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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

The late seventeenth century Mughal India is considered to be a period of Jagirdari crisis. Discuss.

  • UPSC 2021
  • Mughal Empire in the Seventeenth Century

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The jagirdari system, formalised under Akbar, assigned land revenue in lieu of cash salary to office-holders (jagirdars) without conferring hereditary right or disturbing existing local claims; by the closing decades of Aurangzeb's reign, this system had entered a well-documented crisis that historians treat as central to Mughal decline.

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What the full answer covers

  • The Mechanics of the Crisis: Be-jagiri and the Growth of the Nobility
  • The Deccan Wars as Accelerant
  • Re-examining the "Crisis": Rival Historiographical Positions
  • The Collapse of the Tripolar Relationship
  • Consequences of the Jagirdari Crisis
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