Medieval India · Topic 13 of 15
Rise of Maratha power from Shivaji to the Peshwas, 1630-1761
The Basics
By the early 1600s, the Deccan had no single dominant power. Quarrelling sultanates faced growing pressure from the Mughals in the north. This rivalry left a political vacuum, a situation where no one authority dominates.
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Shivaji captured hill forts near Poona, including Torna and Kondana, between 1645 and 1647.
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Shivaji killed Afzal Khan of Bijapur in 1659, using a hidden tiger-claw weapon during a meeting.
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After Shaista Khan's failure, Aurangzeb deputed Raja Jai Singh of Amber, one of his most trusted nobles, to deal with Shivaji. Jai Singh was given full military and administrative authority. He answered directly to the emperor, not to the Mughal viceroy of the Deccan. Unlike earlier commanders, Jai Singh did not underestimate the Marathas. He made careful diplomatic and military preparations. He even tried to win over the Sultan of Bijapur so that Shivaji would be isolated.
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Aurangzeb insisted on a narrow reading of the Treaty of Purandar even after the Bijapur campaign it was tied to had failed. Shivaji could not accept losing 23 forts and valuable territory without compensation, so after about two years of lying low, he resumed fighting. In 1670 he sacked the port of Surat a second time and recovered most of his lost forts, including Purandar. He also defeated a Mughal force at the Battle of Salher around 1672. Mughal attention was distracted by an Afghan uprising in the northwest, which gave Shivaji room to make deep raids into Berar and Khandesh, both Mughal-held tracts. He also pressed Bijapur again, taking Panhala and Satara and raiding Kanara.
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Shivaji died in 1680 without settling who would succeed him. His two sons, the adult Sambhaji and the younger Rajaram, both had rival claims. Sambhaji prevailed and became Chhatrapati. He ruled from 1680 to 1689, continuing the fight against the Mughals and the Siddis.
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After Rajaram's death, Tarabai ruled from Kolhapur for her son Shivaji II. The Mughals released Shahu, Sambhaji's son, around 1707, hoping he would weaken the Marathas by fighting Tarabai. This started a civil war between two branches of the Bhonsle family, both claiming the title of Chhatrapati, the Maratha king.
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Baji Rao I became Peshwa in c.1720, aged twenty, succeeding his father Balaji Vishwanath. He is called "Thorale" or Elder Baji Rao. Historians describe him as the greatest exponent of guerrilla warfare after Shivaji.
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By the early 18th century, the Peshwa's expansion had scattered Maratha commanders across Malwa, Gujarat and central India. These commanders stayed loyal to the Peshwa. They also owed nominal loyalty to the Maratha king at Satara. But they governed their own charges and collected their own revenues. Over time this arrangement hardened into a confederacy of semi-autonomous houses. Each house ruled a distinct region, while still owing formal allegiance upward.
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By the 1750s, the Marathas had expanded deep into north India. They collected chauth and sardeshmukhi, taxes of one-fourth and one-tenth of revenue, even near Delhi. The Mughal emperor was now a mere figurehead. Maratha chiefs had become powerful at the Mughal court. This expansion alarmed other north Indian powers, especially the Rohilla Afghans and the Nawab of Awadh.
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After his 1674 coronation, Shivaji needed a working system to govern his growing kingdom. He called this kingdom Swarajya, meaning self-rule, or Mulk-e-Kadim. He did not invent his administration from scratch. He drew on Deccani sultanate models, especially those developed earlier by Malik Ambar of Ahmadnagar and Mahmud Gawan of the Bahmani kingdom. His system also showed some Mughal influence. Historians see this as evidence that the Marathas grew out of existing Deccan administrative culture, not against it.
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Shivaji had built a strong, functionally divided centre through the Ashtapradhan. But a kingdom spread across hill forts, coastal strips and inland plains could not be run from the capital alone. Shivaji extended the same idea to the provinces and villages. He appointed specialised officials instead of relying on hereditary local chiefs, who might prove disloyal.
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Village disputes went first to the panchayat, a council of local elders.
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By the later seventeenth century, Shivaji's kingdom held a compact core territory in the Western Deccan. The Mughal empire and the Deccan sultanates held much larger lands around it. The Maratha state needed more income than its own land revenue could give. It needed this mainly to pay for its armies. So it looked outward, to neighbouring territories, for extra funds.
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The Maratha homeland lay on the Deccan plateau, a region of black cotton soil and uncertain rainfall. Farming here had long depended on the village community rather than large irrigation works. This agrarian base, not conquest alone, had to feed and finance the Maratha state from Shivaji's time onward.
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Shivaji built his power on a highly mobile light cavalry and a chain of hill forts across the Sahyadri ranges. This suited the Deccan terrain better than the heavy, slow-moving Mughal armies.
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The Konkan coast was rich in trade. It was contested by the Siddis of Janjira, the Portuguese at Goa and Bassein, the English at Bombay, and the Dutch. Without a fleet, Shivaji's coastal forts and ports could be cut off from the sea. From around 1657, he began building a navy. Historians regard him as one of the first Indian rulers of his time to organise a standing naval force against European sea power.
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