British Expansion in India: The Marathas

British Expansion in India: The Marathas

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Rise of the Marathas

• As the Mughal Empire declined, one of its staunchest and hardiest adversaries — the Marathas — got a chance to rise in power.
  • They controlled a large portion of the country, and also received tributes from areas not directly under their control.
  • By the middle of the 18th century, they were in Lahore, contemplating rulership of a north Indian empire, while at the Mughal court they played the role of kingmakers.
• The Maratha state had the potential to develop into a new pan-Indian empire replacing the Mughals, but this potential was never fully realised because of the very nature of the Maratha polity.
• After Shivaji’s death in 1680, the kingdom was troubled by dynastic factionalism and the constant pressure of Mughal conquest policy in the Deccan.
  • Local deshmukhs (revenue officers) and zamindars took advantage of the situation by aligning sometimes with the Mughals, sometimes with the Marathas.
  • Two of Shivaji’s sons — first Shambhaji, then Rajaram — ruled briefly, battling incessantly with the Mughal army.
    • When Rajaram died in 1699, one of his queens, Tarabai, began ruling in the name of her infant son, Shivaji II.
• Aurangzeb died in 1707, after forty years of largely futile warfare in the Deccan; the Marathas remained unsubjugated. The Maratha kingdom was, however, certainly weakened, a process exacerbated further by the release of Shahu, Shivaji’s grandson, from Mughal prison the same year.
  • With two rival contenders for the throne, Maharashtra plunged into a full-scale civil war over the next eight years, between the forces of Shahu and those of Tarabai, who sought to rule in the name of Shivaji II.

Balaji Vishwanath

• With anarchy becoming all-pervasive by 1712–13, Shahu ultimately emerged victorious in this contest — aided by a group of new independent sardars, a number of Brahman banking families, and an able Chitpavan Brahman peshwa (prime minister), Balaji Vishwanath — consolidating his position firmly by 1718–19.
  • In 1719, by helping the Sayyid brothers install a puppet emperor at Delhi, Balaji Vishwanath secured for Shahu a Mughal sanad (imperial order) recognising his right to chauth and sardeshmukhi in the six Mughal provinces of the Deccan, chauth of Malwa and Gujarat, and an independent status in Maharashtra.
  • The contest with the Tarabai faction was settled later through the Treaty of Warna (1731), which granted the state of Kolhapur to Shivaji II.
• Control of the state gradually passed to the Peshwas. Since Balaji Vishwanath’s time, the office of the peshwa rapidly grew powerful, becoming the fountainhead of authority and the source of all patronage in the Maratha kingdom.
  • He died in 1720 and was succeeded by his son, Baji Rao.

Bajirao I (1720–40)

• Considered the greatest of all the Peshwas, Bajirao I was in power till 1740.

His Contributions

• By the end of his tenure, the Maratha state had acquired control over large territories of the Mughal empire; their only major adversary was the Nizam of Hyderabad, both vying for control over Karnataka, Khandesh, and Gujarat.
  • After the Maratha victory at Palkhed (March 1728), the Nizam was forced to recognise Shahu as the sole Maratha monarch, with rights to chauth and sardeshmukhi of the Deccan.
• He led military campaigns to acquire the fertile lands of Malwa, reaching Rajasthan by 1729.
  • Meanwhile in Gujarat, Maratha bands collected taxes in the countryside while the Mughals controlled only the cities, and the once-lucrative trade at the port of Surat declined rapidly under this political pressure.
  • A later treaty with the governor of Gujarat, in effect, ceded 60 per cent of Gujarat’s revenues to Shahu and the Peshwa.
• He moved towards the coastal plain of Konkan, gaining control over the territories of the Sidis (Abyssinian Muslims) and driving the Portuguese out of Salsette, Bassein, and Chaul.
• In 1737, he attacked Delhi, holding the emperor captive for some time.
  • The following year, he defeated a huge Mughal army under the generalship of the Nizam; the Treaty of Bhopal (January 1739) that followed ceded to the Peshwa the subah of Malwa and sovereignty over all lands between the Narmada and Chambal rivers.
  • In these territories, the Marathas did not try to overturn the local power structure, and quickly entered into negotiations with local zamindars for the payment of yearly tributes — a civilian system of revenue administration took time to emerge, a feature typical of all Maratha conquests.

