The Seventeenth-Century Crisis in South Asia

Author(s): John F. Richards

Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 625-638
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/312726 .
Accessed: 15/01/2015 06:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern
Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Moder Asian Studies24, 4 (I990), pp. 625-638. Printed in Great Britain.

The Seventeenth-Century
Crisis in SouthAsia
JOHN F. RICHARDS

Duke University

In several of the world's regions a 'general crisis' seems to have

occurred in the first half of the seventeenth century. At that time in each
region, political instability and war, population decline and urban
stagnation, economic crises marked by falling prices and depleted
stocks of precious metals, and dramatic climatic shifts converged.
These symptoms have been detected in western Europe, in the Otto-
man lands, and even in China and Japan.' Their causes have been
attributed in part to the effects of the price revolution, partly to climate
change, and in part to rising populations which begin to outstrip
agricultural production. The latter tendency in particular seems to
have caused a fiscal crisis for the absolutist agrarian states character-
istic of Eurasia in this period.2 Other analyses stress the effects of a
tightening linkage in the emerging capitalist world economy in which
precious metal flows served to mark newly imposed interdependencies.
On the Indian subcontinent similar symptoms are not readily
apparent for the first half, or indeed, throughout the greater part of the
seventeenth century. This was a period of moderate, but steady,
population growth and rising productivity. The Mughal empire
imposed a new level of peace, order and stability throughout most of
the subcontinent. Only at the turn of the century do we find political
crises, warfare, disease, and economic disruption accompanying the
descending spiral of imperial decline.3 In the first half of the eighteenth
This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies
Annual General Meeting in Washington, D.C., in March 1989.
' For the most recent comparative discussion see Jack Goldstone, 'East and West in
the Seventeenth Century: Political Crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey, and
Ming China', ComparativeStudies in Society and History 30 (1988), I03-42. Also William
Atwell, 'Some Observations on the Seventeenth Century Crisis in China and Japan,'
Journal ofAsian Studies 45 (1986), 223-44.
2 Goldstone,
05: 'Put simply, large agrarian states of this period were not equipped
to deal with the impact of a steady growth of population that was in excess of the
productivity of the land.'
3 For a detailed
description of the effects of Imperial decline and public order on
0026-749X/90/ $5.0o + .oo ( I990 Cambridge University Press
625

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
626 JOHN F. RICHARDS

century Maratha advances were preceded by years, even decades, of

raiding and attrition before final conquest. Shifting to regional polities
in the aftermath of empire-even under Maratha hegemony-was a
troubled and turbulent process for the societies of the subcontinent.
Between 1556 and 1700 the central political fact in the subcontinent
was the rising power and expanding territorial domain of the Mughal
empire. At his death in i605, after five decades of successful warfare,
Akbar left toJahangir (I605-I627) his son and heir, a multi-regional
state controlling the northern half of the subcontinent. After the initial
violence of conquest, the Timurid regime succeeded in imposing
internal peace and order in each new province.
Akbar's successors in the seventeenth century,Jahangir, ShahJahan
(I6o5-I658) and Aurangzeb (I658-I707), continued to extend and
deepen imperial power throughout the century. Following their
familial imperative, the Timurid rulers directed diplomatic pressure
and military campaigns aimed at expansion on all frontiers. When
terrain and strong indigenous resistance repeatedly defied imperial
armies, only then did the Mughals reluctantly accept a boundary. To
the northwest, they clashed repeatedly with the Safavids over Qanda-
har fortress and, in a massive, failed expedition, established their
limitations in Balkh and Badakhshan in the I64os. To the north, in the
Himalayan hills, the Mughals imposed their authority over the rulers
of the Rajput hill states. In the northeast Mughal armies assembled
flotillas of river boats and probed as far as Gauhati on the Brahmaputra
before Ahom defenses prevailed in the I66os. In the south, recurring
wars and incessant diplomatic pressure ended with the final victories
over Bijapur and Golconda in 1686-87. By the mid-seventeenth
century all chiefs, rajas or other Indian rulers formally acknowledged
the overarching authority of the Mughal emperor. All legitimate
authority flowed outward from the Timurid ruler.
Within the empire's boundaries an internal process of tightening and
deepening imperial domination proceeded. No local or regional rulers
could muster forces sufficient to withstand the heavy cavalry, artillery,
matchlockmen and archers of the Mughals. To field an army of twenty
to thirty thousand men for a punitive expedition was a routine matter
for a Mughal governor. Rajas or petty rulers in the reaches of east
Bengal, the hills of Central India or the foothills of the Himalayas who
commercial life see Ashin Das Gupta, IndianMerchantsandtheDeclineof Surat,c. 7o00-
1750 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1978). Caravans and even the routine
commercial post carried by runners suffered a drastic decline in speed and reliability
(pp. 56-7).

