Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c44.1

v4.c44.1

The study of the Mughal Empire which I began with my *India of Aurangzib : Statistics, Topography and Roads* (printed in 1901), has come to its end with the extinction of that empire which is the subject-matter of the present volume. The events of nearly half the reign of Shah Jahān and the whole of Aurangzib’s are covered in my *History of Aurangzib* in five volumes, with a supplementary work *Shivaji and His Times*. Then follows W. Irvine’s *Later Mughals* (1707—1738) in two volumes edited and continued by me, and lastly this *Fall of the Mughal Empire* (1738—1803) in four volumes. Such a long survey, always on the basis of original sources in many languages, could be completed only by the rigid exclusion of those provinces of India which had broken away from the Mughal Empire, and also by ignoring events not directly related to the fate of that empire, such as the Anglo-French rivalry for the dominion of India, and the dynastic struggles in the provinces that had renounced the suzerainty of Delhi. A more serious defect is that the social and economic history of this long stretch of time has been crowded out of the present series, though I have made many short excursions into that field in my minor works and essays.