The Maratha Confederacy

• Bajirao I had started a confederacy of prominent Maratha chiefs to manage the rapidly expanding Maratha power, and, to some extent, to appease the kshatriya section of the Marathas — since the Peshwas were Brahmins — led by the senapati Dabodi.
  • Under this arrangement, each prominent family under a chief was assigned a sphere of influence to conquer and rule, but nominally in the name of the reigning Maratha king, Shahu.
  • The prominent Maratha families that emerged were:
    • the Gaekwad of Baroda;
    • the Bhonsle of Nagpur;
    • the Holkars of Indore;
    • the Sindhias of Gwalior; and
    • the Peshwa of Poona.
  • The confederacy worked cordially from Bajirao I to Madhavrao I, but the Third Battle of Panipat (1761) changed everything.
    • The defeat at Panipat, and later the death of the young Peshwa Madhavrao I in 1772, weakened the Peshwas’ control over the confederacy.
    • Though the chiefs of the confederacy united on occasion — as against the British (1775–82) — more often they quarrelled among themselves.

Balaji Bajirao (Nana Saheb)

• After Baji Rao’s death in 1740, Shahu appointed his son Balaji Bajirao, better known as Nana Saheb (1740–61), as Peshwa. More experienced in administration than in military campaigns, he was nonetheless the most successful among the Peshwas.
• Nana Saheb became the supreme authority in the Maratha polity after Shahu’s death in 1749 — marking the peak period of Maratha glory, when all parts of India had to face Maratha depredations.
• In the east, from 1745 onwards, Maratha bands under Raghuji Bhonsle of Nagpur regularly raided Orissa, Bengal, and Bihar; a treaty in 1751 stopped these raids, with Alivardi Khan surrendering Orissa and agreeing to pay Rs 1,20,000 as annual chauth for the three provinces.
• Near home, Maratha forces regularly raided the Nizam’s territories in Konkan, exacting tributes but never succeeding in fully subduing them.
• In the north, by the Treaty of Bhalke (1751), Salabat Jung, the new Nizam, practically ceded the entire control of Khandesh. Further north, Maratha bands regularly raided the Rajput kingdoms of Jaipur, Bundi, Kotah, and Udaipur, as well as the Gond kingdom of Deogarh — intervening in their succession disputes and exacting annual tributes without attempting any permanent conquest in the region.
• In the face of an Afghan invasion overrunning Lahore and Multan, a treaty in 1752 brought the Mughal emperor under Maratha protection, and a succession dispute in 1753 gave the Marathas the opportunity to install their own chosen candidate on the Mughal throne.
  • The Maratha expedition to Punjab, however, was short-lived, and a Sikh rebellion soon ended Maratha authority in the region.
• The Third Battle of Panipat occurred during his peshwaship; his general and nephew, Sadasiv Rao Bhau, lost the battle.
• By this point, the Marathas had gained mastery over large parts of north India, but there was never any real attempt to establish an empire.
  • It was only in Khandesh, Malwa, and Gujarat that they tried to put in place any form of administration; elsewhere, their conquests seldom went beyond plunder and the levying of chauth and sardeshmukhi — making this mastery difficult to sustain.
• Soon, an Afghan invasion under Ahmad Shah Abdali dealt a deadly blow to Maratha glory.
  • Abdali was supported by other indigenous forces, such as the Rohillas and Shuja-ud-daula of Awadh.
  • In the crucial Third Battle of Panipat, fought on 14 January 1761, Maratha forces under Sadasiv Rao Bhau were routed by Abdali, suffering about fifty thousand casualties — marking the beginning of the decline of Maratha power.
• The Peshwa died within weeks, and as the young Peshwa Madhav Rao tried to gain control of the polity, factionalism among the Maratha sardars reared its head.
  • This factional fighting intensified further after Madhav Rao’s death in 1772. His uncle, Raghunath Rao, seized power but faced opposition from several important Maratha chiefs; to consolidate his position, he sought a new ally in the English.

