Discuss the decline of the Mughal Empire.

To what extent do you

agree that the downfall of the Mughal Empire was caused by the
agrarian crisis of the 17th and 18th century?
Various explanations are put forward for the revolts which brought about thecollapse of the
Mughal Empire. There has existed for a long time the thesis of “Hindu Reaction” as the main
factor behind the revolts against Aurangzeb. Its proponents tent,however, to rely more on
present sentiment than on contemporary evidence. Main concernis with what 17th and
early 18th century texts have to say; and they, at any rate, put thegreatest store by the
economic and administrative causes of the upheaval and hardly ever refer to religious
reaction or consciousness of nationality.

The assignment system, as it was established and worked under the great
Mughals,necessarily presupposed the prevalence of a certain type of economic order. The
jagirswere divorced, as far as possible, from any permanent rights to the land, and
wereessentially assignments of revenue, assessed in terms of money. This suited best
aneconomy where the cash nexus was well established; but that in turn meant that
agrariantrade should have been both brisk and extensive. Both these conditions were
present inMughal India. At the same time, commercial activity could prosper best under an
imperialsystem with its uniform methods of tax collection and administration and its control
of the routes. In so far, therefore, as the assignment system strengthened imperial power it
alsoreinforced the economic foundation of its own existence. Unlike the feudal lord of
WesternEurope, the Mughal jagirdar might not have needed to harbour any fear of money
and tradeundermining his power.

The unity and cohesion of the Mughal ruling class found its practical expression in
theabsolute power of the emperor. The jagidari as an individual member of the
governmentclass had theoretically no right or privileges apart from those received from the
emperor: hecould not manage his jagir just as he pleased, and was required to conform to
imperialregulation. The rate of the land revenue demand and the methods by which it was
to beassessed and collected were all prescribed by the imperial administration. The
emperor alsodecreed what other taxes were to be collected. The conduct of the jagirdar and
his agentswas supposed to be watched over and checked by officials such as qanungos and
chaudhuris, and faujdars and news-writers.

Imperial revenue policy was obviously shaped by 2 basic considerations. First, sincemilitary
contingents were maintained by the mansabdars out of the revenues of their jagirs, the
tendency was to set the revenue demand so high as to secure the greatest militarystrength
for the empire. But, secondly, it was clear that if the revenue rate was raised sohigh as to
leave the peasant not enough for his survival, the revenue collections could soonfall in
absolute terms. The revenue demand as set by the imperial authorities was thusdesigned
ideally to approximate to the surplus produce, leaving the peasant just the barestminimum
needed for subsistence.

It was this appropriation of the surplus produce that created the great wealth of theMughal
ruling class. The contrast was accordingly striking between “the rich in their great superfluity
and the utter subjection and poverty of the common people”. There seems,moreover to
have been a tendency, increasing in its effect with time, to press still harder upon the
peasant. This tendency seemed to derive from the very nature of the jagir system.The
imperial administration, which could observe the long-term interest of the empire andthe
ruling class, did, probably, strive to set a limit to the revenue demand. A great increasein
revenue demand was approved in the course of 17th century is based on anovers implified
view of the evidence; and there are indications that the increase in cash ratesdid not
outstrip the increase in the prices of the interest agricultural produce. But there wasan
element of contra ion between the interests of the imperial administration and
theindividual jagirdar. A jagirdar, whose assignment was liable to be transferred any
momentand who never held the same jagir for more than 3 or 4 years at the most, could
have nointerest in following a far-sighted policy of agricultural development. His personal
interestswould sanction any act of oppression that conferred an immediate benefit upon
him, even if it ruined the peasantry and so destroyed the revenue-paying capacity of that
area for longtime.

Owing to the constant and unpredictable transfers of jagirs, Bhimsen tells us late
inAurangzeb’s reign, the agents of the jagirdars had given up the practice of helping the
peasantry or making firm arrangements. Moreover, the ‘amils of the jagirdars were notsure
of their own tenures of employment and so,” proceeding tyrannically”, wereunrelenting in
the collection of revenue. When the jagirdar, instead of appointing his agentsto collect the
revenue, farmed out the jagir, the evil was worse still. The land was being laidwaste, says
Sadiq khan, writing of Shahjahan’s reign, through bribery and revenue farming,as a result of
which the peasantry was being robbed and plundered.