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I 7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 627
had experienced only sporadic encounters with Muslim rulers found
themselves facing forcible demands for ritual submission and payment
of annual tribute. Long-tributary zamindars or chiefs coped with
intensifying political and economic pressure from the center. If these
tensions grew too insistent, outright rebellion resulted. Some negotia-
tion was always possible, but if talks failed, the outcome was harsh: a
punitive expedition in massive force. The offending ruler might be
reinstated or the petty kingdom annexed as a district for administration
by imperial officials. Ancient Rajput kingdoms such as Baglana in the
Deccan or Palamau in North India suffered this fate.
Political and military strength rested on the ability of the Timurid
regime to collect revenues through its agrarian system. Since its
definitive organization in the i58os the Mughal 'regulation' (zabt)
revenue system funnelled huge sums in copper coin and silver rupee
into the hierarchy of imperial treasuries. Each year, peasants and
landholders (zamindars) paid assessments ranging from one-fifth to as
much as one-third of their harvests in installments to imperial officials.
Foodgrains and other crops, sold for cash in a network of rural and
urban markets, moved from the countryside to the cities in an annual
rhythm in response to this state demand for payment of its tax levies in
cash. In years when the monsoon failed these revenue flows faltered
and remissions were necessary, but in normal years Mughal revenues
were sufficient to pay the costs of the court, imperial household, the
central administration, an enormous standing army, and leave a
surplus.
Shireen Moosvi has calculated the probable annual surplus for the
Mughal empire at the close of Akbar's reign. In the early I6oos Akbar's
treasure hoard, reported from two differentsources, comprised slightly
under 7 million gold muhrs (76 metric tons) and 70 to o00million silver
rupees (a minimum of 807 tons). 4 Smaller amounts of bullion and
precious stones and objects also added to the state reserves. By this time
the regime retained a surplus of income over expenses between 3.9 and
4.7 million silver rupees equivalent in cash each year.5This calculation
does not take into account either extraordinary income -such as from
the plunder of conquest-or extraordinaryexpenses-such as the costs
of a failed military campaign. Nonetheless, the implication is clear:
Akbar's empire maintained large and growing reserves.
All available evidence suggests that Jahangir and Shah Jahan
4 Shireen
Moosvi, TheEconomy
of theMughalEmpire,c. I595 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1987), 198-9.
5 Ibid., 201.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
628 JOHN F. RICHARDS

continued to add to the imperial hoards throughout their reigns.