Maratha State as an Alternative to the Mughal Empire

• The Maratha state could not become an alternative to the Mughal empire, owing to its own structural nature.
  • It was, in essence, a confederacy, with power shared among chiefs or sardars — the Bhonsles of Nagpur, Gaekwad of Baroda, Holkar of Indore, and Sindhia of Gwalior — all of whom had made their fortunes as military leaders since Shahu’s days.
    • Parts of the Maratha state had been alienated to these military commanders, making the chiefs difficult to control, since they resented the Peshwa regulating their activities.
  • This resulted in growing factional rivalry among the Maratha sardars, and although there was always a strong centre, the composition of its inner circle of power changed from generation to generation.
  • At the lower level, there existed heritable vatan rights — such as those of village headmen, mirasidars, and deshmukhs — that could not be taken away even by kings.
    • The regional assemblies of vatandars exercised political power and resolved disputes locally, representing local loyalties as opposed to any centralised concept of kingship.
  • To establish control over its territory, the Maratha state tried to replace the horizontal ethos of “brotherhood” among the vatandars with a vertical relationship of service, by generously distributing temporary and transferable land rights (saranjam), resembling the Mughal jagir — but the old system could not be fully displaced.
    • The same locally powerful Brahman or Maratha individuals thus came to enjoy a “bundle” of different kinds of rights, and local loyalties continued to coexist with centralised kingship.

The Relationship Between the Maratha State and the Mughal System

• Some historians emphasise the rebel nature of the Maratha state.
  • Irfan Habib (1963) views it as the outcome of a zamindar revolt against an oppressive Mughal bureaucracy.
  • Satish Chandra (1993) has argued for its essentially regional nature; although Baji Rao moved towards north India, his major aim remained the establishment of supremacy in the Deccan.
  • In this sense, the Maratha state is often seen as a departure from Mughal tradition.
• Other historians, such as Andre Wink, argue that the Marathas remained very much within the Mughal tradition, since their power was built on the notion of sedition or fitva (the Deccani corruption of “fitna”), for which the Mughal state had always provided space.
  • Even in the 1770s, the Marathas acknowledged the symbolic authority of the Mughal emperor, and in Malwa, Khandesh, and parts of Gujarat, where they set up some form of administration, it closely resembled the Mughal system.
    • The old terminology was retained, and even the differential urban tax rates continued to favour Muslims.
  • The main difference was that Maratha territories had many civilian revenue collectors — mainly Brahmans — who did not move on to military command, unlike the Mughal system’s unified civilian/military bureaucracy.
  • Mughal tradition thus remained central to the social and political life of the Maratha state system, even as it continually contended with local loyalties.
• Ultimately, the Maratha state declined not so much due to internal factionalism, but because of the increasing power of the English in the Deccan — an efficient army the Marathas found difficult to resist.

The Three Anglo-Maratha Wars

• Between the last quarter of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century, the Marathas and the English clashed thrice for political supremacy, with the English ultimately emerging victorious.
• Causes of these conflicts included:
  • the inordinate ambition of the English;
  • the sudden growth of the Company’s cotton trade with China via Bombay from Gujarat, which made them concerned about the security of the Deccan, then under Maratha confederacy control;
  • the divided house of the Marathas, which encouraged English hopes of success; and
  • the English in Bombay’s desire to establish a government along the lines of Clive’s arrangement in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa — making the dissensions over Maratha succession a long-awaited opportunity.

First Anglo-Maratha War (1775–82)

Background

• After Madhavrao’s death in 1772, his brother Narayanrao succeeded him as the fifth Peshwa. However, Narayanrao’s uncle, Raghunathrao, had his nephew assassinated and declared himself the next Peshwa, despite not being the legal heir.
  • Narayanrao’s widow, Gangabai, gave birth to a son after her husband’s death — the infant, named “Sawai” (One-and-a-Quarter) Madhavrao, was the legal successor. Twelve Maratha chiefs (Barabhai), led by Nana Phadnavis, sought to name the infant Peshwa and rule as regents on his behalf.
  • This succession dispute gave the English their first opportunity for intervention — Raghunath Rao, facing combined opposition from the Maratha sardars after his conspiracy against Narayan Rao, began to look at the British in Bombay as a possible new ally.

