Maratha Empire

Background and Origins

The Marathas emerged from the deshmukh and patil families of the Deccan plateau, a land of fortified hill ranges in the Sahyadri chain that had long produced soldiers and administrators for the Deccan sultanates of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur. Shahaji Bhonsle, father of Shivaji, served as a jagirdar and general under both the Nizamshahi of Ahmadnagar and later the Adil Shahi of Bijapur, building a base of local influence in Pune and Supa. Shivaji was born in 1630 at Shivneri Fort; his mother, Jijabai, is credited by tradition with instilling in him an early sense of Hindu identity and independence, while his guardian Dadoji Konddev managed the family's jagir and trained him in administration.

Shivaji and the Founding of Swarajya (c. 1645–1680)

Shivaji began assembling an independent territorial base in his teens, seizing the forts of Torna (1646) and Rajgad from Bijapur's weakening control. In 1659 the Bijapur general Afzal Khan was sent to subdue him; Shivaji killed Afzal Khan at a parley near Pratapgad, a killing central to Maratha legend and to his rise as a serious regional power. His raids on the Mughal port city of Surat in 1664 and again in 1670 brought him into direct confrontation with the Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb. Facing the Mughal commander Jai Singh I, Shivaji was forced to accept the Treaty of Purandar in 1665, surrendering most of his forts, but he continued to press Mughal territory. Summoned to Agra in 1666 and effectively placed under house arrest, he escaped in a celebrated episode involving fruit baskets smuggled out of the city.

In 1674 Shivaji was formally crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in a Vedic coronation ceremony conducted by the Varanasi Brahmin Gagabhatta, establishing Hindavi Swarajya, self-rule free of Bijapur and Mughal overlordship. His administration rested on an eight-member council of ministers, the Ashtapradhan, and on a revenue system that would later expand into the empire-wide claims of chauth (a quarter of revenue) and sardeshmukhi (an additional tenth) levied on neighbouring territory. He also built a coastal navy to counter the Siddis of Janjira, the Portuguese, and the English at Bombay, and maintained a network of several hundred hill forts as the backbone of his defense. Shivaji died in 1680 at Raigad.

Mughal Pressure and the Rise of the Peshwas (1680–1720)

Shivaji's son and successor, Sambhaji, was captured and executed by Aurangzeb in 1689 after the emperor moved his court to the Deccan to crush Maratha resistance in person, launching a campaign that lasted the last quarter-century of his reign without ever fully succeeding. Sambhaji's half-brother Rajaram and, after his death, Rajaram's widow Tarabai continued guerrilla resistance from Maratha forts, keeping Swarajya alive through Aurangzeb's death in 1707. Shivaji's grandson Shahu, held hostage by the Mughals since childhood, was released that year and, after a succession contest with Tarabai, secured the throne with the help of his chief minister, Balaji Vishwanath, whom he appointed Peshwa (prime minister) in 1713.

Balaji Vishwanath negotiated a landmark agreement in 1719 with the Sayyid brothers, then the power behind the Mughal throne, formally recognising the Maratha right to collect chauth and sardeshmukhi across the six Mughal provinces of the Deccan. This agreement transformed the Marathas from Deccan rebels into a recognised imperial power and set the Peshwa's office, rather than the Chhatrapati's, at the centre of Maratha politics for the rest of the century.

Peshwa Expansion into North and Central India (1720–1761)

Balaji Vishwanath's son, Baji Rao I, is generally reckoned the most brilliant Maratha commander after Shivaji. Between 1720 and 1740 his fast-moving cavalry campaigns carried Maratha power into Malwa, Gujarat, and Bundelkhand, defeating the Nizam of Hyderabad at the Battle of Palkhed (1728) and raiding as far as Delhi in 1737. His successor, Balaji Baji Rao (Nanasaheb), presided over the empire's territorial zenith in the 1750s, when Maratha influence extended from Attock in the Punjab to Bengal and deep into the Karnataka region.

The Third Battle of Panipat (1761)

Maratha expansion into the Punjab in the late 1750s brought them into conflict with the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali and his ally, the Rohilla chief Najib-ud-Daula. A Maratha army under Sadashivrao Bhau, accompanied by the Peshwa's young heir Vishwasrao, marched north but failed to secure the alliances it needed: the Rajput states stayed neutral, the Jats withdrew support, and the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daula, sided with Abdali. The armies met at Panipat on 14 January 1761 in one of the largest pitched battles fought on Indian soil; chronicles describe forces in the range of tens of thousands on each side, though precise figures vary. The Marathas were decisively defeated, with Vishwasrao and Sadashivrao Bhau both killed and enormous loss of life among soldiers and camp followers. News of the disaster is said to have hastened the death of Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao later that year. The defeat ended Maratha ambitions in the northwest for a generation, though the confederacy would recover much of its authority within a decade under Madhavrao I.

The Maratha Confederacy

After Panipat, Maratha power increasingly rested with regional chieftains who owed nominal allegiance to the Peshwa at Pune but governed as near-sovereigns: the Gaekwads at Baroda, the Holkars at Indore, the Scindias at Gwalior, and the Bhonsles of Nagpur (a separate line from the Chhatrapati's family). Mahadji Scindia in particular built a modernised, French-trained army under commanders such as Benoît de Boigne and dominated Delhi politics from the 1770s, at one point restoring the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II to his throne under Maratha protection. Central authority weakened further after Peshwa Madhavrao I's death in 1772, when the murder of his successor Narayanrao in a palace intrigue involving his uncle Raghunathrao fractured the Pune court and drew the British East India Company into Maratha politics for the first time.

The Anglo-Maratha Wars and the End of the Empire (1775–1818)

The First Anglo-Maratha War (1775–1782), fought after the Company backed Raghunathrao's claim to the Peshwaship, ended inconclusively with the Treaty of Salbai, which restored the pre-war status quo. The Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805) proved far more damaging: British forces under Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) defeated Scindia and Bhonsle forces at Assaye and Argaon, while a separate campaign under Lord Lake broke Scindia's power in the north. Peshwa Baji Rao II, driven from Pune by the Holkar chief Yashwantrao Holkar in 1802, had already signed the Treaty of Bassein that year, accepting a British subsidiary alliance that placed a Company garrison at Pune and effectively ended independent Peshwa foreign policy.

The Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818) brought the final collapse. Coordinated British campaigns defeated the Peshwa's forces near Pune (including the notable action at Koregaon), crushed Holkar at Mahidpur, and overcame the Bhonsles at Sitabuldi near Nagpur. Baji Rao II surrendered in June 1818, was granted a British pension, and was exiled to Bithoor near Kanpur, where he died in 1851; the office of Peshwa was abolished and its territories annexed to the Bombay Presidency. The Gaekwad, Holkar, and Scindia states survived as princely states under British paramountcy well into the 20th century.

Historiography

Much of the surviving detail on Shivaji's career comes from Marathi court chronicles known as bakhars, including the Sabhasad Bakhar, and from Shivaji's own administrative correspondence. The single most influential connected narrative of the empire, however, was compiled by a British colonial official: James Grant Duff, who served as Resident at Satara in the 1810s, drew on Persian and Marathi court records to write his three-volume History of the Mahrattas (1826), which shaped how the empire was understood by English-language historians for the following century.