History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s4: § 5. Injury to trade and industry by war, disorder, and official exactions.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s4
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§ 5. Injury to trade and industry by war, disorder, and official exactions.
v5.c85.s4.1
There being no peace or safety for tillage, the starving and exasperated peasantry took to highway robbery as the only means of living. In many villages of the Deccan they gathered arms and horses and used to join the Marathas in their raids, and also sheltered enemy Maratha families in their houses while the men-folk were out roving. Raiding bands were, also, locally formed, which gave employment to many and chances of glory and wealth to the more spirited among the villagers.
v5.c85.s4.2
Trade almost ceased in the Deccan during this unhappy quarter century. Caravans could travel south of the Narmada only under strong escort; hence they had to wait in the fortified towns, sometimes for four or five months, before they could get an opportunity of advancing further towards their destination in safety. We even read of the royal mail and baskets of fruits for the Emperor's table being held up for five months at the Narmada by Maratha disturbances in the roads beyond it. A time came when even the Emperor's letters could be carried to distant places only by spies who travelled in disguise,—no escort being available for the regular couriers. Government stores and the personal effects of the nobles were all that could be transported under such conditions; the movement of tradesmen's goods was impossible.
v5.c85.s4.3
Even where war was not raging (as in Bengal), the weakening of the central Government emboldened provincial governors to defy imperial prohibitions, and to make money by forcing goods from traders at absurdly low prices and then selling them in the public marts, and also by exacting forbidden abwabs from craftsmen and merchants. [*Mughal Administration*, Ch. 5.]
v5.c85.s4.4
In the absence of security at home and the impossibility of making purchases at distances, arts and crafts ceased to be practised except in the walled cities. Village industries and industrial classes together died out. The Madras coast, for instance, with its teeming weaving population, was so unsettled by the Mughal-Maratha struggle for the Karnatak (1690—1698) that the English found it difficult to get enough clothes for loading their Europe-going ships. [Ch. 51 § 5.] As early as 1688, Francois Martin had foreseen the war between the Mughals and the Marathas and the consequent ruin of the textile industry of the Karnatak. [Kaep. 259, also 293.] Thus ensued a great economic impoverishment of India,—not only a decrease of the "national stock", but also a rapid lowering of mechanical skill and standard of civilisation, a disappearance of art and culture over wide tracts of the country.