel nothing
but regret that he should be obliged to attribute to an unworthy
motive even those of my labours the result of which he does me the
honour to designate as valuable and trustworthy. I have often had
occasion to refer to Mr. De Bow, and, I believe, have always done so
in a manner consistent with the respect which I feel for the class of
men among whom he has had the honourable ambition to rank
himself. That a man, while occupying a position which properly
belongs to the most able and just-minded statistician in the country,
should think it proper to write under his own name in the manner of
which the above extracts are a sample, about a work which assumes
to relate calmly and methodically, the result of a personal study of
the condition of the people of a certain State, is a note-worthy
circumstance in illustration of the present political history of our
country. I cite them now, however, chiefly to show what need there is
for a discussion upon which I propose to enter, myself, little further
than is necessary to enable me to clearly set forth certain facts in
their more important significance, the right of publishing which can
hardly be denied me, in view of the insinuations made by Mr. De
Bow, who in this follows what has got to be a general custom of
Southern reviewers and journalists towards travellers with whose
expressed judgments upon any matter observed within the slave
States they differ. There are numerous homes in the South the
memory of which I cherish tenderly. There are numbers of men in the
South for whom I have a warm admiration, to whom I feel grateful,
whose respect I wish not to lose. There are others for whom I have a
quite different feeling. Of a single individual of neither class have I
spoken in these two volumes, I believe, by his true name, or in such
a manner that he could be recognized, or his home pointed out by
any one who had not been previously familiar with it and with him,
being, as a rule, careful to so far differ from the actual order of the
events of my journey in narrating them, that facts of private life could
not be readily localized. From this rule I do not intend now to depart
further than is necessary to exhibit the whole truth of the facts to
which I have referred, but since the charge of ingratitude and
indelicacy is publicly made against me, as it has frequently been of
late against better men on similar grounds, I propose to examine
those grounds in the light of certain actual experiences of myself and
others, and let it be judged whether there must always exist a
peculiar moral obligation upon travellers to be mealy-mouthed as to
the habits of the people of the South, either on account of hospitality
or in reciprocation of the delicate reserve which, from the tenor of Mr.
De Bow’s remarks, it might be supposed was habitually exercised in
the South with regard to the habits of their own people. These
experiences shall be both special and general. What immediately
follows is of the former class, but, in the end, it will be found to have
a general significance.
On a hot morning in July a Northern traveller left the town of
Lynchburg, the chief market-town of Virginia tobacco, and rode
eastwardly towards Farmville. Suddenly taken severely ill, and no
house being in sight, he turned from the road into the shade of the
wood, dismounted, reclined against a sturdy trunk, took an anodyne,
which he fortunately had with him, and at length found relief in sleep.
Late in the day he awoke, somewhat recovered, but with a sharp
headache and much debilitated. He managed, however, to mount,
and rode slowly on to find a shelter for the night. In half an hour the
welcome sight of an old plantation mansion greeted his eyes. There
was a large court, with shade trees and shrubbery between the road
and the house, and in the corner of this court, facing the road, a
small warehouse or barn, in and around which were a number of
negroes moving casks of tobacco. A white man, evidently their
owner, was superintending their labour, and to him the traveller
applied for lodging for the night.
“We don’t take in strangers.”
The traveller informed the planter of his illness and inability to ride
further.
“You’ll have to try to ride as far as the next house, sir; we don’t take
in travellers here,” was the reply.
“Really I don’t feel able. I should not like to put you to inconvenience,
sir, but I am weak and faint. My horse, too, has eaten nothing since
early in the morning.”
“Sorry for you, but we have no accommodation for travellers here,”
was the only reply, and the planter stepped to the other side of a
tobacco cask.
The traveller rode on. About half an hour afterwards he came in sight
of another house. It was at a distance from the road, and to reach it
he was obliged to let down and put up again three different sets of
fence-bars. The owner was not at home, and his wife said that they
were not accustomed to take in strangers. “It was not far to the next
house,” she added, as the traveller hesitated.