Treaties of Surat and Purandhar

• Raghunathrao, unwilling to relinquish power, sought help from the English at Bombay, signing the Treaty of Surat (1775).
  • Under this treaty, he ceded the territories of Salsette and Bassein to the English, along with a portion of the revenues from the Surat and Bharuch districts; in return, the English were to supply him with 2,500 soldiers.
• The British Calcutta Council, however, condemned the Treaty of Surat and sent Colonel Upton to Pune to annul it and negotiate a new agreement — the Treaty of Purandhar (1776) — with the regency, renouncing Raghunath while promising him a pension, in return for several concessions to the Company.
  • The Bombay government rejected this and instead gave refuge to Raghunath; the Treaty of Purandhar remained inconclusive and was never ratified by the Bengal authorities.
• In 1777, Nana Phadnavis violated his treaty with the Calcutta Council by granting the French a port on the west coast, prompting the English to retaliate by sending a force towards Pune.
  • By now, Maratha forces had regrouped under Nana Fadnis, Sindhia, and Holkar, inflicting a crushing defeat on the British at Wadgaon (1779).
    • During this war, the Marathas also employed a scorched-earth policy, burning farmland and poisoning wells.
  • The resulting Treaty of Wadgaon forced the Bombay government to relinquish all territories acquired since 1775.
• This period also saw the rise of Nana Fadnis to the political centre stage of the Maratha polity.
  • By 1781, he and the Bhonsle family had formed a grand alliance with the Nizam and Haidar Ali against the British.

The Treaty of Salbai (1782)

• Warren Hastings, Governor-General in Bengal, rejected the Treaty of Wadgaon and despatched a large force under Colonel Goddard, who captured Ahmedabad in February 1779 and Bassein in December 1780.
  • Another Bengal detachment, led by Captain Popham, captured Gwalior in August 1780; in February 1781, the English under General Camac finally defeated Sindhia at Sipri.
  • Sindhia then proposed a new treaty between the Peshwa and the English, bringing the inconclusive First Anglo-Maratha War to an end in 1782 through the Treaty of Salbai, ratified by Hastings and Phadnavis.
• The treaty guaranteed peace between the two sides for twenty years. Its main provisions were:
  • Salsette would continue in English possession;
  • the whole of the territory conquered since the Treaty of Purandhar (1776), including Bassein, would be restored to the Marathas;
  • the English would offer no further support to Raghunathrao, and the Peshwa would grant him a maintenance allowance;
  • Haidar Ali would return all territory taken from the English and the Nawab of Arcot;
  • the English would enjoy their previous trading privileges;
  • the Peshwa would not support any other European nation;
  • the Peshwa and the English would ensure their respective allies remained at peace with one another; and
  • Mahadji Sindhia would serve as the mutual guarantor for proper observance of the treaty’s terms.
• This committed the Marathas once again to friendship with the Company, and also set the stage for a future confrontation with Mysore.

Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805)

Background

• The Second Anglo-Maratha War began in circumstances similar to the first — the Maratha state, by now in a deplorable condition owing to bitter internal rivalry among the sardars, saw Nana Fadnis render the Peshwa virtually powerless.
  • In 1795, the frustrated Peshwa Madhavrao Narayan committed suicide, and the succession dispute that followed threw the entire Maratha polity into confusion.
  • Bajirao II, the worthless son of Raghunathrao, became the new Peshwa, while Nana Phadnavis — a bitter foe of Bajirao II — became chief minister.
• These dissensions gave the English an opportunity to intervene in Maratha affairs, an opportunity further strengthened by Nana Phadnavis’s death in 1800.
  • With the arrival of Wellesley, British attitudes towards the Indian states shifted markedly: Hyderabad had already accepted a Subsidiary Alliance, and Mysore had been crushed in 1799 — bringing the Company face to face with the Marathas, the only remaining significant indigenous power in the subcontinent.

Course of the War

• On 1 April 1801, the Peshwa brutally murdered Vithuji, brother of Jaswantrao Holkar. A furious Jaswant arrayed his forces against the combined armies of Sindhia and Bajirao II.
  • On 25 October 1802, Jaswant decisively defeated the armies of the Peshwa and Sindhia at Hadaspar near Poona, placing Vinayakrao, son of Amritrao, on the Peshwa’s seat.
• A terrified Bajirao II fled to Bassein, where, on 31 December 1802, he signed a treaty with the English.