Certainly their great nobles accumulated enormous fortunes in the
course of their careers-much of which reverted back to the imperial
treasury in escheat procedures at their death. For example, AsafKhan,
Khan Khanan the leading noble of the empire who had successfully
engineered Shah Jahan's occupation of the throne, died in 164 . His
estate when inventoried was worth 27 million rupees. His possessions
included a home mansion and grounds at Agra, a sarai built between
Attock and Lahore and a summer home in Kashmirjointly valued at 2
million silver rupees. His vaults contained 300,000 gold coins (worth
4.2 million silver rupees), 12.5 million silver rupees, gold and silver
articles worth 3 million and jewelry and other valuables appraised at
5.3 million rupees.6Similarly, when the great noble Ali Mardan Khan
died in I657 his estate totalled ten millions of rupees in cash and goods.
The imperial treasury seized half the estate and passed on half to the
sons and daughters of the noble.7
Only in the last two to three decades of Aurangzeb's reign (x658-
I707), when that ruler was enmeshed in the draining wars against the
Marathas in the Deccan, was it likely that the central treasuries were
depleted. Despite these presumed losses the imperial treasuries were
still amply stocked when those princes contending for the throne in the
I707-09 war of succession appropriated their contents as the war
began. When Prince Muazzam (later Bahadur Shah) seized Agra fort
with the central imperial vaults, his officersfound coined and uncoined
gold and silver totalling 240 million rupees - considerably greater
than Akbar's reserves at his death.8
Whether for routine costs of administration or for war, the empire
was self-financing from its own resources. The Mughal emperors did
not depend upon loans from private financiers to meet ordinary
expenditures or to pay for even the most expensive military campaigns.
Military commanders on campaign routinely collected treasure from
the ordinary holdings of provincial treasuries.
State finance under the Timurids rested on an impressive monetary
system which in turn depended upon the regular inflow of gold, silver
and copper. The subcontinent had no producing gold or silver mines
6
W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai (eds), TheShahJahan Nama of 'InayatKhan (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, I989) 282. Under the escheat system the emperor appropri-
ated a large portion of each estate and then passed on some portion to the deceased's
heirs. M. Athar Ali, The Mughal NobilityunderAurangzeb(Aligarh: Asia Publishing
House, 1966) 63-5.
7 Athar Ali, MughalNobility,64.
8
Richards, 'Mughal State Finance', 293.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 629
and modest copper output in this period. Instead, the strength of the
Indian economy drew a steady stream of precious metals to pay for
Indian exports.9When massive new supplies of silver and gold emerged
from the New World and Japan, India became the ultimate sink for
these metals.?1
Akbar and his advisors established a tripartite currency system of
gold, silver and copper coins issued from a centrally-administered
network of imperial mints. Originally based upon the copper dam, the
imperial system shifted to the silver rupee as its principal coin when
imports of silver began to rise in the last quarter of the sixteenth
century.1 The Mughal silver rupee, approximately eleven grams in
weight and stamped from meticulously-engraved imperial dies,
retained its extremely high fineness without any known debasement
until the late eighteenth century. Tens of millions of these coins were
issued and circulated freely. Akbar imposed a uniform currency over
the entire empire by insisting that payments be made in official coin for
taxes and by establishing mints in each province.12Mughal moneyers
also defended the currency by insisting that the vast inflow of foreign
coin and bullion be immediately converted to Mughal currency at
mints located at each major port of entry.13
The movement of prices in the seventeenth century was generally
upward. Prices nearly doubled between the I59os and the mid-I63os
where they remained until the opening years of the eighteenth century.
This pattern is matched by the three-fold increase in Mughal silver
rupees in circulation between 1592 and i639, followed by a slight
decline and a recovery to a peak in the i66os.14 In other words the
disruptive effects of the post- I620 slowing of New World silver imports
were felt, but do not seem to have had a calamitous effect in Mughal
India.
Other indications of economic distress are difficult to detect. The
Deccan provinces and Gujarat experienced several terrible years of
9 J. F. Richards, 'Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy' in
Comparative Studiesin Societyand History(198I), 296.
10 F.
J. Richards, PreciousMetals in the Later Medievaland Early Moder Worlds
(Durham: Carolina Academic Press, I983), 26.
" Irfan Habib, 'A System of Trimetallism in the Age of the "Price Revolution":
Effects of the Silver Influx on the Mughal Monetary System' inJohn F. Richards (ed.),
TheImperialMonetarySystemof MughalIndia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).
12 John
Deyell, 'The Development of Akbar's Currency System and Monetary
Integration of the conquered Kingdoms' in Richards, MonetaryIntegration,44-5.
'3 Richards, ImperialMonetarySystem,2-3.
14 Taypan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds), The Cambridge EconomicHistoryof
India VolumeI: c. 1200-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 375-6.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
630 JOHN F. RICHARDS