He reached, at length, the next house, which proved to be the
residence of another large tobacco planter, who sat smoking in its
verandah, as the traveller rode near and made his petition.
“We don’t take in travellers,” was again his answer.
The sick man stated his special claims to kindness, and the planter
good-naturedly inquired the particulars, asked how far he had ridden,
where he got his horse and his dog, whither he was bound, and so
on (did not ask where he was born or what were his politics). The
traveller again stated that he was ill, unable to ride further, and
begged permission to remain for the night under the planter’s roof,
and again the planter carelessly replied that they didn’t take in
travellers; anon, asked how crops were looking further west, and
talked of guano, the war news, and the prospect for peaches. It
became dusk while the traveller lingered, and the negroes came in
with their hoes over their shoulders from the fields across the road,
but the planter continued chatting and smoking, not even offering the
traveller a cigar, till at length the latter said, “If you really cannot keep
me to-night, I must go on, sir; I cannot keep my horse much longer, I
fear.”
“It is not far to the next house.”
“But I have already called at three houses to-night, sir.”
“Well, you see, since the railroad was done, people here don’t
reckon to take in travellers as they once did. So few come along they
don’t find their account in being ready for them.”
The traveller asked for a drink of water, which a negro brought in a
calabash, bade good night to the planter, and rode on through the
woods. Night presently set in; the road crossed a swamp and was
difficult to follow, and for more than an hour he rode on—seeing no
house—without stopping. Then crossing water, he deliberated
whether he should not bivouac for the night where he was. He had
with him a few biscuits and some dried figs. He had not eaten
hitherto, hoping constantly to come to a habitation where it might
happen he could get a cup of tea, of which he felt more particularly in
need. He stopped, took some nourishment, the first he had tasted in
fifteen hours, and taking also a little brandy, gained strength and
courage to continue his journey. A bright light soon cheered him, and
after a time he made his way to a large white house, in the rear of
which was an old negro woman stirring the contents of a caldron
which stood over the fire, by which he had been guided. The old
woman had the appearance of a house servant, and he requested
her to ask her master if he would favour him with lodging for the
night.
“Her master did not take in travellers,” she said, “besides, he was
gone to bed;” and she stirred on, hardly looking at the traveller till he
put his hand in his pocket, and, holding forth silver, said—
“Now, aunty, mind what I tell you. Do you go in to your master, and
say to him, ‘There is a gentleman outside who says he is sick, and
that his horse is tired and has had nothing to eat to-day; that he is a
stranger and has been benighted, don’t know the roads, is not well
enough to ride further, and wants to know if you won’t be so kind as
to let him stay here to-night.’”
“Yes, massa, I’ll tell him; ’twon’t do no good, though, and he’ll be
almighty cross.”
She went in, returned after a few minutes, seized her paddle, and
began stirring before she uttered the words—
“Says yer ken go on to de store, he reckon.”
It was after ten o’clock when the traveller reached the next house. It
stood close upon the road, and the voice of a woman answered a
knock upon the door, and, in reply to the demand, said it was not far
to the store, and she reckoned they accommodated travellers there.
Finally, at the store, the traveller succeeded in getting admittance,
was comfortably lodged and well entertained by an amiable family.
Their kindness was of such a character that he felt, in the position of
an invited guest, unable to demand and unwilling to suggest any
unvolunteered service. There was no indication that the house was
an inn, yet the traveller’s experience left him little room to hesitate to
offer money, nor was there the slightest hesitation on the part of the
storekeeper in naming the amount due for the entertainment he had,
or in taking it.
If the reader will accept the traveller’s judgment of himself, he will
assume that there was nothing in his countenance, his dress, his
language, or his bearing, by which he could readily be distinguished
from a gentleman of Southern birth and education, and that he was
not imagined to be anything else, certainly not on his first inquiry, at
any one of the plantations where he was thus refused shelter.
