Indian Economy: The Mughal Empire (16th-18th centuries)
Figure 1.--Despite their Islamic faith, the Mughals have left a vivid pictorial record of their rule. The Mughal Emperor Jahangir recounts weighing ceremonies in his memoirs. He explains that this was a tradition begun by his father Akbar the Great. The Emperor or one of the princes could be weighed several times using varioius precious materiala, such as gold, silver, fine textiles, and grain. We are not sure what is being used here to weigh the prince. It could be textiles and we see textiles laid out in front of him. These goods or the monetary equivalent was then distributed to fakirs (itinerant holy men) or to the needy. Some times they were used to finnce important building projects. The tradition was continued by Prince Khurram when he became Emperor Shah Jahan who would later build the Taj Mahal.
The name ‘Mughal’ became synnomanous with both wealth and opulence. The wealth of the Mughals is a matter of legend. And the word entered the English language meaning an important, powerful, or influential person. The Mughal Empire at its peak encompased Pakistan and most of modern India except for the far south. A significant area of land areas were brought under the control of a entities like the Suris, the Lodhis or the Mughals. The Grand Trunk Road was built as well as the Taj Mahal and the Fatehpur Sikri. Substsantial urbanization began. India nationalist see the Mugal Empire as the Golden Age of India. The country was prosperous and productive. Queen Elizabeth I for good reason envied the wealth of Empire and wrote to the Emperor Akbar anxious to begin trade (1583). The seat of power of the Mughal empire was the "Peacock Throne." It had in it background an image of a peacock with an expanded tail wrought in gold and precious stones. It is difficult making precise comparative estimates. We suspect that Akbar was the wealthiest man on earth. Whether his subjects were better off than Europeans we are not sure, they may well have been. The Indian economy supported a population of 100-150 million people. [Habib] At the time Englnd had a population of about 4 million and France, historically Europe's most populace country, perhaps 20 million. India It was like all countries at the time an agricultural economy, but it looks like there was more manufacturing in India than in Europe. Agricultural technology was comparable to that of Western Europe. Several analysts suggests that even small sale subsistence peasant got a reasonable return and overall living standards were comparable to the West. One analyst writes, "... at its peak, it is conceivable that the per capita product was comparable with that of Elizabethan England.” [Maddison, p. 18.] Other authors provide similar assessments. [Moreland] There is no doubt that India large and skilled manufcturing labor force. They produced not only cotton textiles, and metal products, but also luxuries and beautiful buildings for the for the Mugul ruling class. As a result revenue collected by the Muguls was astonishing. One author reports that yearly revenue of the absoluteist Mogul emperor Aurangzeb (1659-1701) witing in 1982 may have amounted to $450 million -- ten times those of (his contemporary) big-spending absolutist ruler Louis XIV. [Kautsky, p. 188.] Indian nationalists see this as a sign of strength. In fact it was a clossal weakness. The wealth of the Empire as kept out of the hands od an industrious and hard working people. Just compare how England with a parliament to limit royal spending consistently bettered the mich larger and potentially more powerful France with its royal absolutism. India was undeniably rich, but like the rest of Asia did not experience the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enligtenment which together produced modernity. India invented modern mathmtics and achieved technological advances, but it did not invent modern science and all the achievements that followed. And it did not invent either capitalism (economic freedom) and democracy (political freedom). Remembers the Muguls were not a medievl dynasty. They seized power at the dawn of the modern age, but did not lead India toward modernity. Indian nationalists want to blame all of India's problems on the British. What in fact was the central cause was that the Muguls not only did not use their fabulous wealth to build a modern society and kept much of the wealth way from their industrious people who might have achieved modernity like Europeans.
Sources
Habib, Irfan. Habib estimates the population of Mugul India at about 150 million, higher than many other analysts. Irfan Habib. “Potentia.ities of capitalist development in the economy of Mughal India”, Journal of Economic History, vol. 29, no.1, pp.32-37.
Kautsky, john. The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1982).
Maddison, Angus. Class Structure and Economic Growth: India and Pakistan since the Moghuls (George Allen and Unwin: London, 1971). Reprinted by Routledge in 2013.
Moreland, W.H. India at the Death of Akbar (A Ram: Delhi, 1962). Moreland provides a insightful description of Indian living conditions at the end of the 16th century.