These statements show that in 17th century the belief had become deep-rooted thatthe
system of jagir transfers led inexorably to a reckless exploitation of the peasantry. Itwas a
result which the imperial administration might check for some time but could notultimately
prevent. It was inevitable that the actual burden on the peasantry should becomeso heavy
in some areas as to encroach upon their means of survival. Manuchy, who on thisoccasion
assumes the viewpoint of the ruling class, declares that they have no money.
Thechastisements and instruments [of torture] are very severe. They are also made to
endurehunger and thirst….They feigns death (as sometimes really happens)….but this trick
secures them no compassion….Frequently, therefore, the peasants were compelled to
selltheir women, children and cattle in order to meet the revenue demand. But the
enslavementwas not generally so voluntary. They are carried off, attached to heavy iron
chains, tovarious market and fair, with their poor, unhappy wives behind them carrying their
smallchildren in their arms, all crying and lamenting their evil situation. Failure to pay
therevenue was not the only cause for which such punishment was inflicted upon the
peasants.It was the general law in Mughal Empire that if any robbery occurred within
theassignment or jurisdiction, respective, of a jagirdar or a faujdar, he was obliged to either
trace the culprits and recover the loot, or make the payment himself.

In Gujarat, a Dutch traveler noted in 1629 that “the peasants are more oppressed
thanformerly and frequently abscond”, so that the revenues had fallen. What the condition
wereduring the early years of Aurangzeb’s reign may be judged from Bernier’s long
discourseon the ills of the Mughal Empire. He too declares that “a considerable portion of
the goodland remains untilled from the want of peasants”, many of whom “perish in
consequence of the bad treatment they receive from the Governors”, or are left no choice
but to “abandon the country”. Bernier sights example of peasants leaving “the country” to
“seek a moretolerable mode of existence either in towns or in the camps; as bearers of
burdens, carriersof water, or servants to horsemen”. The urban population was large,
relatively speaking,and the countryside must have been the source of the innumerable
“peons”, and unskilledlabourers who filled the towns. The lot of the aimless migrant was not
a happy one. A pointcould accordingly arrive where there was no choice left to the peasant
but that betweenstarvation or slavery and armed resistance.

It may be unnecessary to say that by willingness the mass of the people were anything
butwarlike. It is recorded as a peculiarity of Malwa that both the peasants and artisans of
the province used to carry arms. Pelsaert (c.1626) observed that despite so much misery
andwant:”the people endure patiently, professing that they do not deserve anything
better”. Nevertheless, there was a limit to endurance. The classic act of defiance on the part
of the peasants was the refusal to pay land revenue. But a particular act of oppression
committedagainst them might also goad them into rebellion. They are also frequently
alleged to havetaken to robbery; Villages and areas, which thus went into rebellion or
refused to pay taxes,were known as mawas and zor-talab, as opposed to the revenue-
paying village, calledraiyati. Usually, the villages, which were protected in some measures by
ravines or forestsor hills, were more likely to defy the authorities than those in the open
plains. Very oftenacts of defiance by the peasants were mere isolated incidents. The
intensity of distress probably varied from village to village, according to the burden of the
revenue demandimposed upon each. But distress to be translated into armed resistance
required the presence of some other factors as well. Since weaponry was crucial to even
the initialsuccess of any act of defiance, the readiness of the upper strata of peasants,
possessed of muskets or swords, might often determine whether such an act would take
place at all.However, there were still two social forces remained working among the
peasantry, whichcould help to ignite, and extent the scale of such peasant uprisings. The
real transformationof peasant unrest was probably brought about by the intervention of
elements from thezamindar class that had their own motives in opposing the Mughal ruling
class. This camethrough two distinct processes: either the peasant rebellions, at some
stages of their development, passed under the leadership of zamindars or, from the very
beginning, thedesperation of the peasants provided recruits for rebelling zamindars. The
rising of theoppressed thus became inseparable from the conflict between two oppressing
classes.Official texts frequently reflect an attitude of hostility towards the zamindars as a
class.Abu –l Fazl declares that “the custom of most of the zamindars of Hindustan is that
leavingthe path of single-mindedness they look to every side and whoever appears more
powerfuland tumult-raising, they join him”

In southwestern Bengal in 1695-98 the mughal authority was seriously shaken bythe
rebellion of Sobhs Singh, “the zamindar of Chitwa and Barda”, who was joined byRahim
khan, “the chief of the tribe of the perdition-marked Afghans” of the area: the
loyalzamindar of Burdwan was killed, and the area on both sides of the Hugli River
ravaged.The struggle between the imperial administration and the zamindars, breaking
outfrequently into armed conflict, was thus an important feature of the political situation.