dearth and famine in the early I630s, but a wider pattern of recurring
shortage and mortality is not readily apparent. A recent, conservative
estimate by Irfan Habib suggests that the total population of India
increased slowly throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
from just under 150 millions in 600o to about 200 millions in I8oo.15
In the seventeenth century Mughal rule fostered a vital urban
culture. Toward the end of his reign Akbar's India, by a contemporary
estimate, contained I20 larger cities and approximately 3,200 town-
ships (qasbas) with over 400,000 villages. These sheltered a total
imperial population recently estimated at between 107 and 115 mil-
lions.'6 The urban population is estimated at a relatively high 15
percent.'7The Mughal agrarian system nurtured a network of vigorous
market towns by its insistence that the peasantry pay the land revenue
in imperial currency. Cadres of grain-dealers and moneylenders
organized a tiered system of efficient commodity and credit markets
which stretched from the most remote villages to the subdistrict town
(pargana) to provincial capitals to the great imperial capitals. The flow
of commodities moving up the system encountered a return flow of
currency which in turn was replenished by the annual payment of the
land tax.'8
Certainly the larger cities flourished in the seventeenth century.
Ahmadabad, Patna, and Surat, among others, were densely populated
trading centers.'9 The Mughal emperors lavished attention and funds
on Lahore, Agra, and Delhi. The populations of these cities varied with
the presence of the imperial court, but at their most populous may have
reached close to a million persons.20In these capitals the opulence and
conspicuous display associated with the Great Mughals was clearly to
be seen in the possessions and households of the emperor and his high-
ranking nobles.
The building of Shahjahanabad in the mid-seventeenth century was
an expression of imperial confidence and victory, rather than a sign of
crisis. In 1638 Shah Jahan planned and constructed a new city in the
15Ibid., I67.
16
Ibid., 170.
17 Ibid., 169.
18 B. R.
Grover, 'An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in the Rural Society of
North India During the 17th-I8th Centuries' Proceedings,Indian HistoricalRecords
Commission, 37th Session, 1966, 121-53.
19 Ibid. Surat was estimated to have a population of ioo,ooo in 1663 and 200,000 in
1700.
20
Raychaudhuri and Habib, 171 Table 3, 'Estimate of population of towns in
Mughal India'. Estimates for Agra in I609 are 500,000; in I629-43, 660,ooo; and in
i666, 8oo,ooo.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I 7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 63I
Delhi area which would become the new imperial capital. Delhi itself
had not served as a capital since the death of Humayun in 1556. Work
began on the palace-fortressin April 1639 and proceeded steadily until
completion just nine years later in April 1648. Simultaneously the
princes and great amirs, allotted plots of land, built their own lesser,
but still magnificent palaces throughout the city. A great congrega-
tional mosque for the entire city, designed to be the largest in all India,
was begun in I650. For six years five thousand workmen labored on the
Jama Masjid under Shah Jahan's supervision. Completed in i658, a
3.8 mile massive stone wall 27 feet high encircled the city. A canal and
aqueduct system directed water from the Yumna river throughout the
entire city for domestic and irrigation needs. At its height, Shahja-
hanabad was indeed a great imperial capital. Great mansions, lush,
artificially-watered gardens, covered bazaars, caravanserais, and Sufi
hospices all were integrated into a buoyant, confident metropolitan
setting.2
Until the last decade of the century the economy of Mughal India
apparently prospered. In agriculture, apart from occasional periods of
dearth due to failure of the monsoon rains, the peasantry continued to
produce its surplus. If anything, agricultural capacity improved over
the long term. Indian peasants in the seventeenth century grew a large
number of food and industrial crops efficiently and well. The Mughal
revenue system was biassed in favor of producers of higher value of cash
crops like indigo, cotton, sugar-cane, tree-crops, or opium. The system
also provided for concessionary rates for those landlords or peasants
who brought waste or fallow lands into production. State incentives
plus rising market demand thereby stimulated cash crops grown for the
market.
Indian peasants were quick to seize upon new crops as well. Between
I6oo and I650 tobacco and maize, two valuable new crops from the
new world, were widely adopted by cultivators throughout Mughal
India.22In the north along the Terai or foothills of the Himalayas and
in northeastern India, a settler frontier, large areas were reclaimed
from the jungle for rice cultivation.23Bengali peasants were quick to
learn the techniques of mulberry cultivation and sericulture to make
Bengal a major silk-producing region for the world.24
21
Stephen P. Blake, 'Cityscape of an Imperial Capital: Shahjahanabad in I739' in
R. E. Frykenberg, Delhi ThroughtheAges (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986).
22
23
Raychaudhuri and Habib, 217.
Ibid., 225.
24
Ibid., 217.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
632 JOHN F. RICHARDS

