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SUBMITTED BY : DIKSHA BHARDWAJ

ROLL NO : 222413
COURSE : BA HISTORY HONORS
PAPER : HISTORY OF INDIA VI
SUBMITTED TO : ADITYA SIR

How do various theoretical frameworks have explained the nature of the 18th century in Indian
History? Describe with a detail of historiographical trends.

India had to undergo one of the most slipshod periods in its entire history in the
Eighteenth-century. The Mughal Empire, which had dominated the Indian subcontinent for
two centuries, began to decline due to the internal rift and external assail. Following the
decline of the empire, numerous local powers antagonized with the imperial house for
independence, and European powers began to invade Indian subcontinent. The eighteenth-
century has been a competent subject of historiographical debate among scholars from the
various schools of thoughts. It represents a phase of transition between medieval and
modern periods.

The Eighteenth Century in India was characterized by two critical transformations which
changed the structure of power and polity and initiated important social and economic
reconfigurations. One is the transition from the Mughal state to regional political orders
(Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad etc.) in the first half of the eighteenth century; the other is the
rise of the English East India Company as a sort of Company or colonial state in the late
eighteenth century. The historiography of the first half of 18th century highlighted the
Mughal decline as well as the ‘continuity’ that was seen by the other historians who
contributed to developing the revisionist school of thought. For a long time, the 18th century
was considered an era of darkness, characterized by Mughal political disintegration,
economic decline, warfare and disorder. However a series of new regional-centric revisionist
studies These studies together have solidified enough evidence to suggest that the first half of
the 18th century was not a century of absolute and all-encompassing darkness, but rather saw
the politico-economic decline of a few regions while many other regions flourished
culturally, socially and economic boom.