Under A’zam khan, governor of Gujarat (1632-42), the peasants suffered greatoppression,
“most of them fled and took refuge with the zamindars in distant places”.A’zam khan
thereupon led an expel the peasants who had fled to his territory, so that theymight return
to their old homes. In Malwa, in 1644, a similar campaign was organized against the
“zamindar” of Ginnur, not only because “the peasants of some of the mahals of the jagir of
the governor, who had fled to the territory of Ginnur , evaded paying therevenue as well,
being backed in this by those infidels”. The peasants and thus frequently became associated
in the struggle against Mughal authorities.

The new feature that comes to the fore in the reign of Aurangzeb is, indeed, that
thezamindars struggle against the Mughal is no longer merely defensive. As the number of
starving, homeless peasants grew and the peasants took to arms themselves, it became
possible for the zamindars to organize them into large bands, and even armies, and
employthem in predatory warfare with the object of extending their own zamindars or
areas of dominance.

In 1623 it was reported to the court that of “ganwars and cultivators” on the eastern sideof
the Yamuna, near Mathura, “do not cease to commit highway robbery and, protected by
dense jungle and fastnesses, live in rebellion, have no fear of anyone and do not pay the
revenue to the jagirdars”. In 1645 the “rebels” near Mathura were apparently still out of
control. Such had been the past history of the area which was to be the cradle of the
Jatrevolt in the time of Aurangzeb. In the accounts of the earlier revolts, the revolting
peasantsare not identified as Jats. The usual term for them is ganwar, or villager, and in one
or twocases, at least, they were probably led by Rajput zamindars. Nevertheless Manchy,
who treats of their revolts in some detail, knows the Jat rebels of Aurangzeb’s reign also
assimply “peasants” and assumes them to be the partisans of the same cause as of
thosewhom Akbar had oppressed.
The Jat rebellion, properly speaking, dates from the time when Gokula Jat, thezamindar of
Talpat near Mathura, “assembled a large army of Jats and other villagers andraised a
rebellion”. He was killed in 1670; but the leadership passed to Raja Ram Jat(d.1688) and
then to Churaman Jat, who is said to have been the son of a zamindar of 11villages. Over
wide areas the peasants refused to pay revenue and took to arms. In1681Multafat Khan, the
faujdar of the district around Agra, was killed when leading an attack on village whose
peasants had refused to pay the revenue. The leadership of the Jatrebellion lay in the hands
of zamindars is established not only from the known antecedentsof its chief men, but also
from their conduct. Churaman, for example, is said to have“seized a number of Churamars
[tanners], who are called the menials of Hindus andentrusted [the upkeep of] the ditch [at
Bharatpur] to them”.

The Jat revolt grew in time into a large plundering movement. This was, perhaps,inevitable
under the narrow caste horizons of the peasants and the plundering instincts of their
zamindar leaders. The areas devastated expanded from the one pargana of aroundAgra,
sacked by Raja Ram, to its highest extent under Churaman, when “all the parganasunder
Agra and Delhi had been sacked and plundered and, from the tumult of that perdition-
seeker, the routes and ways were blocked”. The Jat rebels had no connection withany
particular religious movement. In the Satnami and Sikh rebellions, on the other
hand,religion almost entirely replaced caste as the cementing bond among rebel ranks.

The Satnamis were a sect of the Bairgis. The traditional date of the foundation of thissect by
a native of Narnaul is 1657. The Satnami beliefs, as stated in the sect’s scripture,centred
round an unalloyed monothesim. Ritual and superstition were alike condemned,and
allegiance was explicitly rendered to Kabir. There was also a definite social aspect of the
message. Caste distinctions within the community of believers were forbidden; so alsoone’s
living on the charity of others. An attitude of sympathy with the poor and hostility towards
authority and wealth is apparent from such commandments as the following: “donot harass
the poor…shun the company of an unjust king and a wealthy and dishonest man;do not
accept a gift from these or from kings”. Such a religion could best appeal to thelower
classes. In a possible to them made during the early years of Aurangzeb, a revenueofficial
declared that though certain “cultivators” in a village in the pargana of Bhatnair were “living
with their women, children, possessions and cattle in the garb of Bairagis”,they were “not
free from the thoughts of sedition and robbery”. The revolt in fact began(1672) as a rural
affray.