So far as this inhospitality (for this is, I think, what even the Southern
reader will be inclined to call it) needed explanation, it was supposed
to be sufficiently given in the fact that the region had, by the recent
construction of a railroad through it, approximated the condition of a
well-settled and organized community, in which the movements of
travellers are so systematized, that the business of providing for their
wants, as a matter of pecuniary profit, can no longer be made a
mere supplement of another business, but becomes a distinct
occupation.
This, then, but a small part of the whole land being thus affected by
railroads, was an exception in the South. True; but what is the rule to
which this is the exception?
Mr. De Bow says, that the traveller would have had no apprehension
that the offer of money for chance entertainment for the night
furnished him at a house on the banks of the Connecticut, would
give offence; yet in the Connecticut valley, among people having no
servants, and not a tithe of the nominal wealth of the Red River
planter, or of one of these Virginia planters, such has been a
frequent experience of the same traveller. Nor has he ever, when
calling benighted at a house, anywhere in the State of Connecticut,
far from a public-house, escaped being invited with cordial frankness
to enjoy such accommodation as it afforded; and this, he is fully
convinced, without any thought in the majority of cases of pecuniary
remuneration. In several instances a remuneration in money has
been refused in a manner which conveyed a reproof of the offer of it
as indelicate; and it thus happens that it was a common experience
of that, of the possibility of which Mr. De Bow is unable to conceive,
that led in no small degree to the hesitation upon which this very
comment was made.
This simple faith in the meanness of the people of the North, and
especially of New England, is no eccentricity of Mr. De Bow’s. It is in
accordance with the general tone of literature and of conversation at
the South, that penuriousness, disingenuousness, knavish cunning,
cant, cowardice, and hypocrisy are assumed to be the prevailing
traits by which they are distinguished from the people of the South—
not the poor people of New England from the planters of the South,
but the people generally from the people generally. Not the tone of
the political literature and of the lower class of the South, but of its
wealthy class, very generally, really of its “better class.” Mr. De Bow
is himself the associate of gentlemen as well informed and as free
from narrow prejudices as any at the South. No New England man,
who has travelled at the South, would be surprised, indeed, if, at a
table at which he were a guest, such an assumption as that of Mr.
De Bow should be apparent in all the conversation, and that the gist
of it should be supposed to be so well understood and generally
conceded, that he could not be annoyed thereat.
I need hardly say that this reference to Mr. De Bow is continued, not
for the purpose of vindicating the North any more than myself from a
mistaken criticism. I wish only to demonstrate how necessary it must
soon be to find other means for saving the Union than these
commonplace flatteries of Southern conceit and apologies for
Southern folly, to which we have not only become so accustomed
ourselves, as to hardly believe our eyes when we are obliged to
meet the facts (as was my own case), but by which we have so
successfully imposed upon our friends, that a man like Mr. De Bow
actually supposes that the common planters of the teeming and
sunny South, are, as a rule, a more open-handed, liberal, and
hospitable class than the hard-working farmers of the bleak and
sterile hills of New England; so much so, that he feels warranted not
merely in stating facts within his personal knowledge, illustrating the
character of the latter and arguing the causes, but in incidentally
referring to their penuriousness as a matter of proverbial contempt.
Against this mistake, which, I doubt not, is accomplishing constant
mischief to our nation, I merely oppose the facts of actual
experience. I wish to do so with true respect for the good sense of
the South.
Presenting myself, and known only in the character of a chance
traveller, most likely to be in search of health, entertainment, and
information; usually taken for and treated as a Southerner, until I
stated that I was not one, I journeyed nearly six months at one time
(my second journey) through the South. During all this journey, I
came not oftener than once a week, on an average, to public-
houses, and was thus generally forced to seek lodging and
sustenance at private houses. Often it was refused me; not
unfrequently rudely refused. But once did I meet with what Northern
readers could suppose Mr. De Bow to mean by the term (used in the
same article), “free road-side hospitality.” Not once with the slightest
appearance of what Noah Webster defines hospitality—the “practice
of receiving or entertaining strangers without reward.”