Treaty of Bassein (1802)

• This was a treaty of Subsidiary Alliance. Under its terms, the Peshwa agreed:
  • to receive from the Company a native infantry of not less than 6,000 troops, with field artillery and European artillerymen attached, permanently stationed in his territories;
  • to cede territories yielding an income of Rs 26 lakh to the Company;
  • to surrender the city of Surat;
  • to give up all claims to chauth on the Nizam’s dominions;
  • to accept the Company’s arbitration in all differences between him and the Nizam or the Gaekwad;
  • not to employ Europeans of any nation at war with the English; and
  • to subject his relations with other states to English control.
• Baji Rao was thereafter escorted to Poona and installed in office, though this did not mean an immediate end to independent Maratha power.
  • This, in fact, marked the beginning of the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–5), as Holkar soon put up a rival candidate for the peshwaship and sought allies; for the next two years, battles continued across Maratha territories.

Reduced to Vassalage

• After the Peshwa accepted the Subsidiary Alliance, Sindhia and Bhonsle attempted to save Maratha independence, but the well-prepared and organised English army under Arthur Wellesley defeated their combined armies, forcing both to conclude separate subsidiary treaties.
  • In 1804, Yashwantrao Holkar attempted to form a coalition of Indian rulers against the English, but the attempt proved unsuccessful.
• The Marathas were defeated, reduced to British vassalage, and isolated from one another:
  • Defeat of Bhonsle (17 December 1803, Treaty of Devgaon);
  • Defeat of Sindhia (30 December 1803, Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon) — this treaty secured for the British all Sindhia’s territories north of the Yamuna, including Delhi and Agra, his possessions in Gujarat, and his claims over other Maratha houses; and
  • Defeat of Holkar (1806, Treaty of Rajpurghat).
• Ultimately, treaties of subordination were imposed on a number of Maratha tributaries — the Rajput states, the Jats, the Rohillas, and the Bundelas in northern Malwa — while other Europeans were barred from serving in any Maratha army, and the British became arbiters in disputes between Maratha houses.
• Even this, however, did not mean the final demise of Maratha power. The wars entailed huge expenses for the Company, and the Court of Directors, already dissatisfied with Lord Wellesley’s forward policy, recalled him in 1805.
  • Lord Cornwallis was reappointed Governor-General with specific instructions to follow a policy of non-intervention, allowing Maratha sardars like Holkar and Sindhia to regain some of their power — while their irregular soldiers, the Pindaris, plundered the countryside of Malwa and Rajasthan.

Significance of the Treaty of Bassein

• Though signed by a Peshwa who lacked real political authority, the gains made by the English were immense.
  • The provision of permanently stationed English troops in Maratha territory was of great strategic benefit — the Company already had troops in Mysore, Hyderabad, and Lucknow, and the addition of Poona meant these forces were now more evenly spread and could be rushed anywhere without delay.
• While the Treaty of Bassein did not hand India over to the Company on a platter, it was a major step in that direction, positioning the Company well to expand its influence — the observation that the treaty “gave the English the key to India” may be exaggerated, but remains understandable.

Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–19)

Background

• The situation continued largely unchanged until the arrival of Lord Hastings as Governor-General in 1813.
  • Harbouring imperialistic designs of imposing British paramountcy, Hastings acted against the backdrop of the Charter Act of 1813, which ended the East India Company’s monopoly of trade with China (except tea), pushing the Company to seek new markets.
  • Hastings initiated the new policy of “paramountcy”, privileging Company interests as a paramount power over those of other Indian powers, and legitimising the annexation or threatened annexation of any Indian state to protect those interests.
• The Pindaris — irregular mercenaries drawn from many castes and classes, attached to Maratha armies — found themselves without regular employment as the Marathas grew weaker, and turned to plundering neighbouring territories, including those of the Company.
  • The English charged the Marathas with sheltering the Pindaris. Pindari leaders Amir Khan and Karim Khan surrendered, while Chitu Khan fled into the jungles.
• The Treaty of Bassein, described as “a treaty with a cipher (the Peshwa),” deeply wounded the feelings of other Maratha leaders, who saw it as an absolute surrender of independence.
  • Lord Hastings’s actions against the Pindaris were seen as a transgression of Maratha sovereignty, once again uniting the Maratha confederacy.
• A repentant Bajirao II made a last bid in 1817, rallying the Maratha chiefs against the English in the course of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which began with the Peshwa’s attack on the British Residency at Poona.