Just as it has been said of Islam that it is a “religion for towns-people”, so it will, perhaps,
not wrong to say that Sikhism is a peasant religion. The verses of Guru Nanak “are all in the
language of the Jatts of the Punjab. And Jatt in the dialect of the Punjabmeans a villager, a
rustic”. Guru Arjan (d.1606) took the first step in creating a well-knitand disciplined
organization. The Sikh became a military power under Guru Hargobind(1606-45), who
created an army of his own, and, as a result, came into armed collision withMughal power.
He thus founded a tradition, which was doggedly continued by the lastGuru, Gobind Singh
(1676-1708), till; finally, in 1709-10 Banda was able to put into thefield in sarkar Sirhind “an
army of innumerable men, like ants and locusts, belonging to thelow castes of Hindus and
ready to die” at his orders.

The Marathas undoubtedly constituted the greatest single force responsible for thedownfall
of the Mughal Empire. On the history of their uprising, and the factors thatcontributed to its
genesis and success, so much has been written that it would seem presumptuous to add to
the mass. One can, however, legitimately draw attention to theagrarian contexts in which
this momentous event took place.

Some peasants are not remiss in paying the authorized revenue, but are made desperate by
the evil of this excruciating spoliation it came to be represented at the imperial court
thatthe Marathas obtain collaboration from the peasants of the imperial dominions. It
was,thereupon, ordered that the horses and weapons found in every village should
beconfiscated. When this happened in most villages, the peasants, providing themselves
withhorses and arms, joined the Marathas.

Shivaji had used the peasants in a different sphere altogether. They were the “NakedStarved
Rascals” who formed much of his army. Armed with “only lances and long swordtwo inches
wide”, they were “good at Surprising and Ransacking”, but not “for a pitchedField”. They
had to live by plunder only, for Shivaji’s reputed maxim was: “No Plunder,no pay”. This was
the form of salvation which Shivaji and his successors held out to thedestitute peasantry of
the Dakhin. As Bhimsen’s account shows, the military operations of the Marathas did not
offer any relief to the cultivating peasants. On the contrary, theysuffered grievously from
the ravages of both the Maratha armies and their opponents. In1671 the castellan of Udgir
reported that reported that owing to the operations of “theimperial forces and the
villainous enemy” all the peasants had fled the pargana and for twoyears no revenue had
been collected, the Mughal too would burn villages, devastate thecrop and enslave men and
women. As the range of the conflict grew, and the number of victims increased, a still larger
number of the “naked starved rascals”, themselves plundered, had no alternative left but to
join the Marathas and become plunderersthemselves. And so the unending circle went on.

"There is no province or district,” confesses Aurangzeb in his last years, where theinfidels
have not raised a tumult and since they are not chastised, they have established themselves
everywhere. Most of the country has been rendered desolate and if any place isinhabited,
the peasants there have probably come to terms with the ‘Robbers’ [Ashqiya, official
Mughal name for the Marathas]… If the peasant distress was at the root of theserebellions
that shook the Mughal Empire to its foundations, the rebellions themselvesrepresent a
historical paradox in that the alleviation of such distress nowhere forms part of rebels’
proclaimed objectives or of their actual deeds and measures.

Historiographical perspective on the Mughal decline:

The history of this phase of the Mughal Empire has generally been written from the
perspective of decline of Mughal power. William Irvine and Jadunath Sarkar, who wrotethe
first detailed histories of this period, attributed the decline to deterioration in thecharacters
of the emperors and their nobles. As Sarkar examined the developments of this period in
the context of law and order, he held Aurangzeb to have been the arch-culprit.Aurangzeb
was a religious bigot, and therefore failed. He discriminated against certainsections of the
nobility who had served the empire like members of a large joint family.Aurangzeb’s
successors and their nobles, he suggested, were mere shadows of their predecessors and
was thus unable to set right the evils of the legacy of Aurangzeb. Thisexplanation did not
lead us beyond the perspective of 17th and 18th centuries’ Persianchroniclers, with the
difference that Sarkar also read evidence of a ‘Hindu reaction’ in theRathor, Bundela,
Maratha and Sikh wars against the Mughal Empire. On the contrary, incontemporary
sources the rebels and ‘disturbers’ had been identified in terms of either their class, namely,
zamindars, or their caste, clan and region. Sarkar’s views and like them, theviews of many
other historians, are to be seen against the ambience of the time which lentlegitimacy to
communal interpretation of Indian history in the late-19th and 20th centuries.They rightly
emphasized Aurangzeb’s attempt to associate the Mughal state with Muslimorthodoxy; but
the conclusion that this engendered problems for the empire only from theHindus and that
the ‘Hindu reaction’ was the major cause of the decline is unsatisfactory,since Muslim
nobles and officials also reacted to such policies.