More indirect evidence implies an expanding rural economy in

Mughal India. In this century the upper strata of the peasantry,
members of the dominant cultivating castes, retained their relative
wealth and power vis a vis the rest of village society. Throughout the
empire members of this dominant class profited and reinvested their
profits in agricultural expansion to meet new market demands. The
peasants referred to as khud-kasht in Mughal documents held distinct
ownership rights which permitted them to bequeath, sell or transfer
their land. They could not be evicted from their holdings as long as they
paid their share of the village land revenues and continued to cultivate
their holdings. Refusal to cultivate as much land as possible was
grounds for punishment by the state. These peasants who cultivated
their own holdings were also distinguished by ownership of draft cattle
and plows. Khud-kasht cultivators, acting as a corporate body, jointly
managed the financial affairs of the village. They were collectively
responsible for the payment of the land revenue and the village
headman came from their number. At the same time they paid revenue
at concessionary rates fixed by custom which were less than those paid
by tenants or migrant cultivators. These dominant peasants also
administered the communal pastures, woodlands, and ponds and other
shared resources of the village-a responsibility which gave them
preferential access to these resources.25
Within the class of khud-kasht cultivators we find considerable
evidence of inequality and internal stratification. The data from
eastern Rajasthan for the late seventeenth century reveals that the
wealthiest khud-kasht peasants, perhaps five percent of the total
population, or two to five big men per village, owned six to eight plows
and bullock-teams which they let out on share-cropping terms to their
less-wealthy fellows.26These wealthy men retained and built up profits
from investing in cash crops and in extension of cultivation. Often they
engaged in moneylending within and without the village.
Detailed sources from eastern Rajasthan suggest that cultivation was
expanding steadily in the late seventeenth century and that the
wealthier land-owning peasants put their capital into this effort. Khud-
kasht peasants universally paid less in revenues than the body of tenant
farmers (pahi) cultivators in northern India who did not share in the