The Mughal Empire's political decline sparked debate about the nature of economic and
social changes in eighteenth-century India. This led to the development of the perspectives of
historians from different schools of thought, including the Aligarh Historians, Marxist
School, Revisionist School, Cambridge School, and Neo-revisionist School. They have
examined the decline of the Mughal Empire, the emergence of autonomous states, their
economic prosperity, and the British encroachment in India.
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The early historiography of decline of Mughal Empire focused on the administrative and
religious policies of individual rulers and their nobles. 1Both the British administrator-
scholars and the Indian nationalist historians of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries
assessed the empire in terms of the character of the ruling elite. In the works of Jadunath
Sarkar the spotlight remained on Aurangzeb, the emperor who oversaw the imperial
downfall. His religious policy, in particular, and later his Deccan campaigns were identified
as the chief cause for the decline of Mughal Empire. Sarkar characterized the peasant
rebellions that ultimately destroyed Mughal political stability as a ‘Hindu reaction’ to
Aurangzeb’s Muslim orthodoxy. The Eighteenth-Century India emerged as a politically
chaotic and economically crisis-prone period.
A different approach was adopted by scholars from the late 1950s, those who largely
conformity with the Marxist framework began to provide explanations of Mughal decline in
materialist terms. 2‘Jagirdari Crisis’ of the eighteenth century developed by Satish Chandra
in which held the structural flaws in the working of the Mughal institutions of jagir and
manasab responsible for the fiscal crisis of the late seventeenth century. Jagirdari Crisis of the
eighteenth century has been defined by Satish Chndra in the following words: “The available
social surplus was insufficient to defray the cost of administration, pay for wars of one type
or another and to give the ruling class a standard of life in keeping with its expectations” . In
the 1980s, the later work of Satish Chandra once again shifted the focus to the economic
aspects of the politico-administrative imperial crisis. He argued that as jagirs became few and
relatively infertile, the discrepancy between the estimated revenue (jama) and the actual
yields (hasil) intensified. This had an adverse impact on the ability of state functionaries to
ensure the regularity of revenue collection. A jagirdari crisis with distinct economic
undertones finally undid Mughal stability.
In his work The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, on the agrarian system of
the Mughal Empire, Irfan Habib broadly accepted and underlined the centralized nature of
Mughal Polity and the large share of the surplus that the Mughal land-tax represented. He
explained Mughal decline and the consequent political and social unrest in fiscal terms. 3Irfan
Habib asserted that ‘the peculiar feature of the state in Mughal India was that it served not
merely as the protective arm of the exploiting classes, but was itself the principal instrument
of exploitation’. Habib argued that the high rate of land revenue demanded by Delhi caused
large-scale rural exploitation, leading to peasant migration and rebellion. This created an
Agrarian Crisis that resulted in the weakling of the empire’s political edifice . The earlier
emperors tried to keep them in check through a system of rotation. Irfan Habib has argued
that because of this Mughal system, and by taking advantage of it, the jagirdars oppressed the
peasantry. 4As they were frequently transferred, they did not develop any attachment of any
long-term interest in the estate and tried to exact as much as possible during their short
tenures, without any consideration for the peasants. This led to the decline of empire’s
economic atmosphere.
The decline of the Mughal Empire is also viewed as a ‘cultural’ failure. Athar Ali in his work
Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture, stated that "cultural and
1
(Alavi, 2002, p. 3)
2
(Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707-1740, 1973, p. xiv)
3
(Habib, 1963, p. 257)
4
(Bandyopadhyay, 2004, p. 9)
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ideological failure" as the root cause underlying the incapability of the Islamic political
formations to modernize or revolutionize their armies and productive capacities. No new
innovations were made in the field of technology. India saw no conscious attempt to design
new artillery weapons, the making of muskets and guns remained a mere craft, with no touch
of science. IqtidarAlam Khan put forward his view that listed a failure to develop a
technology superior to what was common: and this became the cause of the decline of the
Mughal Empire. According to him 5the art of manufacturing and use of gunpowder in the
later 16th and 17th Century and the percolation of the handguns even amongst the peasants
and zamindars made the local elements confront the imperial authorities. His evidence
suggests that the Mughals from the very beginning used handguns in North India: in 1528
Babur reduced the assignments of his nobles by 1/3rd for the manufacture of fire-arms and
payment to the tufangchis. By 17th century the guns were used freely.
The ‘revisionist’ approach to the analysis of Mughal polity arrived at by ‘Mughal-centred’
historians . C.A. Bayly initiates the ‘revisionist’ approach to the analysis of the disintegration
of Mughal political and economic atmosphere. He emphasizes that6 ‘the key note of Mughal
rule had been size and centralization’ . He saw in the decline of the Mughal empire a positive
element, where ‘corporate groups’ or ‘social classes’ played their role through the
‘commercialization’ and ‘decentralization’ of Mughal polity. The British conquest was thus
an Indo-British affair-the culmination of Bayly’s ‘continuity’ thesis . First, the emergence of a
vibrant crosses caste mercantile organization and their involvement in politics, which
resulting in the emergence of a new class of intermediaries. Secondly, the gentrification
process which brought together a class of scribes, accountants and other Mughal service
groups. Finally, the practice of military fiscalism, which meant the maintenance of large
armies and their deployment in revenue collection. The impulse in Bayly’s work is on rise of
intermediaries which associated with the royal power, portraying on Mughal military and
fiscal institutions, and their emergence as new power centres .These revenue-collecting
intermediaries, who attained their power from a variety of portfolios and who collaborated
with English Company later in the decade, are categorized by C. A. Bayly and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam as ‘portfolio capitalists’. In his more recent work, Bayly shows the
increased local control exercised on the ‘Indian information order’ by regional polities, which
resulted in the increasing bureaucratization of its formal and informal networks .
Muzaffar Alam in his work The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the
Punjab 1707-1748 study of early eighteenth-century Awadh provides evidence of the
enormous economic boom and prosperity which resulted in zamindari unrest in the region.
Economic prosperity was a consequence of increased commercialization and the
monetization of the economy that was initiated in the heyday of the Mughals. The wealthy
zamindars took advantages of their newly acquired assets and refused to comply with Mughal
commands. He argued that, the decline of centralization of Mughal power must have been a
complex process of decentralization, in which local elites who had prospered under the.
Karen Leonard arrived with the ‘Great Firm Theory of the Decline of Mughal Empire’,
published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol.21, no.2, 1979. According to

