Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c2.7

v1.c2.7

In reviewing the earlier history of the decline of the same Empire as narrated in William Irvine's Later Mughals, edited and brought down to 1739 by me, Mr. P. E. Roberts used a very apt image when he wrote: "It drives a broad pathway through a very tangled jungle.... It is a piece of work which badly needed doing, and it has been done with amazing, thoroughness.... The most valuable part of the book is the careful incorporation of Persian and Marathi unpublished material." The same woodcraft has been followed in this continuation of that work, but the jungle is much thicker here. There was at least one common head of the Delhi Empire up to 1739 (when Irvine’s book ends), one centre of Government in theory and almost always in practice. But after Nādir’s invasion the dismemberment proceeded apace and many independent centres sprang up, whose interplay makes the history of the succeeding period extremely complicated. But the reader is most likely not to lose his way in this many-wooded forest if the historian is constantly by his side to whisper, “Delhi is not far off.”