Mughal India, 1526–1857

Dates. 1526 (Babur’s victory at Panipat) to 1857 (final abolition following the Indian Rebellion). The period’s effective imperial-Mughal phase ends with Aurangzeb’s death in 1707; the 18th century is a successor-state period in which Mughal authority fragments among Marathas, Mysore, Sikhs, Awadh, Bengal, the Deccan sultanates, and eventually the East India Company as territorial successor.

Geography. At Aurangzeb’s peak (early 18th c.), the Mughal Empire covered most of the Indian subcontinent including Afghanistan. For Great Divergence purposes, the commercially relevant regions include:

• Bengal — one of the world’s major textile producers through 1700 (cotton calicos and muslins for European, Asian, and Middle Eastern markets); later the first EIC territorial conquest after Plassey.
• The Gujarat-Surat Arabian Sea trading nexus — the principal pre-EIC commercial port of western India; substantial cotton textile production and Indian Ocean trading networks.
• Coromandel coast (Madras, Pondicherry) — eastern Indian textile production; the European trading-company foothold.
• The Mughal heartland (Delhi, Agra, Lahore) — administrative center; the jagirdar land-revenue system that funded the imperial state.

Why it matters. Mughal and successor-state India is the South Asian comparator for the Great Divergence debate. The Broadberry-Gupta reconstructions of Indian long-run GDP bear directly on the meta-debate about when the divergence began. The empire and coerced-extraction position takes a distinctive form in the Indian case because of the Company’s transformation from trading entity to territorial sovereign after 1757 and the subsequent de-industrialization of Bengal textile production.

Economic structure

Mughal India in 1700 was, by most plausible reconstructions, the largest single economy in the world by GDP (with China close behind). It was a commercialized agrarian empire with substantial proto-industrial textile production:

• Cotton textiles. Bengali, Gujarati, and Coromandel cotton fabrics (calicos, muslins, chintz) dominated global trade. By 1700, Indian textiles supplied Southeast Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and (via European trading companies) Europe and the Americas. The British East India Company in its early centuries was substantially a vehicle for moving Indian textiles into European markets.
• Land-revenue extraction. The Mughal state extracted perhaps 25–40% of agricultural output as revenue (the zamindari and jagirdari systems), substantially higher than European states’ tax extractions. The high extraction rate funded the imperial military and bureaucracy but limited capital accumulation outside the state-elite circuit.
• Commercial sophistication. Hundi (bills of exchange) operated across the subcontinent and into Central Asia and the Persian Gulf; Marwari, Gujarati, and Tamil merchant communities ran sophisticated long-distance commercial networks; banking houses like the Jagat Seths of Bengal financed imperial campaigns.
• Demographic scale. Indian population in 1700 was perhaps 150 million — comparable to China and substantially larger than Europe.

Demographic and economic trajectory

Indian per-capita GDP shows the most dramatic colonial-era decline of the major Asian comparators:

Approx. year	Population (millions)	Notes
1600	~145	Akbar’s late reign; consolidated empire
1700	~165	Near Mughal peak
1800	~200	Post-Mughal fragmentation; EIC territorial expansion
1850	~232	Pre-Rebellion
1900	~284	Crown rule

Per-capita GDP in 1990 international dollars (Broadberry-Gupta reconstructions): ~$682 in 1500, declining to ~$1,078 in 1820, declining further to ~$526 in 1870. The 19th-century Indian decline is one of the major unambiguous economic catastrophes of the early modern world, and the empirical anchor of the empire-and-coerced-extraction position at the GD scale.

Key markers

• 1526 — Babur defeats the Lodi sultan at Panipat; Mughal founding.
• 1556–1605 — Akbar’s reign; consolidation and administrative systematization (the mansabdari system; the zabti land-revenue assessment).
• 1600 — English East India Company chartered (royal charter from Elizabeth I).
• 1602 — Dutch VOC chartered.
• 1605–1627 — Jahangir’s reign.
• 1628–1658 — Shah Jahan’s reign; Taj Mahal built (1632–1653); imperial architectural peak.
• 1639 — EIC obtains permission to fortify Madras.
• 1658–1707 — Aurangzeb’s reign; imperial peak in territorial extent but also imperial over-extension; revivalist Islamic policy alienates Hindu and Sikh constituencies.
• 1690 — EIC founds Calcutta (Fort William).
• 1707 — Aurangzeb’s death; onset of effective Mughal decline.
• 1707–1761 — Successor-state period; Maratha confederacy expansion under Peshwas; Persian invasion (Nadir Shah, 1739) sacks Delhi; Afghan invasions; Mughal authority effectively confined to Delhi region by 1760.
• 1757 — Battle of Plassey; Robert Clive’s EIC takes Bengal in alliance with Mir Jafar.
• 1764 — Battle of Buxar; EIC defeats combined Mughal-Awadh-Bengal force.
• 1765 — Treaty of Allahabad; EIC granted diwani (tax-collection rights) over Bengal, Bihar, Orissa. Company transitions from trader to territorial ruler.
• 1770 — Bengal famine; perhaps 10 million deaths amid Company tax policy.
• 1773 — Regulating Act; Parliament’s first oversight of EIC affairs.
• 1784 — Pitt’s India Act; further parliamentary control.
• 1793 — Permanent Settlement; land-revenue system fixing Bengali tax structure for a century.
• 1799 — Tipu Sultan defeated at Seringapatam; Mysore brought under EIC.
• 1818 — Final Maratha defeat; EIC paramount across most of subcontinent.
• 1820s–1840s — Bengali textile deindustrialization accelerates; Lancashire-cotton imports displace Indian production; the “drain of wealth” patterns documented by later Indian nationalists (Naoroji, R. C. Dutt).
• 1849 — Annexation of Punjab.
• 1857–1858 — Indian Rebellion (“Mutiny” / “First War of Independence”); formal Crown rule replaces EIC; end of nominal Mughal sovereignty.
• 1876–1879 — Famines kill perhaps 5–10 million; Lytton’s policy of free-market non-intervention is a textbook subject of subsequent famine-policy debate.
• 1890s — Indian National Congress emerges; “drain of wealth” critique enters formal political discourse.

Connected debates

• The Great Divergence — the primary debate this period anchors.
• The Industrial Revolution — Bengali textile deindustrialization is one of the reciprocal movements in the British industrial story; without the suppression of Indian cotton production, the Lancashire-led IR is a substantially different phenomenon.
• Empire & coerced extraction (GD) — the EIC and Crown-rule trajectories in India are the canonical material on which the modern Williams-thesis revival builds.