The Marathas 1600 1818

In this book, Dr Stewart Gordon presents a comprehensive history of one of the most colourful and least-understood kingdoms of India: the Maratha Empire. The empire was founded by Shivaji in the mid-seventeenth century, spread across most of India during the following century, and was conquered by the British in the nineteenth century. Using administrative documents of the Maratha polity, family papers and Histories of the Empire, Stewart Gordon explores the origin of the Marathas, their emergence as elite families, patterns of loyalty and strategies for maintaining legitimacy. He traces how the armies developed into European-style infantry and artillery and assesses the economics that funded the polity, especially taxation and credit. Finally the author considers the lasting effects the empire had on administrations, law and trade patterns of Central India, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

This is a most comprehensive history of the Maratha polity, an important regional kingdom in the seventeenth century and the largest political entity of eighteenth-century India. It explores strategies of maintaining loyalty among elite families and military, economic and administrative change.

List of maps; General editor's preface; Acknowledgements; Glossary; Introduction: historiography and bibliography; 1. The geopolitics of Maharashtra; 2. Marathas and the Deccan sultanates; 3. Shivaji (1630¿80) and the Maratha polity; 4. Family responses to invasion (1680¿1719); 5 Baji Rao I's northern expansion (1720¿1740); 6. Conquest to administration (1740¿1760); 7. Centripetal forces (1760¿1803); Epilogue (1803¿1818); Conclusions; Index.