5
(Khan, 2004, p. 180)
6
(Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion
1720-1801, 1983, p. 465)
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her, 7the exploration of the availability and distribution of economic resources had neglected
one group whose relationship to the Mughal state and whose roles in the political system was
quite crucial: the bankers – sahukars, shroffs and mahajans – particularly those in the ‘great
firms’ .It was these great firms which played an important role in the decline of the empire.
She argued, the indigenous banking firms were inevitable allies of the Mughal state, and that
the great nobles and imperial officers ‘were more than likely to be directly dependent upon
these banking firms’. And thus, the great firms’ diversion of resources, both credit and trade,
from the Mughals to other political powers in the Indian subcontinent contributed to its
bankruptcy and ultimately the downfall . There was the increasingly important role of
banking firms’ in revenue collection.
A serious challenge to the thesis is given by J.F. Richards who finds ‘serious problems of
documentation’ in this Great firm theory. Richards finds it hard to agree with Karen Leonard
and argued 8‘I am far from certain that the term great firm, as defined by Leonard, is useful
for a discussion of the economy of Mughal. According to him there were different kinds of
commercial groups who carried on the essential services in different fields: grain dealers or
moneylenders (baqqal, mahajan) associated in financing the landtax system by lending cash
to peasants, village headmen, rural aristocrat; and they also purchased, stored, shipped and
sold grain etc. from qasbas to larger towns and imperial cities. The moneychangers or money
lenders (sarrafs) specialized in short term finance through hundis (bills of exchange) and a
limited form of deposit banking. Similarly, another group was that of brokers (dallals) who
were ‘a highly specialized commercial group’. J.F. Richards’s study of the Mughal
administration in Deccan challenged the idea that there was a shortage of usable jagirs in the
region . His conclusion that the Deccan was not a deficit area questioned the belief that be-
jagiri (the absence of jagirs) was a major cause of the crisis of empire.
Richard Barnett in his work North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the
British 1720-1801 aims to show that the eighteenth-century history of Awadh, the largest and
most durable post-Mughal polity in North India and the first Indian state to come under a
subsidiary alliance system with the British, is a success story of its own. Andrea Hintz in his
The Mughal Empire and its Decline: An Interpretation of the Sources of Social Power,
Ashgate, Brookfield USA, 1997 stated that the great Mughal canopy that extended over the
subcontinent gradually acquired a number of large discolorations, throughout the eighteenth
century, in the form of patches that marked the emergence of a slew of successor states viz.,
Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad, the Marathas and the Sikhs. The most signal omission in
Barnett's study of eighteenth-century Awadh is its cultural life. 9Yet, it is in the cultural sphere
that Awadh most clearly emerges as the prime successor state to the Mughals. Poets and
artists deserted Delhi when the Mughal capital became unsafe. Ashin Das Gupta in his
Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat: c. 1700-1750, indicates that corporate mercantile
institutions transcended political boundaries for overseeing the transportation of goods and
the provision of credit and insurance services in the period of decline. Even though inland
trade increased, export trade and port cities suffered relatives eclipse in the face of European
advances . Chetan Singh, following the general region-centric trend laid out by Alam, in his
Region and Empire: Punjab in the Seventeenth Century, suggested that the political unrest in

7
(Leonard, 1979, p. 151)
8
(Richards, 1981, vol.23, no.2, p. 289)
9
(Barnett, 1980)
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some provinces, such as the Punjab, was linked to tensions generated between the agrarian
economy of the Mughal Plains, on the one hand, and fringe tribal societies as they moved
towards a sedentary existence, on the other. The latter process altered the structure of tribal
societies and the increased pressure on the agrarian economy, which was already under stress.
Thus, the events of the eighteenth century were rooted in the economic processes that shaped
the functioning of empire from its very inception .
Historians belong to the Neo-revisionist school like PrasannanParthasarthi and David
Washbrook have questioned the revisionist’ argument on history of eighteenth-century India.
Parthasarthi in his ‘Merchant and the Rise of Colonialism’, in Institutions and Economic
Change in South Asia, shows that labourers in South India had enormous earnings and a
much better standard of living than their British counterparts. This was due to the high
agricultural productivity that enabled artisans to survive on a lesser wage and gave the
industry a competitive terminal in terms of cost of production and price. 10High demand
translated into greater power in the case of merchants. Washbrook argues that the last decades
of the 18th century was a golden age for low-ritual status, non-specialized working (pariahs).
The wars of the period increased demand for labour; competition among mercantilist states
for trade and cash to feed their armies also created the spaces within which labour could
negotiate better conditions; and finally, the drain of labour away from agricultural activities
enhanced the bargaining power of those that did remain. Thus, at least for labour in some
regions, the 18th century was a period of relative prosperity.

By the mid-century, regional powers like Awadh and Hyderabad had ceased paying tribute to
the Mughal emperor, signaling the decline of Mughal authority and the rise of localized
governance and military spending. Leaders such as Alivardi Khan in Bengal, the Peshwa Baji
Rao in Maratha territories, and others in Punjab and Rohilkhand consolidated regional power,
emphasizing the need for greater control over revenue collection to maintain military strength
amidst constant political flux. The weakening of the Mughal Empire coincided with external
invasions from Persia and Afghanistan (Ahmad Shah), further destabilizing the region. These
events, along with the growing influence of the English East India Company—especially
after its victory at the Battle of Buxar (1764)—contributed to the political realignments of the
period. The defeat of Shuja-ud-Daulah of Awadh at Buxar allowed the Company to expand
into northern India, signaling the beginning of its political dominance.
Debates among historians focus on four themes: the role of trade and empire, the impact of
state and economy, the military and legal structures of the Company, and the ideological
shifts that accompanied early colonial rule. The rise of the Company and its integration into
local economies has been a key area of scholarly discussion, especially in relation to the
transition from indigenous regimes to colonial governance.

