The Patrimonial-Bureaucratic Empire of the Mughals (2053505)

Author(s): Stephen P. Blake

A number of non-specialists have used the Mughal Empire as an example of A various models of
state organization,1 but no authority on Muslim India has yet attempted to place the Mughal state
in a larger context, as part of a more generalized type of political organization.

the Empire was char- acterized as oriental, despotic, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Mongol, or some
com- bination of these.

like the Mughals, the British divided governmental authority into two main branches, military and
rev- enue; they kept the basic Mughal administrative subdivisions and centralized civil power at each
level in the hands of one person; and they adopted, especially after the Mutiny of I857, the Mughal
position that the state's role should be limited to collecting taxes and maintaining law and order.

scholars described mansabddrs, the officers of the Mughal army, as members of a finely graded,
hierarchical system of rank and responsibility similar to that of the British army, with detailed salary
schedules, promotions, demotions, bestowal of honors, regulations regarding horses and
equipment, and a great gap between officers and soldiers. Mansabddrs filled almost all of the posts
in what was portrayed as an elaborately bureaucratic administrative system. The Empire was divided
and subdivided, according to this view, into provinces, districts, and subdistricts for ease of
administration. At each level, military, fiscal, and judicial officials operated within definite
jurisdictional limits.

The Patrimonial-Bureaucratic Empire

As an ideal type, this model does not reflect the working of any actual state, but presents a
catalogue of elements drawn from existing situations and ordered into a functioning but
theoretical system.

I draw heavily on Max Weber's work on the patrimonial state. The ruler of such a state governs on
the basis of a personal, traditional authority whose model is the patriarchal family. Patrimonial
domination originates in the patriarch's authority over his household; it entails obedience to a
person, not an office; it depends on the reciprocal loyalty between subject and master; and it is
limited only by the ruler's discretion. Patrimonial states arise, according to Weber, when lords and
princes extend their sway over extrahousehold subjects (patrimonial masters themselves) in areas
beyond the patri- archal domain. This extension involves a change of authority: from the
patrimonial, which is domestic and personal, to the purely political, which is military and judicial and
which must be administered by extrahousehold officials
I distinguish two variants within the patrimonial type of political organization. The first, the
patrimonial kingdom, is the smaller of the two, and is closer in organization and government to
the ideal represented by the patriarchal family. The second, the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire,
is larger and more diffuse. Rulers of such empires developed a collection of strategies and
techniques that allowed personal, household- dominated rule of an attenuated sort within realms
of considerable area, population, and complexity.

a patrimonial ruler must have at his disposal a body of loyal, disciplined soldiers. Patrimonial armies
were made up of troops whose primary allegiance was to an individual rather than to a dynasty or
an office In patrimonial kingdoms the military forces consisted, for the most part, of the household
troops of the ruler. In patrimonial-bureaucratic empires, on the other hand, armies grew large and
complex. The armies required to pacify and maintain order in states of such size were too large for
the imperial household to manage and support. As a result, the armies of patrimonial-bureacratic
emperors split into two groups: the private house- hold troops of the emperor, and the soldiers of
major subordinates, who made up the bulk of the army-men who were bound more to their
commanders than to the emperor.

atrimonial-bureaucratic officials filled positions that were loosely defined and imperfectly
ordered-a situation very dif- ferent from the articulated hierarchy of precisely circumscribed
offices in a modern bureaucracy

Candidates for posts in patrimonial-bureaucratic administrations had to demonstrate personal

qualifications -loyalty, family, and position- in addition to technical qualifications such as reading
and writing

An analysis of the Mughal state

ONE cannot expect to find a perfect patrimonial-bureaucratic image in the governmental

organization of any historical state, a number of states should approximate the model more or less
closely. The Mughal Empire belongs to that number,5(This is, as far as I know, the first serious
attempt to analyze the Mughal empire in terms of the patrimonial-bureaucratic model. Both
Pearson, Merchants and Rulers, p. 62, and Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, I972), pp. I2-I4 mention Weber's work. Neither, however, writes at any
length on the application of the model to Mughal India.)

The A'in-i Akbari (Regulations of Akbar) of Abu al-Fazl is the major text on Mughal government; it is
the manual that expounds Akbar's conception of the state and his plans for ordering and
administering it.

The Mughal Emperors were Turks. Babar, the founder of the dynasty, spoke Chaghatai Turkish and
descended from Timur, the great Central Asian ruler (r. I370- I405).

The Mongol state of Chinghiz Khan (r. 1206-27), was much closer than the Mughal Empire to the
pure patrimonial type, contributed a strong patrimonial strain.
The Persians contributed a strong bureaucratic strain not only to the Mughals, but also to the
other Turkish and Mongol states in West and Central Asia.

