Maratha Power

There is no doubt that the single most important power that emerged in the long twilight of the Mughal dynasty was the Marathas. The most important Maratha warrior clan was of the Bhonsles, Sivaji Bhonsle, emerged as the most powerful figure in the southern politics.

The good fortune of Sivaji did not fall to his sons and successors, Sambhaji, and his younger brother, Rajaran. For a time it appeared that Maratha power was on the decline. But a recovery was effected in the early eighteenth century, in somewhat changed circumstances.

A particularly important phase in this respect is the reign of Sahu, who succeeded Rajaram in 1708. Sahu’s reign, lasted for four decades upto 1749. It was marked by the ascendancy of a lineage of Chitpavan Brahman ministers, who virtually came to control central authority in the Maratha state. The Bhonsles were reduced to figureheads. Holding the title of peshwa (chief minister), the first truly prominent figure of this line is Balaji Visvanath, who had helped Sahu in his rise to power.

Visvanath and his successor, Baji Rao I (peshwa between 1720 and 1740), managed to bureaucratise the Maratha state to a far greater extent than had been the case under the early Bhonsles. They systematized the practice of tribute gathering from Mughal territories, under the heads of sardeshmukhi and chauth (the two terms corresponding to the proportion of tribute collected). They seem to have consolidated methods of assessment and collection of land revenue and other taxes, on the lines of the Mughals.

Much of the revenue terminology used in the documents of the peshwa and his subordinates derives from Persian. This suggests a greater continuity between Mughal and Maratha revenue practices.

The Maratha Confederacy

By the close of Sahu’s reign, a few powerful Maratha Kingdoms were in complete control of their territories. This period saw the development of sophisticated networks of trade, banking, and finance in the territories under their control. The banking houses based at Pune, had their branches in Gujarat, Ganges Valley, and the south.

Attention was also paid to the Maritime affairs. Bala ji Visvanath took some care to cultivate the Angria clan, which controlled a fleet of vessels based in Kolaba and other centres of the west coast. These ships posed a threat not only to the new English settlement of Bombay, but to the Portuguese at Goa, Bassein, and Daman.

On the other hand, there also emerged a far larger domain of activity away from the original heartland of the Marathas. Of these chiefs, the most important were the Gaikwads (Gaekwars), the Sindhias, and the Holkars. Also, there were branches of the Bhonsle family that relocated to Kolhapur and Nagpur, while the main line remained in the Deccan heartland, at Satara.