25
Satish Chandra, 'The Structure of Village Society in Northern India' in Satish
Chandra, MedievalIndia (Delhi: Manohar, 1982), 33.
26
Satish Chandra, 'Role of the Local Community, the Zamindars and the State in
Providing Capital Inputs for the Improvement and Expansion of Cultivation' in ibid.,
171-2.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I 7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 633
corporate privileges of the village. Often the wealthier of these owning
peasants possessed surplus funds sufficient to lend at interest. They
retained profits from expanding arable and the increases in cash crops.
The position of the regional rural aristocracies, who served as
intermediaries between imperial administration and the peasantry,
also supports this inference. The prescriptive rights of the zamindars
evolved into property rights as the imperial revenue system entered
into contractual relationships with each revenue intermediary. That
agreed upon share of the annual land revenue guaranteed to the
zamindar by the empire became a form of property that could be sold,
inherited and even mortgaged.27 Obviously, if the rural economy were
in crisis -whether from natural calamity or from excessive taxation-
there would be no point to a market in such property rights. The fact
that numerous sale deeds for zamindari rights are extant from the
seventeenth century supports the notion of a growing economy.
The industrial and trading economy ofMughal India expanded until
the disruptive events of the early years of the eighteenth century.
Inland trade moved briskly up the river systems and along the great
overland caravan routes in the subcontinent. All evidence suggests that
the value, quantity and coverage of this local and inter-regional trade
continued to rise in the seventeenth century.28 Nor was this exchange
confined to light-weight luxury items. Instead, substantial carriage of
foodstuffs, textiles, animals and other commodities flourished.
At the same time Mughal India maintained its long-standing posi-
tion of dominance in the Indian Ocean trade. India exported textiles,
spices, precious stones, and other commodities in amounts every year
that far exceeded its imports. Self-sufficient in virtually all essential
goods save precious metals and horses, India's trade balance remained
favorable throughout the early modern period. Indian mercantile
groups from the highly-skilled and well-funded trading castes domin-
ated the trading system between East Africa and the Straits of Malacca.
Their remitted profits returned to Indian accounts every year as well.
Ports like Surat, Thatta, and Goa on the west coast and Hughli,
Balasore, and Machilipatnam on the east coast saw their sea-borne
trade burgeon under the Mughals. The movement of shipping main-
tained a brisk pace throughout this period-despite imposition of the
Portuguese system of maritime domination in the Indian ocean in the
sixteenth century. Indeed, Goa became and remained a leading west
coast port until the late eighteenth century. Arasaratnam has recently
27
Rachaudhuri and Habib, I76-7; 246.
28
Tapan Raychaudhuri, 'Inland Trade' in ibid., 325-59.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
634 JOHN F. RICHARDS