Akbar's contribution to the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire in India was to develop, refine, and
systematize the elements of state organization he had inherited from India and West and Central
Asia. Both the Muslim dynasties which preceded the Mughals (collectively called the Delhi
Sultanate, c. 1206- 1526) and the earlier Hindu states such as the Mauryan Empire (c. 322- I85 B.C.)
exhibited aspects of patrimonial- bureaucratic organization. Akbar synthesized these elements into
the coherent, rational system of government that we see described in the A'Tn-i Akbari, and gave
the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire in India its most systematic, fully developed, and clearly
articulated form.

A close and careful reading of the major document on Mughal government, the A'Yn-i Akbari of Abu
al-Fazl, not only reveals the weakness of the established interpretation, but shows as well the
remarkable congruence between the state Akbar organized and the patrimonial-bureaucratic
empire analyzed by Weber.

In its depiction of the emperor as a divinely-aided patriarch, the household as the central element in
government, members of the army as dependent on the emperor, the administration as a loosely
structured group of men controlled by the Imperial household, and travel as a significant part of the
emperor's activities, the Av'n-i Akbari supports the suggestion that Akbar's state was a
patrimonial-bureaucratic empire.

Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy (178737)

Author(s): J. F. Richards

. One can argue that the imperial system, constrained by its very centralized power, could not adapt
to nor cope with the rapidly changing circumstances of the early eighteenth century, and thus
declined. One can also make the point that some of these massive social and economic changes
were engendered by the very success of the imperial system as it expanded.

The scale and degree of centralization displayed in the revenue system of Mughal India is far
closer to that of China prior to 1644 under the Ming. And in terms of revenue collections from the
countryside actually reaching the central ad- ministration, the Mughal revenue ministry was
apparently far more successful than its Ming Chinese counterpart.38

The seventeenth century con- juncture 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 British East India company.

The post-1600 development of a new and powerful, centrally directed market demand for large
volume Indian industrial and agricultural exports, and the use of New World and Japanese precious
metals to obtain these goods, further strengthened the cur- rency, the reserves, and ultimately the
authority of the emperors succeeding Akbar.
The Mughal Polity — A Critique of Revisionist Approaches

Author(s): M. Athar Ali

In his work on the agrarian system of the Mughal Empire,14 Irfan Habib (I963) broadly accepted
and underlined the centralized nature of Mughal polity and the large share of the surplus that the
Mughal land-tax represented.

On this he presented an impressive amount of documentary evidence. But at the same time he
insisted that the centralized ruling class of the Mughal Empire co-existed, in a relationship of
collaboration and antagonism, with another scattered, localized hereditary 'junior' ruling class, the
zamindars, who were smaller co-sharers in the surplus.

the peasants. Irfan 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' exploitation'.16 This brought him, of course, very close to the concept
of Oriental Despotism (or to the 'Tributary Mode' of Samir Amin).

The starting point of the objection seems to be the rejection of a view that India could really have
developed centralized or systemat- ized state institutions in view of its cultural and social
circumstances. Burton Stein (1980) raised this objection in a challenging form, when he argued
that the model of the state in South India was that of the 'segmentary state' located in African
tribal society by Aidan Southal.19

The 'revisionist' approach to the analysis of Mughal polity arrived at by 'Mughal-centred'

historians (Frank Perlin's expression) has now taken a number of forms. The first was initiated in
asides, rather than in substance, by C. A. Bayly (i983).21 He acknowledged that 'the key note of
Mughal rule had been size and centralization.

He saw in the decline of the Mughal Empire a positive element, where these 'Corporate groups' or
'social classes' played their role through the 'commercialization' and 'decentralization' of Mughal
polity in the i8th century in extending agriculture and intensifying commerce, and then shifted
their loyalties to the British, as the most-for them-beneficial power. The British conquest was thus
an Indo-British affair-the culmination of Bayly's 'continuity' thesis.23

Bayly's thesis was supported by Muzaffar Alam (I986), who took over the glorification of the
permanent jagir and revenue farming (ijara) as indices not of collapse of government and equity,
but of regionalization and commercialization- and therefore of growth.25

A second line of approach has been adopted by Andre Wink (1986), which in its conclusions loosely
meshes with the argument. nsion. 'The Mughal Empire' merely 'represented a form of sover- eignty,
a balancing system of continually shifting rivalries and alli- ances-At no stage did it transcend fitna.27
HARMANN KULKE ( THE STATE IN INDIA 1000 – 1700) -Introduction: The Study of the State
in Pre-modern India HERMANN KULKE

the study of the state in India between 1000 and 1700 has become one of the most conuovcrsial
issues in contemporary Indian historiography.