In 1959 the publication of Satish Chandra’s Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court,1707-40
from Aligarh marked the first serious attempt to study the structural flaws of theMughal
system with a view to understanding the decline of the empire in the 18th century.To Satish
Chandra, the stability of the empire as a centralized state in 17th century depended on an
efficient working of the mansab and jagir system. The nobles (umara) werethe core state
official whose position and status in the hierarchy corresponded to their rankings
designated in numbers (mansab) and who were paid generally in assignments of land
revenue (jagirs). Availability of the revenue to be assigned and the ability of theMughals to
collect them thus became two crucial prerequisites for an effective working of the system.
Towards the end of Aurangzeb’s reign the Mughal failure to maintain thesystem had
become too evidence to be concealed any longer.

In 1966, from Aligarh appeared yet another major study of the subject in M.Athar Ali’s
excellent work on the nobility and their politics in the late-17th century. Athar Ali provided
quantitative support to Satish Chandra’s study. In these two studies, the problemsattending
the annexation of the Deccan states, the absorption of the Marathas and theDeccanis into
the Mughal nobility, and the subsequent shortage of jagirs have the pride of place.

In recent symposium on the decline of the Mughal Empire, J.F.Richards,M.N.Pearson and

P.Hardy also give a pivotal position to the Mughal involvement in theDeccan and the
Maratha land. But the participants of this symposium also try to modify theexplanations
offered by Aligarh historians. Pearson noticed a basic flaw in the Mughalsystem. Mughal
rule, he argues, was ‘very indirect’ and it was not state control but localties and norms
which governed ‘the lives of most people most of the time’. Pearsonemphasizes the absence
of an impersonalized bureaucracy, its consequences for the Mughalstate and thus reaffirms
an oft-repeated explanation for the absence of successful states inAsia and Africa in pre-
modern times.

There is no denying the fact that the personal achievements and failures of the
emperorstheir declining military fortunes weighted considerably with the nobles.
Pearson‘sformulation, however, is not borne out from the details of the history of our
period.Muzaffar Alam’s study shows that not only the small group of nobles (umara) but
also thezamindars, the village and qasba-based madad-i ma’ash holders and a very large
number of lower-level officials drawn from various regional and local communities were
allintegrated intimately into the framework of the empire. The Mughal Empire rested on a
balancing of these diverse interests. But it is true that the imperial system could not
fullyoverride, let alone obliterate the landlorders’ primary attachments to local groups, in
particular those of kin, clan and caste. The empire signified a coordinating agency
betweenconflicting communities and the various indigenous socio-political system at
differentlevels. The basis of the empire, in a measure, had been negative; its strength had
lain in theinability of the local communities and their systems to mobilize beyond relatively
narrow bounds.

Political integration in Mughal India was, up to a point, inherently flawed. It wasconditional

on the coordination of the interests and the political activities of the varioussocial groups
lad by local magnates. This, in turn, was dependent on the latter realizing thatthey could not
make fortunes by themselves. The thrust of the nobles’ action in our period,and their
Endeavour towards independent political alignment with the zamindar in order tocrave out
their own fortunes, were not absolutely incompatible with earlier development.

J.F.Richards makes a valuable contribution to an explanation of the problems of Mughal

administration in the late-17th and 18th centuries. He demolishes the long-held belief that
the Deccan was a deficit areas from which had sprung the belief that be-jagiriwas the major
cause of the decline of the Mughal Empire. Considering newly discoveredarchival sources,
Satish Chandra makes a clear distinction between be-jagiri and the crisisin the jagirdari
system in a review of his explanation of the decline of the Mughal Empire.Central to the
growth of the crisis of the jagirdari system, as he suggests in this study, wasits non-
functionality—not the growth in the size of the ruling class and the correspondingdecline in
the revenues earmarked to be assigned in jagirs (paibaqi). Richards is right instressing the
role of ‘the local warrior aristocracies’ for any analysis of the problems of theMughal
administration in the late-17th century and early 18th century. Satish Chandra hintsat the
possibility of a ‘tripolar relationship’ between the jagirdars, zamindars, and thekhudkashtas
(resident cultivators) having been the principal factor in the stability of theMughal Empire.
Nowhere, however, has the dynamic of these relationships been linked tothe social
conditions of those constituting them: the jagirdars, the zamindars and the peasants.
Richards sometimes explains ‘the imperial crisis’ in terms of the emperor’s decisions and
policies.