Only twice, in a journey of four thousand miles, made independently
of public conveyances, did I receive a night’s lodging or a repast
from a native Southerner, without having the exact price in money
which I was expected to pay for it stated to me by those at whose
hands I received it.

If what I have just narrated had been reported to me before I

travelled in the manner I did in my second journey at the South, I
should have had serious doubts of either the honesty or the sanity of
the reporter. I know, therefore, to what I subject myself in now giving
my own name to it. I could not but hesitate to do this, as one would
be cautious in acknowledging that he believed himself to have seen
the sea-serpent, or had discovered a new motive power. By drawing
out the confidence of other travellers, who had chanced to move
through the South in a manner at all similar, however, I have had the
satisfaction of finding that I am not altogether solitary in my
experience. Even this day I met one fresh from the South-west, to
whom, after due approach, I gave the article which is the text of
these observations, asking to be told how he had found it in New
England and in Mississippi. He replied.
 “During four winters, I have travelled for a business
purpose two months each winter in Mississippi. I have
generally spent the night at houses with whose inmates I
had some previous acquaintance. Where I had business
transactions, especially where debts were due to me,
which could not be paid, I sometimes neglected to offer
payment for my night’s lodging, but in no other case, and
never in a single instance, so far as I can now recollect,
where I had offered payment, has there been any
hesitation in taking it. A planter might refrain from asking
payment of a traveller, but it is universally expected. In
New England, as far as my limited experience goes, it is
not so. I have known New England farmers’ wives take a
small gratuity after lodging travellers, but always with
apparent hesitation. I have known New England farmers
refuse to do so. I have had some experience in Iowa;
money is there usually (not always) taken for lodging
travellers. The principal difference between the custom at
private houses there and in Alabama and Mississippi
being, that in Iowa the farmer seems to carefully reckon
the exact value of the produce you have consumed, and
to charge for it at what has often seemed to me an
absurdly low rate; while in Mississippi, I have usually paid
from four to six times as much as in Iowa, for similar
accommodations. I consider the usual charges of planters
to travellers extortionate, and the custom the reverse of
hospitable. I knew of a Kentucky gentleman travelling from
Eutaw to Greensboro’ [twenty miles] in his own
conveyance. He was taken sick at the crossing of the
Warrior River. It was nine o’clock at night. He averred to
me that he called at every plantation on the road, and
stated that he was a Kentuckian, and sick, but was
refused lodging at each of them.”
This the richest county of Alabama, and the road is lined with
valuable plantations!
The following is an extract from a letter dated Columbus, Mississippi,
November 24, 1856, published in the London Daily News. It is
written by an Englishman travelling for commercial purposes, and
tells what he has learned by experience of the custom of the country:
“It is customary in travelling through this country, where
towns are few and taverns scarce and vile, to stop at the
planters’ houses along the road, and pay for your bed and
board in the morning just as if you had stayed at an inn.
The custom is rather repugnant to our Old World notions
of hospitality, but it appears to me an excellent one for
both the host and his guest. The one feels less bored by
demands upon his kindness, as soon as it ceases to be
merely a kindness to comply with them, and the other has
no fear about intruding or being troublesome when he
knows he will have to pay for his entertainment. It is rarely,
however, that the entrée can be obtained into the houses
of wealthy planters in this way. They will not be bothered
by your visits, and, if you apply to them, have no hesitation
in politely passing you on to such of their neighbours as
have less money or more generosity.”