Historians have different views on how the English East India Company moved from trade to
political control in India. Earlier accounts suggest that the collapse of the Mughal Empire and
competition from the French forced the Company to become a territorial power. Additionally,

10
(Parthasarathi, 1996)
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the growing export of Indian textiles, paid for in bullion, created pressure on British trade,
and accessing Indian revenue seemed like a solution . Later historians argue that private
interests within the Company pushed it to expand politically. Stokes highlights how revenue
collection went beyond trade needs, while Marshall points out that British private trade
weakened regional Indian states, making it easier for the Company to gain power. Marshall
also emphasizes that British political and economic expansion were interconnected, as seen in
regions like Awadh, where British merchants helped undermine local rulers . R. Mukherjee
adds that British control was not just about trade but also about maintaining military power to
enforce monopolies, which required financial resources. This led to the Company’s deeper
involvement in local politics.

Historians have debated whether the British colonial state's economic policies marked
continuity or change in the agrarian economies of India. Early thinkers like R.C. Dutt and
Dadabhai Naoroji saw colonialism as a break from the past, particularly in economic terms .
Ranajit Guha emphasized that the introduction of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal
marked a significant shift by securing private property rights in land, moving away from
earlier revenue farming practices. Other historians, such as Bayly, Marshall, Stein,
Washbrook, and Das Gupta, argue that the colonial state adapted to existing indigenous
economic and political structures. They noted that the British built upon pre-existing agrarian
practices and fiscal systems while establishing new centers of trade and power like Calcutta,
Bombay, and Madras. Das Gupta, for instance, highlights the collaboration between Indian
traders and the British in these new urban centers. According to these historians, the
Company's dominance did not necessarily break with the past but evolved from the regional
economies of the 18th century. However, differences exist in how historians view this
transition. Stein, for example, believes that the Mysore regime of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan
shared many features with the British colonial system, such as military fiscalism and the use
of non-local officials to connect the state to agriculture. Burton Stein argues that the
Company’s dominance was inevitable, given its greater resources and Tipu's unsustainable
political order
In contrast, Washbrook focuses on the changes in labor under Company rule. He suggests
that British policies weakened labor's position, especially as the Company restored the
privileges of elite landowners (mirasidars and jenmis), pushing less privileged labor groups
back into subordination (Washbrook, 1993).

In the non-agricultural production and trade sectors, the British East India Company
established a monopoly over key industries like salt, opium, and saltpetre. The introduction of
the agency and contract system during the 1770s and 1780s marginalized local middlemen
and brokers, particularly in the textile industry. The Company used Bengal’s surplus revenue
to purchase export goods, leading to a decline in Bengal’s export trade and causing a
reduction in bullion inflows from Europe, which contributed to monetary issues. This resulted
in Indian capital being limited to internal trade, unorganized banking, and small-scale
production, setting the stage for indigenous capital to be subordinated to British capital
(Bhattacharya, 1982). However, the effects of Company rule on trade varied by region.
Marshall argues that Bengal's economy had already been in decline due to financial crises and
Maratha invasions before the Company gained Diwani rights. The economic downturn,
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which included declining European exports and reduced bullion inflows, continued until the
1780s when exports began to recover. Marshall emphasizes that there was no sudden halt in
bullion trade after the acquisition of Diwani . Regional studies highlight further complexities.
In Rajasthan, Dilbagh Singh notes that merchants and privilege holders gained power as the
fiscal pressures on the state increased. Bhattacharya's work on the Coromandel region
suggests that political instability did not disrupt trade, which shifted to new centers like
Hindupur and Walajahpet .
Revisionist historians question the idea that the Company smoothly integrated into existing
networks. Lakshmi Subramanian’s work on Surat reveals that the Company faced resistance,
as local job opportunities in East Africa improved the bargaining power of weavers
(Subramanian, 1996). Similarly, Prasannan Parthasarathi shows that in South India, the
Company primarily gained support from disenfranchised merchants who had been
marginalized by local rulers’ monopoli. These studies suggest that the Company’s dominance
was not uniform, nor was it solely due to the weakening of regional polities.

