Anglo-Maratha Wars

Background

The Maratha Confederacy, a loose alliance of major chiefs — the Peshwa at Pune, the Scindias of Gwalior, the Holkars of Indore, the Gaekwads of Baroda, and the Bhonsles of Nagpur — under the nominal authority of the Peshwa as head of the Maratha state founded by Shivaji in the seventeenth century, was the dominant Indian power in much of the subcontinent through the eighteenth century, having expanded across central and northern India after the decline of Mughal authority. Its internal rivalries and periodic wars with the East India Company over three campaigns between 1775 and 1818 progressively reduced its territory and independence.

First Anglo-Maratha War (1775-1782)

The first war arose from a disputed succession to the office of Peshwa and Company intervention in support of a claimant, Raghunath Rao, against the regency government led by Nana Fadnavis at Pune on behalf of the infant Peshwa Madhavrao II. An expedition sent by the Bombay government to install Raghunath Rao was surrounded and forced to capitulate at the Convention of Wadgaon in 1779, one of the more serious military humiliations suffered by Company forces in the eighteenth century; the Bombay government's officers repudiated the terms, and fighting continued elsewhere, including a Bengal-based column under Warren Hastings's direction that marched across central India and captured the fort of Gwalior. The war ended inconclusively with the Treaty of Salbai in 1782, negotiated in large part through the diplomacy of the Scindia chief Mahadji Scindia, which restored much of the pre-war territorial position, required the Company to abandon Raghunath Rao's cause, and secured roughly two decades of peace between the Company and the Marathas.

Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-1805)

The second war grew out of renewed factional conflict among the Maratha chiefs, particularly between the Peshwa Baji Rao II and Yashwantrao Holkar, whose forces defeated the Peshwa's army near Pune in 1802 and drove him to seek Company protection under the Treaty of Bassein (1802) — an act other Maratha chiefs regarded as a betrayal of Maratha independence. Governor-General Richard Wellesley used the treaty as grounds to install the Peshwa under Company protection and to move against the Scindia and Bhonsle forces that opposed the arrangement. Company armies under Arthur Wellesley in the Deccan and Gerard Lake in the north won a series of victories in 1803, including at Assaye, Argaon, and Gawilghur in the south and at Delhi and Laswari in the north; Lake's capture of Delhi brought the aged Mughal emperor Shah Alam II, until then under Scindia's protection, under British protection instead. The Scindia and Bhonsle chiefs were forced to cede substantial territory and accept subsidiary alliances, while Holkar fought on into 1804 before a settlement was reached in 1805.

Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818)

The third and final war followed continued friction under the subsidiary alliance system and Company operations against the Pindaris, irregular raiding bands loosely tied to Maratha chiefs, which the Marathas viewed as encroaching on their sovereignty and which the Company, under Governor-General the Marquess of Hastings, used as a pretext to press further into Maratha territory. Peshwa Baji Rao II, resentful of the constraints imposed since 1802, led a coordinated uprising joined by the Bhonsle forces at Nagpur and the Holkar army in 1817, but Company forces defeated the Maratha armies in a series of engagements, including at Khadki (Kirkee) and Koregaon near Pune, Sitabuldi near Nagpur, and Mahidpur against Holkar's forces, all fought within a few months of each other in late 1817 and early 1818. Baji Rao II surrendered in June 1818 and was pensioned off to Bithoor near Kanpur, and the Company abolished the office of Peshwa, annexing his territories into the newly organized Bombay Presidency under the administration of Mountstuart Elphinstone; the Scindia and Holkar states survived as reduced princely states under Company suzerainty.

Consequences

The third war's outcome eliminated the last major independent Indian power capable of contesting British control on a subcontinental scale, and it is generally treated by historians as the decisive step establishing British paramountcy — the position of the East India Company, and later the Crown, as the dominant authority over the remaining Indian princely states, which continued to exist under subsidiary alliances but without independent foreign or, in most cases, significant military policy.