PREFACE

The starting point for this volume is 15 26, the date of Babur’s victory at Panipat. The ending point is 1720, the date of Muhammad Shah’s accession in Delhi. By the latter date the essential structure of centralized empire was disintegrated beyond repair. Behind my choice of 1720, rather than 1739, or 1761, or even 1803, is the belief that the collapse of the centralized formal apparatus of the Mughal empire was an important turning point in Indian history. Three decades of study have convinced me that Mughal centralized power was a reality and that its effect on Indian society was considerable. Whether this was good or bad is a different question. After 1720 the Mughal empire became a substantially different entity.

Within these dates I have tried to describe the construction of the Mughal empire, its operation, and its destruction. One of my aims has been to explain as clearly as possible the design and operation of the imperial system. This is no small matter, for generations of scholars have worked hard to try and decipher the intricacies of this enterprise.

Another goal has been to write a concise, coherent narrative history from 15 26 to 1720. The narrative is conventional in that I trace the large public events, primarily political and military, that shaped imperial history. Partly this is because I believe that we ought to take the military history of the Mughal empire more seriously than is our current custom. After all, war was the principal business of the Mughal emperors, who committed by far the bulk of their resources to the military. It is also difficult to understand the nature of the empire without some knowledge of its dynamic growth in territory and resources.

A third aim is to encourage further scholarly work on the Mughal period. We simply do not know enough. The secondary literature on the Mughals is thin despite its great importance in South Asian and world history. Many more detailed local histories need doing. A host of scholarly monographs and lengthy articles on various castes and ethnic groups are waiting for their historian. New sources in different genres and languages need to be identified, authenticated, collated, and published in the original text and in translation. We need better integration of the Indian and European sources by someone who reads Rajasthani, Persian, French, and Dutch, for example. For such new work our best hope lies in the originality of young historians from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Finally, my most important goal is to offer a one-volume synthesis that will be comprehensible to the ron-specialist. I hope that this book can be read with profit by anyone interested in this most fascinating of historical periods. If successful, the volume should create a context for further reading and study.

In writing this volume I have become deeply conscious of my debt to colleagues in this field. I am especially grateful to Irfan Habib, Ashin Das Gupta, Satish Chandra, Tapan Raychaudhuri, and M. Athar Ali for their inspired scholarship and leadership in Mughal history over the past decades. Peter Hardy and Simon Digby have provided warm support and encouragement for my work over the years. A more immediate debt is to my two fellow editors, Gordon Johnson and Christopher Bayly, for their patience and their criticism. I especially wish to thank Muzaffar Alam for his incisive comments on an earlier draft. I have also benefited from discussions with Catherine Asher, Stewart Gordon, Bruce Lawrence, Om Prakash, Sanjay Subrahma-nyam, and Ellen Smart. And, as always, I must thank my wife and children for their continuing love and understanding.