The same writer afterwards relates the following experience:—
“About nineteen miles from Canton, I sought lodging at
nightfall at a snug house on the roadside, inhabited by an
old gentleman and his two daughters, who possessed no
slaves and grew no cotton, and whose two sons had been
killed in the Mexican war, and who, with the loudest
professions of hospitality, cautiously refrained from giving
himself any personal trouble in support of them. He
informed me that there was corn in the husk in an almost
inaccessible loft, there was fodder in an un-get-at-able
sort of a cage in the yard, water in a certain pond about
half a mile off, and a currycomb in a certain hole in the
wall. Having furnished me with this intelligence, he left me
to draw my own conclusions as to what my conduct ought
to be under the circumstances.”
A naturalist, the author of a well-known standard work, who has
made several tours of observation in the Slave States, lately
confided to me that he believed that the popular report of Southern
hospitality must be a popular romance, for never, during all his
travels in the South, had he chanced to be entertained for a single
night, except by gentlemen to whom he was formally presented by
letter, or who had previously been under obligations to him, without
paying for it in money, and to an amount quite equal to the value
received. By the wealthier, a night’s entertainment had been
frequently refused him, under circumstances which, as must have
been evident to them, rendered his further progress seriously
inconvenient. Once, while in company with a foreign naturalist—a
titled man—he had been dining at the inn of a small county-town,
when a certain locally distinguished judge had seen fit to be eloquent
at the dinner-table upon the advantages of slavery in maintaining a
class of “high-toned gentlemen,” referring especially to the proverbial
hospitality of Southern plantations, which he described as quite a
bewilderment to strangers, and nothing like which was to be found in
any country unblessed with slavery, or institutions equivalent to it. It
so happened that the following night the travellers, on approaching a
plantation mansion in quest of lodging, were surprised to find that
they had fallen upon the residence of this same judge, who
recognized them, and welcomed them and bade them be at home.
Embarrassed by a recollection of his discourse of hospitality, it was
with some difficulty that one of them, when they were taking leave
next morning, brought himself to inquire what he might pay for the
entertainment they had received. He was at once relieved by the
judge’s prompt response, “Dollar and a quarter apiece, I reckon.”
It is very true that the general custom of the South which leads a
traveller to ask for a lodging at any private house he may chance to
reach near nightfall, and to receive a favourable answer not merely
as a favour but as a matter of business, is a convenient one, is one
indeed almost necessary in a country so destitute of villages, and
where, off certain thoroughfares of our merchants, there are so few
travellers. It is a perfectly respectable and entirely sensible custom,
but it is not, as is commonly represented to be, a custom of
hospitality, and it is not at all calculated to induce customs of
hospitality with the mass of citizens. It is calculated to make
inhospitality of habit and inhospitality of character the general rule;
hospitality of habit and of character the exception. Yet the common
misapplication of the word to this custom is, so far as I can ascertain,
the only foundation of the arrogant assumption of superiority of
character in this respect of the Southerners over ourselves—the only
ground of the claim that slavery breeds a race of more generous and
hospitable citizens than freedom.

The difficulty of giving anything like an intelligent and exact estimate

of the breeding of any people or of any class of people is almost
insurmountable, owing to the vagueness of the terms which must be
used, or rather to the quite different ideas which different readers will
attach to these terms. The very word which I have employed to
designate my present subject has itself such a varied signification
that it needs to be defined at the outset. I mean to employ it in that
sense wherein, according to Webster, it covers the ground of
“nurture, instruction, and the formation of manners.” It is something
more than “manners and customs,” then, and includes, or may
include, qualities which, if not congenital, are equally an essential
part of character with those qualities which are literally in-bred of a
man. Such qualities are mainly the result of a class of
circumstances, of the influence of which upon his character and
manners a man, or a child growing to a man, is usually unconscious,
and of which he cannot be independent if he would.
The general difficulty is increased in dealing with the people of the
Slave States, because among themselves all terms defining social
rank and social characteristics are applied in a manner which can be
understood only after considerable experience; and also because
the general terms of classification, always incomplete in their
significance, fail entirely with a large class of Southerners, whose
manners have some characteristics which would elsewhere be
thought “high bred,” if they had not other which are elsewhere
universally esteemed low and ruffianly.