Various scholars, and in some cases 'schools', have come forward with different approaches and
conceptual modds to define the Indian state and its key features,

five distinct models of state for- mation and of the state in India between 1000 and 1700. Listed
according to their date of origin, these models are:

1. Marx's notion of oriental despotirm and the Asiatic mode of production. This concedes to
the 'unchanging' state a strong central coercion for external warfare and internal
exploitation of the village communities. In order to increase agrarian surplus the central
bureaucracy took charge of large-scale irrigation projects.
2. The Indian historiographical model of a rather unitary, centrally organized and territorially
defined kingdom with a strong burcaucracy.1

(The existing models depict the state in medieval India as a: strong apd centralized state (1, 2))

3. The Marxist-influenced mode of an Indian feudalism, of a de- centralized and fragmented

feudal state which however presupposes the existence of an earlier rather strong state
weakened through the feudalization of societv. (or as a kingdom which was weak and
decentralized successor to an earlier strong and centralized state (3;)
4. The model of the segmmtary state, which allots the early medieval state in India a position
on a continuum of governance formation berween the tribal 'stateless' form of government
and a patrimonial state. (or as a state which has not yet reached the position of a strong
and centralized state (4 ))
5. The patrimonial state, which depicts the Mughal empire as a household-dominated
patrimonial-bureaucratic empire rather than a highly structured bureaucratically
administered state. (or as a state with a strong patrimonial administration at its centre
which it was able to extend temporarily beyond w core area through increased military
and administrative control (5).)
6. Besides these different models, a number of recent contributions to the debate on the pre-
modem Indian state show a reluctance to accept any of these models. A distinct
denominator of this group of studies is their focus on structural developments and changes
within a given state system. This group of non-aligned studies will be dealt with at the end
of this Introduction.
The concept of the patrimonial-bureaucratic state of late medieval India concedes a much higher
political profile to the pre-modern state in India. Even though basically still facing similar structural
problems as the two former modds, as for instance the lack of political integration and ubiquitous
centrifugal tendencies, the patrimonial-bureaucratic state was able to increase its surplus
appropriation considerably through a new system of land assignment and thus develop new and
temporarily successful administrative and military methods to cope with these problems.

With its administrative, fiscal and military abilities, the patrimonial state may indeed come quite
near to the 'imperial' or 'conventional' model and to Max Weber's sultanism (as an extreme form of
patrimonial authority), which shows certain similarities with Marx's Oriental Despotism.

the patrimonial-bureaucratic model clearly stresses the fact that the patrimonial state still
remained in its essence a rather fragile institution as it depended strongly on the personal
ambitions and abilities of its ruler and his capability to cope with the various autonomous and
centrifugal forces of his state.

a patrimonial-bureaucratic state depended strongly on the appropriation of additional surplus (e.g.

through levy on trade), which however could never be taken for granted. Stephen Blake's
'Patrimonial- Burcaucratic Empire of the Mughals' aims at a conccptualiz:ation of the Mughal state
on the basis of Max Weber's theory of the pauimonial state.

The question whether the Mughal Empire has to be regarded 'either as the most successful of the
traditional states [in India] or as an abortive quasi-modem polity' (A. Ali) has been asked time and
again since Bcr- nier's 'Travels in the Mogul Empire'.

As regards the traditional means Arhar Ali distinguishes between administrative, ideo- logical, and
socio-structural spheres. Based on the continuing surviv:al of the administrative framework of the
Delhi Sultanate, particularly on the land revenue assessment of the Siir regime, the Mughal
government derived its strength from Akbar's systematization of the administration. The creation of
the mll~ri system, the further systematization of the jilgir land-revenue assignment and his 'largely
sua:.essful attempts to make the entire administrative structure of one ~ into the exact replica of the
other, with a chain of officers at wriow levels ultimately controlled by the ministers at the centre,
gave identity to Mughal administrative institutions irrespective of the regions where they
functioned'. Apart from 'this immense work of centralization and systematization' Arhar Ali sees a
new stress on the 'absoluteness of sovereignty'.

Athar Ali, too, ass~gns to the Mugbal srate an exaemely high position and thus follows to a
considerable atent the Indian historiographical model of the pre- modern state in India whereas
other historians of the Aligarh School and related scholars tend to treat the Mugbal state and its
inherent struetural defects more critically (e.g. Satish Chandra. lrfan Habib and Tapan
Raychaudhuri). More recently the high profile of Mnghal sratecraft, particularly the alleged degree
of centralization of administration and irs standardization throughout the Empire has been
questioned. Thus, for instance, M. Alam and S. Subrahmanyam criticize in a forthcoming paper on
state-building under the Mugbals the 'picture of unremitting centralization' and emphasize instead
the 'persistence of differences &om region to region, rather than centrally imposed uniformiry'.
Chetan Singh, too, argues in favour of a 'regionalizationof the administrati"Ye functionaries' of the
Mugbal state in seventeenth-<entury Punjab (C. Singh 1988: 317). In a recently published paper
Athar Ali takes up the gauntlet of these 'revisionalistic approaches' and defends bis definition of
Mughal poliry as a centralized poliry 'geared to systematization and creation of an all imperial
bureaucracy' (A. Ali 1993: 710).

