Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c18.1

v2.c18.1

This volume covers eighteen eventful years in the history of India of which the dominating theme is the great Afghan-Maratha contest for the lordship of Delhi, followed by the abrupt rise and still more abrupt fall of the Jat kingdom of Bharatpur within the space of a decade only. This period witnessed the deposition and blinding of one Emperor, the murder of another, the twelve years' banishment from capital and power of a third, and the ten months' reign of yet another crowned puppet in Delhi. Horror is piled upon horror almost throughout the epoch; but at its end the worst is over and we begin to emerge into light. The Sikhs have now established their rule over much of the Panjab and given to the people of that province internal security and the promotion of agriculture in a degree unknown for sixty years past. At the opposite corner of India,—in Bengal, Bihar and Oudh up to Allahabad, British peace has been established, and trade, industry and tillage are on the threshold of an unprecedented revival after the unbroken anarchy of one full generation and appalling natural calamities. Soon the indigenous culture which had been quenched in blood in the capital cities of the empire was to revive and Indo-Persian historical literature to take a new birth under alien patronage at Allahabad and Benares, Patna and Calcutta. When Shah Alam II first rode into the capital of his fathers on the 6th of January 1772,—the point at which this volume ends,—we are within three months of the beginning of the governorship of Warren Hastings, the creator of British India.