Mughal Empire

While the Mughal Empire was extremely large in both size and population, it was very faulty and led to chaos in northern India, resulting in its decline and Britain’s control of India. During the rule of Aurangzeb Alamgir was the point when things started to decline. His corrupt policies and bad relationships with certain groups in India was the final event leading to the fall of an already weak empire. With all the chaos arising in the North due to succession battles, invasions, a weak ruler, and rebellion, the British decided to use this as a means of taking over such a vulnerable empire. They had already set up the East India Company, which was a trading venture that took many of India’s riches through a means of unfair trade. After the British took control of Bengal, India’s richest province, they were able to take over the rest of the country by setting up a more efficient state and government. This was the beginning of a new empire run solely by the British over the Indian people in an effort to take over the East.
The Mughal Empire was started in the seventeenth century by a Muslim Emperor named Babur who took over Northern India. It was based on heirarchy, by giving different levels of authority to people based on their social standings. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Mughal rule started to decline due to numerous reasons. The first, and probably most impacted, cause was the uprise of the zamindars. Zamidars acted as “middle-men” (Reader), who stood between the cultivator and the State. A zamindar owned land and the cultivator worked on the land, so had to pay a tax for using the land. The zamindar would take a portion of this money to pay the State as land revue, but was allowed to keep the rest for himself. As zamindars were becoming wealthy and gaining high rank by Mughal rulers, certain groups of Indians came together to protest Mughal authority, including the Marathas of Deccan, the Sikhs of Punjab, and the Jats near Agra. Aurangzeb,