Maratha Empire

The Maratha Empire, also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, was an early modern Indian empire and later a confederation that controlled large portions of the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. Maratha rule formally began in 1674 with the coronation of Shivaji of the Bhonsle dynasty as the Chhatrapati. Although Shivaji came from the Maratha caste, the Maratha empire also included warriors, administrators, and other nobles from the Maratha and several other castes from what is known today as Maharashtra. The Marathas were a Marathi-speaking warrior group from the western Deccan Plateau (present-day Maharashtra) who rose to prominence by establishing Hindavi Swarajya (meaning "self-rule of Hindus"). The Marathas became prominent in the seventeenth century under the leadership of Shivaji, who revolted against the Adil Shahi dynasty and the Mughals to carve out a kingdom with Raigad as his capital. Marathas were one of the major causes of the decline of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. The religious attitude of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb estranged non-Muslims, and his inability to suppress the resulting Maratha insurgency after a 27-year war came at a great cost for his men and treasury and eventually ensured Maratha ascendency and their control over sizeable portions of former Mughal dominions in the north of the Indian subcontinent. After the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, Shivaji’s grandson Shahu revived Maratha power and confided power to the Brahman Bhat family, who became hereditary peshwas (prime ministers). After his death in 1749, they became the effective rulers. The leading Maratha families—Sindhia, Holkar, Bhonsle, and Gaekwar—extended their conquests in northern and central India and became more independent and difficult to control. The effective control of the peshwas ended with the great defeat of Panipat in 1761, at the hands of the Afghans and the death of the young peshwa Madhav Rao I in 1772. Thereafter the Maratha state was a confederacy of five chiefs under the nominal leadership of the Peshwa at Poona (now Pune) in western India. These leaders became known as the Gaekwads of Baroda, the Holkars of Indore and Malwa, the Scindias of Gwalior and Ujjain, the Bhonsales of Nagpur and the Jadhavs of Vidarbha. Though they united on occasion, as against the East India Company (1775–82), more often they quarreled.