Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
Jagjeet Lally
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Seasonal Movements ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralists ◽  
Dry Zone

By introducing the idea of economies of violence, this chapter explains the connection of seasonal movements from the dry zone of mercenaries, horse traders, and nomadic pastoralists and their herds to the production and exercise of hard power in monsoon south Asia. Zooming in, it then examines the rise of the Durrani Empire in the northwest borderlands of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century. It shows how this process of expansion—alongside the expansion of the Qing and Romanov empires deeper into Eurasia around the same time—brought into this space more of the liquid wealth derived from the increasingly globalised economy which was emerging along the continental seaboards. This wealth was used to bolster a different form of power: that deriving from the management of the state’s material resources (the land and its productivity, not least) and the expansion of the state’s fiscal base.

The Rise of Merchants and Traders in Eighteenth-century Rajasthan, India: An Exploratory Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Meera Malhan ◽  
Shalini Saksena
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
New Governance ◽  
Commodity Trade ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Commercial Relationships

The collapse of the Mughal Empire in Rajasthan during the first half of the eighteenth century initiated important reconfigurations in its polity, society and economy. Emergence of regional political order and a new notion of commercialisation widened the sphere of engagements of merchants and traders. This article traces the structural changes that ensued, focusing specifically on (a) the emergence of the non-peasant sector in agriculture, (b) the rise of a cross-caste mercantile class and (c) change in commercial relationships under the new governance between the principalities, traders, artisans and the merchants. The research is based on insights from rich archival primary sources from the Rajasthan State Archives in Bikaner, focusing primarily on careful and extensive examination of the Bahis. With the objective of enriching the current understanding of how trade and commerce played a pivotal role in serving as engines of social change and economic growth, this study finds ample evidence of thriving trade, growing commercialisation and capitalist development, characterised by complex financial networks and an intricate system of credit in highly speculative commodity trade markets. Evident economic prosperity in most parts of Rajasthan helps add to the existing literature debunking the idea of eighteenth century being a ‘dark age’.

The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Finance ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Church

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

scholarly journals A Historiography of Islamic Law in the Mughal Empire

2016 ◽  
pp. 492-510
Author(s):  
M. Reza Pirbhai
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Late Works

Whereas political and cultural histories of the Mughal Sultanate (1526–1858) abound, the study of Islamic law under the state’s auspices is less clearly drawn. This article considers the reasons behind the dearth by outlining the process by which major archival collections came into being and critically evaluating the secondary works produced over the last century and half. It argues that two factors are primarily responsible: 1) the qualitative and quantitative paucity of extant documentation as a consequence of no Mughal state archives and the fact that contemporary collections originated with British colonialism; 2) the approach too often taken by historians of South Asia. Early secondary works make little to no distinction between treatises reflexive of legal theory and practice, while many late works compensate by considering theory entirely divorced from Mughal practice. For the study of Islamic law under the Mughals to progress, practical and theoretical obstacles must be overcome.

Appropriations and Contestations of the Islamic Nomenclature in Muslim North India

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-110
Author(s):  
Jan-Peter Hartung
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
North India ◽  
The Political ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ruling Elites

This article comprises a twofold attempt: the first is to establish a semantic field that revolves around the concept of siyāsat—roughly equivalent to the political—in Muslim South Asia; the second is to trace semantic shifts in this field and to identify circumstances that may have prompted those shifts. It is argued here that the terms that constitute the semantic field of the political oscillate between two sociolinguistic traditions: a strongly Islamicate Arabic one, and a more imperially oriented Persian one. Another linguistic shift is indicated with the replacement of Persian by Urdu as the dominant literary idiom in and beyond North India since the eighteenth century. The aim is to serve only as a starting point for a more intensive discussion that brings in other materials and perspectives, thus helping to elucidate the tension between normative aspirations by ruling elites and actual political praxes by variant socioeconomic groups.

‘The Real Value of the Lands’: The Nawabs, the British and the Land Tax in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. TRAVERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Real Value ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Ever since the late eighteenth century, no subject has been more prominent in histories of ‘the transition to colonialism’ in south Asia, than the issue of taxation. In particular, the complex system of agrarian taxation that was developed under the Mughal empire, and further elaborated by various post-Mughal regimes, has often been seen as the defining institution of both the pre-colonial and colonial states. What the British called ‘land revenues’, which included taxes on land proper (mal) and taxes on trade and markets (sair), were the main source of income for both Indian and British rulers. Assessments of the impact of colonial rule have often depended on supposed changes in the tax regime. Since the nineteenth century historians have tended to focus their attention on the relationship between the land tax and structures of agrarian property. They have generally argued that British rule both substantially increased the tax burden, and modified structures of agrarian tenure by splicing together rights of revenue collection and private property in land. But they have focused much more on early colonial policies with regard to private landed property, and less on the issue of the actual tax assessment. This paper takes up the issue of the land tax demand (known as jama in the terminology of Mughal and post-Mughal administration) tracing British debates about tax assessments through the first three decades of colonial rule in Bengal.

The Imperial Crisis in the Deccan

1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F Richards
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In recent years, historians associated with the school of Indo-Muslim history at Aligarh Muslim University have developed a persuasive, now widely accepted, view of imperial decline. Satish Chandra and M. Athar Ali have argued that a primary cause of the collapse of the Mughal empire in the early eighteenth century was the rise of intense factionalism among the Mughal nobility. Conflict within this imperial elite (i.e., the body of amirs or mansabdars holding ranks of 1000 zat or above) resulted from a rapid rise to nearly double the number of nobles during the latter portion of the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707). This growth in the number of nobles was not matched by a corresponding increase in the resources available to pay them and their followers. Consequently, the system of alienation of the land-tax proceeds for salary payments (the jagir system) broke down simply because not enough lands could be found to meet a sharply enhanced demand.

The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Munis Faruqui
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Intense Competition

AbstractThis paper examines the intense competition between Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605)—the effective founder of the Mughal Empire in India—and his Kabul-based half-brother, Mirza Hakim (d. 1585). A focus on this rivalry serves to highlight the critical but historically unacknowledged role played by Mirza Hakim in shaping the trajectory of Akbar's reign and also that of the Mughal Empire in India. It is also intended to underline the continued significance of connective links between Central Asia and South Asia decades after the founding of the Mughal Empire in 1526. Cet article examine la concurrence intense entre l'empereur Akbar (règne 1556-1605)—le fondateur véritable de l'empire Moghol en Inde—et son demi-frère, basé à Kaboul, Mirza Hakim (d. 1585). L'étude de cette rivalité sert à souligner le rôle crucial mais historiquement méconnu joué par Mirza Hakim dans la définition de la trajectoire du règne d'Akbar ainsi que dans celle de l'empire Moghol en Inde. Cet exposé vise aussi à relever l'importance continue des liens entre l'Asie centrale et l'Asie du sud pendant plusieurs décennies après la fondation de l'empire Moghol en 1526.

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