characterized the situation by the mid-seventeenth century as 'a trade

boom' stimulated by the Mughal unification of the subcontinent and by
the leading role taken by Gujarat which 'was the home of a substantial
investment in shipping and commodities.29
A critical development in this growth in maritime trade was the
establishment of a direct link between northern Europe and the
Mughal empire:30
In ... Mughal India, it was the post- 600 intersection of the dynamic imperial
economy with the northern European trading companies which produced a
critical nexus between the subcontinent and the economic center ofpremodern
Europe. The seventeenth century conjuncture between India and Europe was
closed by the intersection of three centralized, large-scale, rationalized
organizations: the Mughal empire, the Dutch East India Company, and the
English East India Company.
The East India Companies created a directly administered trade link
between producers in India and their salesrooms and warehouses in
London and Amsterdam. Their charters permitted the East India
Companies monopoly rights to seek trading privileges from the Mughal
Emperor or from his tributary rulers in the south of the subcontinent.
From their coastal trading stations, the company buyers shipped
Indian hand-loomed cotton cloth, spices, saltpetre, indigo and other
commodities to meet a steadily rising market demand in London and
Amsterdam. To pay for these goods they exported new world precious
metals to Mughal India.
The importance of this new European trade link is emphasized when
we adopt a regional perspective. Bengal's economy, already expanding
as Muslim pioneer settlers pressed eastward to extend wet rice cultiva-
tion, boomed from the I64os on under the stimulus of English and
Dutch commercial activity. Dutch purchases of cotton textiles, raw
silk, saltpetre and opium, rose from 150,000 florins in I648 to 4.6
million florins value in I720.31 English exports followed a similar
trajectory.32 After a careful study of the Dutch East India Company's
activities in seventeenth-century Bengal, Om Prakash concludes 'that
the Dutch (and English) trade in Bengal was a net contribution to the
trade from the region .... There was an increase in the level of output,
income, and employment in the [Bengal] economy as a result of this
29
and Commerce
Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Merchants,Companies on theCoromandel
Coast
165o0-750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), I i.
30 Richards, 'Mughal State Finance', 303.
3 Om Prakash, The DutchEast India Companyand the Economyof Bengal, i630-1720
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 70-I.
32
Ibid., 82.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I 7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 635
trade.'33Similar export-oriented growth is argued for the southeastern
or Coromandel coast.34
The trends discussed above strongly imply that Mughal India
enjoyed extended stability and prosperity. What do we make therefore
of that structural crisis widely perceived in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries by contemporaries and most modern
historians? The 'crisis of the jagirs' or 'the jagirdari crisis', as it is
usually termed, refersto a widening gap between the salary demands of
the imperial corps ofmansabdars and revenue-yielding lands sufficient
to meet these needs.35This shortfall was a most serious issue. Thejagir
system served as a crucial link between the land tax system, rural
society and the military elites which had driven imperial expansion.
Was the jagir crisis then a symptom of a deeper structural fault? Was
there a critical disjuncture between Mughal state and society that
would lead to the break-up of the empire and a societal crisis in the
eighteenth century?
Irfan Habib takes this view. In the well-known last chapter of his
1963 book, Irfan Habib argues that official revenue policy-driven by
ever-expanding military expenses -appropriated the.entire surplus
produced by the peasantry. Habib asserts that the nature of the jagir
system itself created a tendency to raise the revenue demand even
higher with the passage of time. This did not show up in the nominal
assessment, which increased roughly in tandem with prices, but rather
in the behavior of the individualjagirdar. The latter, who held his lands
for no more than three to four years before transfer, maintained no
long-term interest in their prosperity. Hence, each jagirdar's need for
money encouraged him to 'sanction any act of oppression that con-
ferred an immediate benefit upon him, even if it ruined the peasantry
and so destroyed the revenue-paying capacity of that area for all
time.'36 Therefore cultivation fell off as oppression increased and
peasants left the land because they could not survive. In response to
this cycle, zamindars who were squeezed between thejagirdars and the
peasantry entered into armed revolts at the head of their peasant
dependants. In support of this argument Habib refers to the protracted
revolts of the Jats and Sikhs, among others in North India during
Aurangzeb's reign. Most devastating, of course, was Maratha
33 Ibid.,
256.
34 Arasaratnam, Merchants,Companies, and Commerce,3-4.
35 Chandra, MedievalIndia, 46-75 for two essays on the jagirdari crisis.
36 Irfan Habib, TheAgrarianSystemof MughalIndia(London: Asia Publishing House,
1963), 320.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
636 JOHN F. RICHARDS

resistance in the Deccan which Habib sees as primarily opposition from

the zamindari class.
This interpretation, undeniably powerful, has colored virtually all
popular writing and most scholarly views of the late Mughal empire in
the last three decades. Despite wide acceptance, the link between
oppressive jagirdars, agrarian resistance and imperial decline is diffi-
cult to establish. Checks against abuse were built into the system. As
suggested earlier, a plausible case can be made that agricultural
production was increasing, not decreasing, and that peasants were not
fleeing the land, but rather expanding agriculture. The late seven-
teenth-century revolts resulted in part from ineffectual or weak
imperial administration in northern India when Aurangzeb was pre-
occupied in the Deccan. From one perspective at least, the causes of the
shortage of jagirs can be located in official policy and the strains
attendant upon the Maratha wars.
Under the Mughal system, the chief imperial fiscal officer, the
diwan, and his subordinates assigned villages or larger tracts of land to
individual officers in jagir. These men were thereby entitled to send
their agents to collect the assessed revenue in installments each year on
those tracts. This was a purely fiscal claim which prohibited any direct
administrative responsibility for the area in question. From the pro-
ceeds of his jagir holdings, often scattered in various locations, each
noble or lesser mansabdar met his household expenses and paid a
stipulated number of cavalrymen who mustered under his banner. The
Mughal jagir was an attenuated version of the older Islamic iqta or
administrative fief used by the Sultans of Delhi in earlier centuries. The
jagir, unlike the iqta, was a fiscal device which placed the burden of tax
collection upon the individual jagirdar but retained strict limits and
controls upon his actions.
Jagir shortages began to appear during the Deccan wars in the last
half of the long reign ofAurangzeb. Aurangzeb, who in i68 had led his
household, court and grand army personally into the Deccan, had
conquered and annexed the Sultanate of Bijapur, Golconda and the
Maratha kingdom by 1689. Thereafter his armies launched a protrac-
ted siege of the great stronghold atJinji, the far southern refuge of Raja
Ram, the new Maratha ruler. Over the next seventeen years the
emperor directed expensive, arduous, campaigns against the Maratha
forces in the Deccan. It is in the context of these campaigns that the
number of claimants for jagirs began to exceed the lands in the
temporary pool (paibaqi) awaiting assignment.37
37 Athar Ali, Mughal Nobility, 92-4.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE I7TH CENTURY CRISIS IN SOUTH ASIA 637