Stephen Blake (1979) admits in the Introduction to his paper that the studies of Achar Ali and Satish
Chandra 'break important new ground' but criticizes that 'neither has looked into the impact of his
work on the conventional model of the Mughal state' and points out that so far 'no complete model
of chis traditional state was presented'. In chis context he refers particularly to Achar Ali's above
mentioned study. In view of the many analytical books and articles written on the Mughal state since
Moreland and in particular by the Afigarh School such a statement seems exaggerated.

his article and his attempt to evaluate the validity of Weber's concept of patrimonialism in the Indian
context may even have to be regarded as the third major contribution to a conceptualiution of the
pre-modern state in India.

Blake's concept of patrimonial bureaucracy is based on Max Weber's monumental work 'Economy
and Society' ,79 which contains several chap- ters on patrimonialism. Weber defines gerontocracy
and primary patriar- chalism as the two most elementary types of traditional domination.

Weber referred quite frequently, although only very cursorily, to Mughal India and the Delhi
Sultanate as pauimonial states in Economy llnd Society, and rarely to the Mauryan empire in his
religion of India.

Blake's attempt to define a concrete historical state in India in Weberian terms as patrimonial-
bureaucratic is . thus also a pioneering work in the context of Weberian studies. In his summary
Blake concludes that a careful reading of major documents of the Mughals, e.g. the A'in-i Akbllri,
not only reveals the weakness of the escablished interpretation but shows as well the remarkable
congruence between the state Akbar organiud and the patrimonial-bureaucratic em- pire analysed
by Weber: 'In its depiction of the emperor as a divindy-aided patriarch, the household as the
central element in government, members of the army as dependent on the emperor, the
administration as a loosely structured group of men conaolled by the Imperial household, the
travel as a significant part of the emperor's activities, the A'in-i AkbNzn supports the suggestion
that Akbar's state was a patrimonial-bureaucratic empire.'

On the ~s of his analysis Hardy concludes that the Mughal empire exemplified a typical patrimonial
state through- out its history. In view of the strong dependCJl('.C of the imperial system on the
nobility and its abilities J. Richards, too, agrees that 'one might well term the empire a patrimonial-
bureaucratic system' (1993: 59).
The Mughal state&mdash;Structure or process? Reflections on recent western
historiography

Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi School of Economics)

Much has been written in the past three decades about the Mughal state, which dominates the
study of ’medieval’ Indian history.

The patrimonial-bureaucratic state

According to Blake, small ’traditional’ states, are often based on the idea of assimilating state to
household, so that the ruler ’attempted to administer, control, and finance the entire realm as if it
were part of his own private domain’ (p. xii). As states grew larger, however, a ’compromise of the
patrimonial ideal’ had to be under- gone, and a bureaucracy brought in, thus giving rise to the
’patrimonial- bureaucratic empire’ _ In such empires between 1400 and 1750, moreover, one had a
’sovereign city’ as a capital, which was ’the kingdom in miniature’.

In brief, the Mughal state of Blake encompassed everything in the sovereign city, and since the city
was the kingdom in miniature, it seems to follow that it encompassed everything in the kingdom
as well. This model, if read literally, appears to be the Ahgarh model of centralisation taken to its
very extreme.

A recent study by Chetan Singh with a very different perspective to that of Streusand and Blake,
which considers the Mughai state from the viewpoint of a region (namely, Punjab), concludes that
Crown offic·als may have tended as early as the seventeenth century to acquire local roots,
modifying the notional ’rule’ of periodic transfers which suggests a relatively bureaucratic system
at work.42

Besides, the ’patrimonial-bureaucratic’ state is again bound up closely to the conception of a Mughal
state structure which is already defined by the end of Akbar’s reign, and the logic of which works
itself out through the seventeenth century. Like the segmentary state as used by Streusand, it has
iitile room for the depiction of a painfully improvised process of state building, whether at the level
of the shifting ideologies existent in different epochs, or the incorporation and modification of
regional traditions, or the expansion of the agrarian frontier, of trade and manufacture, and the
creation of new opportunities which had an impact on the essential char- acter of the Mughal
state.43 In sum, these views are excessively focused on structure and neglect the historical process.
In this sense, they cannot provide a fundamental challenge to the paradigm of the ’Aligarh school’,
which is again based on treating the Mughal state as a fixed structure, a ,system’ created under
Akbar.