The debate around the revenue settlements and the introduction of agrarian capitalism during
the English Company’s rule focuses on two key developments: the Permanent Settlement of
Bengal (1793) and the broader attempts to introduce agrarian capitalism in the 19th century.
Historians are divided on whether these changes were innovations or had indigenous roots.
Ranajit Guha and Eric Stokes highlight the transformative nature of the Permanent
Settlement. Stokes views it as a clear departure from pre-colonial systems, introducing
private property based on English Whig notions. Guha, however, traces the intellectual
influences of the settlement to mercantilist, physiocratic, and free-trade advocates, suggesting
that it led to the creation of landed estates, land markets, and the rise of new zamindars who
invested capital in land . On the other hand, Ratnalekha Ray argues that the impact of the
Permanent Settlement was limited. She suggests that changes only affected the upper levels
of rural society, while village-level landholdings and the agricultural base remained largely
unchanged. Pre-colonial rights were merely formalized . Similarly, N. Mukherji and Robert
Eric Frykenberg, in their studies on the Ryotwari Settlement in South India, emphasize
continuity within the traditional agrarian order, arguing that initial disruptions were
eventually stabilized, restoring the privileges of local elites .
Neeladri Bhattacharya brings a nuanced perspective, asserting that while British agrarian
policies led to significant changes, these shifts were not solely driven by European ideas of
private property. Instead, they were shaped by indigenous social groups, whose responses
influenced the extent of policy implementation . Regional studies further complicate the
picture. Regarding the development of agrarian capitalism in the 19th century, Irfan Habib
views this as a colonial phenomenon. He argues that pre-colonial India did not have capitalist
relations; merchant capital remained confined to urban areas and did not extend to rural
agriculture (Habib, 1985). Habib claims that British colonial extraction of revenue marked
the decline of indigenous capital and further subordinated the agrarian order to British
interests. In contrast, historians like Christopher Bayly, André Wink, and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam argue for continuity. They suggest that the rudiments of agrarian capitalism
existed in the pre-colonial political economies, with merchant and banking capital already
playing a significant role in regional trade and governance. These historians see the
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emergence of a new gentry and changes in community structures as part of a larger

transformation towards agrarian capitalism (Bayly and Subrahmanyam, 1988).
The governance of the English Company in India, including its administration, military, and
legal spheres, played a key role in shaping the transition period of colonial rule. Robert
Frykenberg’s work on Guntur between 1770 and 1830 highlights how British rule in Madras
was supported by Indian district officials connected to the old clerisy . Similarly, Bernard
Cohn and Burton Stein show the persistence of indigenous social structures, such as the
clan-holding structures in north India and segmentary state systems in the south,
demonstrating that the Company’s rule was built on pre-existing Indian frameworks. Despite
this reliance on local systems, Bayly argues that the Company distinguished itself from
Indian states in key ways. It maintained an exclusive racial policy, insisting on its own
sovereignty without sharing power, sought to maximize revenue collection without
intermediaries, and separated the public/political sphere from the private/non-political realm
(Bayly, 1998). These distinctions ultimately led to a critical break between the Company and
indigenous political traditions by the 1830s. Through recruitment, the Company established a
monopoly of power in north India and redefined notions of caste and community . This
helped it break free from the legitimacy frameworks provided by regional rulers. The
Company’s criminal law and procedures drew on earlier Indian institutions, personal codes,
and legal texts, though it continued to depict regional regimes as despotic in contrast to its
claim of being "bound by law" .

To Conclude the debate surrounding the nature of the eighteenth century in India has
significantly broadened our understanding of the Mughal and colonial transitions. Historians
initially viewed this period through the lens of Mughal political collapse, often labeling it as
the "Dark Ages." However, later studies like those by Bayly, Subrahmanyam, and Frykenberg
challenge this notion, emphasizing regional variations, economic prosperity, and the
emergence of new political formations.
The transition from Mughal to colonial rule, while marked by shifts in governance,
economy, and society, was not a straightforward break. The continuity versus change
debate, highlighted by revisionist historians, underlines that the colonial state maintained
many pre-colonial structures even as it sought to assert its distinctiveness. The Company’s
use of local practices was often strategic, as it simultaneously distanced itself from being
perceived as just "another Indian state," asserting a unique political sovereignty. Instead, it
portrays colonialism as a dynamic cultural exchange, influenced by shifting political
imperatives and regional responses. The ideological underpinnings of British rule, as
identified by Bayly, with the “rhetoric of benevolence” and “agrarian patriotism,” were not
only pragmatic but instrumental in securing the Company’s power over time.
The period, far from being an era of decline, was one of transformation, regional
reconfigurations, and cultural negotiations, shaping the trajectory of modern India.