There are undoubted advantages resulting from the effects of
slavery upon the manners of some persons. Somewhat similar
advantages I have thought that I perceived to have resulted in the
Free States, where a family has been educated under favourable
influences in a frontier community. There is boldness, directness,
largeness, confidence, with the effect of the habitual sense of
superiority to most of the community; not superiority of wealth, and
power from wealth merely, but of a mind well stocked and refined by
such advantages of education as only very unusual wealth, or very
unusual individual energy, rightly directed, can procure in a scattered
and frontier community. When to this is added the effect of visits to
the cultivated society of denser communities; when refined and
polished manners are grafted on a natural, easy abandon; when
there is high culture without effeminacy either of body or mind, as not
unfrequently happens, we find a peculiarly respectable and
agreeable sort of men and women. They are the result of frontier
training under the most favourable circumstances. In the class
furthest removed from this on the frontier—people who have grown
up without civilized social restraints or encouragements and always
under what in a well-conditioned community would be esteemed
great privations—happens, on the other hand, the most disagreeable
specimen of mankind that the world breeds; men of a sort almost
peculiar to America and Australia; border ruffians, of whom the
“rowdies” of our eastern towns are tame reflections. Cooper has well
described the first class in many instances. I know of no picture of
the latter which represents them as detestable as I have found them.
The whole South is maintained in a frontier condition by the system
which is apologized for on the ground that it favours good breeding.
This system, at the same time, tends to concentrate wealth in a few
hands. If there is wisdom and great care in the education of a family
thus favoured, the result which we see at the North, under the
circumstances I have described, is frequently reproduced. There are
many more such fruits of frontier life at the South than the North,
because there is more frontier life. There is also vastly more of the
other sort, and there is everything between, which degrees of wealth
and degrees of good fortune in education would be expected to
occasion. The bad breed of the frontier, at the South, however, is
probably far worse than that of the North, because the frontier
condition of the South is everywhere permanent. The child born to-
day on the Northern frontier, in most cases, before it is ten years old,
will be living in a well organized and tolerably well provided
community; schools, churches, libraries, lecture and concert halls,
daily mails and printing presses, shops and machines in variety,
having arrived within at least a day’s journey of it; being always
within an influencing distance of it. There are improvements, and
communities loosely and gradually cohering in various parts of the
South, but so slowly, so feebly, so irregularly, that men’s minds and
habits are knit firm quite independently of this class of social
influences.
There is one other characteristic of the Southerner, which is far more
decided than the difference of climate merely would warrant, and
which is to be attributed not only to the absence of the ordinary
restraints and means of discipline of more compact communities in
his education, but unquestionably also to the readiness and safety
with which, by reason of slavery, certain passions and impulses may
be indulged. Every white Southerner is a person of importance; must
be treated with deference. Every wish of the Southerner is
imperative; every belief undoubted; every hate, vengeful; every love,
fiery. Hence, for instance, the scandalous fiend-like street fights of
the South. If a young man feels offended with another, he does not
incline to a ring and a fair stand-up set-to, like a young Englishman;
he will not attempt to overcome his opponent by logic; he will not be
content to vituperate, or to cast ridicule upon him; he is impelled
straightway to strike him down with the readiest deadly weapon at
hand, with as little ceremony and pretence of fair combat as the
loose organization of the people against violence will allow. He
seems crazy for blood. Intensity of personal pride—pride in anything
a man has, or which connects itself with him, is more commonly
evident. Hence, intense local pride and prejudice; hence intense
partisanship; hence rashness and over-confidence; hence visionary
ambition; hence assurance in debate; hence assurance in society.
As self-appreciation is equally with deference a part of what we call
good breeding, and as the expression of deference is much more
easily reduced to a matter of manners and forms, in the