Aurangzeb's attempt to coopt the services of large numbers of former

nobles from Bijapur, Golconda and the Maratha kingdom added a
hefty increase to the annual demand for jagirs. The most obvious
course would have been for the emperor to assign all productive lands
in the new provinces to meet these needs. Instead, in what appears to
have been a deliberate policy decision, Aurangzeb retained the bulk of
revenues from Golconda, renamed Hyderabad province, for the
imperial treasury (khalisa) or in the temporary paibaqi pool. The latter
remained in that pool without reassignment for extended periods of
time.38 Similar policies seem to have prevailed in Bijapur and the
Maratha lands.
The shortfall in jagirs in the Deccan proved to be more than an
artificially created problem. As the Deccan wars continued year after
year, the Maratha style of predatory raiding and Mughal reprisals
drove greater and greater numbers of peasants off the land. Burnt
villages and towns and butchered traders and caravans hindered
production. Embittered men joined the Marathas or groups of bandits
as public order declined.39Under these conditions jagirdars holding
lands in the Deccan provinces found it more difficult to collect even
reduced revenues. Mughal officers clashed with one another over
access to those tracts of land where revenues could be reliably collected.
By the early I70oos, in the last years before Aurangzeb's death, many
Mughal officers suffered real impoverishment as they failed to obtain
paying jagirs.
Nevertheless, recovery was possible. Had Bahadur Shah lived longer
and the empire not been subject to two bloody wars of succession in
I712-13, and had Farrukhsiyar (1713-1719) been able to control his
king-makers, the Sayyid brothers, revenues would have resumed their
inward flow and authority its outward movement from Delhi. Instead,
all the reserves of the empire's central vaults were consumed by the
time of Farrukhsiyar's rebellion. The six-year hiatus occupied by the
bitter political struggle which ended with the execution of Farrukhsiyar
allowed the Marathas to consolidate their supremacy over much of the
Deccan. By the time of Muhammad Shah, the empire no longer
functioned as the centralized entity that it had been in the previous
century.
Instead, Mughal India continued to decline and to display those
symptoms of a general crisis noticed as early as the Deccan famines of
38
J. F. Richards, Mughal Administrationin Golconda(Oxford: Clarendon Press, I975),
157-62.
3 For details of these years in Hyderabad province see ibid., 215-35.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
638 JOHN F. RICHARDS

1703-4. One may well argue that the eighteenth century crisis was the
product of new forces, of new connections to which the Indian subcon-
tinent had become subject. This may be the most plausible explanation
for the rapidity with which the empire broke apart and public order
diminished. Certainly we must point to the potent effects of the
conjuncture established between India and Europe under the
Mughals, mentioned above. We should also recall the potentially
disruptive effects of continuing imperial military and administrative
consolidation for well over a century. One may question whether the
symptoms of crisis in the eighteenth century did not mask a more
profound structural change in Indian society at the regional and local
level. This is, however, an eighteenth, rather than a seventeenth,
century concern.

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:49:16 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions