A Highlight · History
The Maratha Empire
Shivaji’s hill forts to a confederacy that broke Mughal power across the Deccan and north India.
Overview
- Maratha EmpireThe Maratha Empire was a Hindu warrior state that rose in the Deccan under Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the mid-17th century and, as a loose confederacy of allied houses, became the dominant power across most of the Indian subcontinent before its final defeat by the British in 1818.
- ShivajiShivaji Bhonsle (1630–1680) was the founder of the Maratha Empire, crowned Chhatrapati in 1674 after building an independent state in the Deccan through decades of warfare against the Bijapur Sultanate and the Mughal Empire.
- The PeshwasThe Peshwas were the hereditary chief ministers who ruled the Maratha empire from Pune for a century, expanding it across northern India and losing it to the British in 1818.
Against the Mughals
- Aurangzeb and the MarathasThe Mughal-Maratha wars were a 27-year series of campaigns (1681–1707) fought by Emperor Aurangzeb in the Deccan against the Maratha kingdom founded by Shivaji, ending in Mughal exhaustion and the later rise of Maratha power across much of India.
- Mughal-Maratha warsThe Mughal-Maratha wars were a prolonged series of conflicts between the Mughal Empire and the Maratha state founded by Chhatrapati Shivaji, fought mainly between 1657 and 1707 and continuing in altered form until Maratha power was broken by the British in 1818.
More collections
- The Indian Independence MovementFrom the 1857 revolt to Partition — every satyagraha, revolutionary and Congress leader, in one place.
- European Colonial Rule in IndiaFrom Vasco da Gama's landfall to the last Viceroy — the Company's conquest and every Governor-General who ruled after it.
- The Maurya EmpireFrom Chandragupta to Ashoka — the first pan-Indian empire, and the emperor who renounced conquest after seeing what it cost.
- The Gupta Golden AgeClassical India at its height — the age of Aryabhata, Kalidasa, and a revival of Sanskrit literature and science.
- The Chola EmpireSouth India's great maritime power — temple-building, a navy that reached Southeast Asia, and the longest-lived dynasty in Indian history.
- The Vijayanagara EmpireThe last great Hindu empire of the south, built in the fourteenth century as a bulwark against the Sultanates — and sacked in 1565.
- The Islamic Conquest of North IndiaGhaznavid raids to the Delhi Sultanate, 1000–1526 — the temples destroyed, Nalanda burned, Delhi sacked twice, told without euphemism and without inventing what the sources don’t say.
- The Mughal EmpireFrom Babur to Aurangzeb — the empire that built the Taj Mahal, ran the Mansabdari system, and reached its widest extent just before it began to break apart.
- The Bhakti MovementDevotion over ritual and caste — the poet-saints who reshaped Hindu religious life from the seventh century onward.