Result

• In June 1818, the Peshwa finally surrendered, and the Maratha confederacy was dissolved — the peshwaship was abolished, and the British took complete control of the Peshwa’s dominion.
  • Peshwa Bajirao became a British retainer at Bithur, near Kanpur.
• Both the Maratha army and the Pindaris were thoroughly crushed. Several important treaties were signed:
  • the Treaty of Poona, with the Peshwa;
  • the Treaty of Gwalior, with Sindhia; and
  • the Treaty of Mandasor, with Holkar.
• Pratap Singh, a lineal descendant of Shivaji, was made ruler of a small principality, Satara, carved out of the Peshwa’s former dominions.
• The English East India Company now enjoyed complete mastery over all the territories south of the Vindhyas.

Why the Marathas Lost

Inept Leadership

• The Maratha state was despotic in character, with the personality of its head having enormous bearing on state affairs — but the later Maratha leaders, Bajirao II, Daulatrao Sindhia, and Jaswantrao Holkar, were worthless and self-serving, no match for English officials such as Elphinstone, John Malcolm, and Arthur Wellesley (who later led the English against Napoleon).

Defective Nature of the Maratha State

• The cohesion of the Maratha state’s people was not organic, but artificial and accidental, and hence precarious.
  • There was no sustained effort, right from Shivaji’s days, towards organised communal improvement, the spread of education, or the unification of the people — the rise of the Maratha state had rested largely on a religio-national movement.
  • This defect became glaring once the Marathas had to contend with a European power organised on the best pattern of the West.

Loose Political Set-up

• The Maratha empire was a loose confederation under the leadership of the Chhatrapati, and later the Peshwa.
  • Powerful chiefs — the Gaikwad, Holkar, Sindhia, and Bhonsle — carved out semi-independent kingdoms for themselves, paying only lip service to Peshwa authority.
  • Irreconcilable hostility persisted between different units of the confederacy, with chiefs frequently taking sides against one another — this lack of cooperative spirit proved deeply detrimental to the Maratha state.

Inferior Military System

• Though full of personal prowess and valour, the Marathas were inferior to the English in the organisation of forces, war weaponry, disciplined action, and effective leadership.
  • The centrifugal tendencies of divided command accounted for much of the Maratha failures, with treachery in the ranks further weakening their forces.
  • The Marathas’ adoption of modern warfare techniques remained inadequate — they neglected the paramount importance of artillery, and though the Poona government did set up an artillery department, it hardly functioned effectively.

Unstable Economic Policy

• Maratha leadership failed to evolve a stable economic policy suited to changing times, with no industries or foreign trade openings — leaving the Maratha economy poorly suited to sustaining a stable political set-up.

Superior English Diplomacy and Espionage

• The English possessed superior diplomatic skill in winning allies and isolating enemies; the disunity among Maratha chiefs simplified this task considerably, allowing the English to launch quick offensives against their targets.
  • Unlike the Marathas’ relative ignorance about their enemy, the English maintained a well-knit spy system, gathering detailed knowledge of the potentialities, strengths, weaknesses, and military methods of their foes.

Progressive English Outlook

• The English had been rejuvenated by the forces of the Renaissance, emancipated from the shackles of the Church, and were devoting their energies to scientific inventions, extensive ocean voyages, and the acquisition of colonies — while Indians remained steeped in medievalism, marked by old dogmas and notions.
  • Maratha leaders paid little attention to mundane matters of state administration, and their insistence on maintaining a traditional social hierarchy dominated by the priestly class made the unification of an empire difficult.
• In the end, it can be concluded that the English attacked a “divided house,” which began crumbling after only a few decisive pushes.