The Mughal decline has also been explained in terms of participation in 18th century politics
of groups conventionally regarded as non-political. Karen Leonard arguesthat ‘indigenous
banking firms were indispensable allies of the Mughal state’, and that thegreat nobles and
imperial officers ‘were more than likely to be directly dependent uponthese firms’. When in
the period 1650-1750 these banking firms began ‘the redirection of their economic and
political support’ towards nascent regional polities and rulers, includingthe British East India
Company in Bengal, this led to bankruptcy, the ensuing series of political crises and the
‘downfall of the empire’. The premises on which Leonard build her conclusion do not get
adequate support from the existing studies of Mughal polity andeconomy; yet her
explanation is worth considering and cannot be dismissed summarily.

Philip Calkins was the first to take serious note of merchants and bankers in hisanalysis of
political formation in the 18th century Bengal. In Pearson’s study of Gujaratthere is some
convincing evidence of the merchants’ participation in politics. Still, Pearsonrefrains from
the suggesting that the Mughal finance system was dependent on merchants’credit. Calkins
also limits his generalization to the period and the region he examines andrefrains from
attributing the stability of the empire to merchant participation in earlier periods or in other
regions. Without any fresh evidence to support her contention, Leonardextents further
what Calkins and Pearson have suggested with rather unfair andexaggerated emphasis on
the role of bankers.

Societal ‘crisis’ is the dominant note in the writing of Cantwell Smith, K.M.Ashraf,Irfan Habib
and Athar Ali. The Mughal Empire, according to them, declined as societyfailed to produce
enough surpluses to sustain a vast all-Indian polity. In other words,economic failure, at
least, coincided with, if they did not actually precede, political decline.

Richard Barnett has considered briefly political formation in Awadh against the backdrop of
imperial disintegration. But his interest seems to be more in the latter half of the 18th
century. The process of the subordination of all offices and authorities within aregion to the
governor and, simultaneously, the governor’s acquisition of a practicallyindependent and
hereditary position needs to be studied in greater depth. Local politicaland administrative
problems were reflected in changes in the actions and positions of thevarious social groups,
particularly, the zamindars, the madad-i ma’ash grantees and themansab holders, which in
turn compelled governors to adopt new policies that could only be implemented at the
expense of imperial authority or those sections of the nobility whichremained outside the
province. While examining political realignment in the provinces, itcan be seen that local
and regional social groups were emerging as powerful forces.Muzaffar Ali have thus tried to
study the history of the period in the context of the Mughalimperial centre, namely, the
emperor, the nobles posted at the court or outside the provinces under review on the one
hand and the region, on the other. The interactions of these elements have also been
scrutinized.

The stages of the breakaway from the centre- of individuals, of social groups, of
communities, and of regions- have been studied with a view to understanding the nature of
political transformation in the 18th century. Both Awadh and Punjab provinces
wereextremely important to Mughal Indian. They lay in close proximity to the capital and
werefully integrated into the empire at the beginning of the period of our study. The
Punjablinked the Mughal Empire, through commercial, cultural and ethnic intercourse, with
Persiaand Central Asia. On the other hand Awadh – together with the northern parts of
theMughal province of Allahabad- was the gateway to the eastern province.

In early 18th century in both these provinces, politics and administration appear to
havemoved along similar lines. The local officials faced stiff resistance from the zamindars
andthe peasants to the exercise of the imperial control. The governors sought wide powers
inorder to bring provincial finance and all other officers eventually under their own
control.During the later phases of our period, however, development in these provinces
began todiverge. In Awadh the governor could mobilize local social groups around his own
banner and was thus able to place nawabi rule on the firm ground; in the Punjab the new
subadaricollapsed and there was total chaos and confusion towards the end of our period.
Given thisdivergence the history of these provinces appears to be especially amenable to
anexamination of issues concerning both the decline of the imperial authority and
thecircumstances that caused and accompanied emergent political formation in the
provinces.The shift from control of peripheries by the provinces was significant. But such
was themyth and influence of Delhi that no regional power could replaces it as the centre
inthe18th century.