Global Economic History Seminar: The Evolution of State Capacity in Early Modern Empires: The Mughal South Asian case 1556-1707’

Speaker: Dr Safya Morshed (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Title of the Presentation: The Evolution of State Capacity in Early Modern Empires: The Mughal South Asian case 1556-1707’

Title of the Book: Devolutionary Empire: Demystifying State Formation in Mughal South Asia 1556-1707

Abstract:

Economic historians have long studied the impact of conflict on state formation, yet the precolonial Indian subcontinent has received considerably less attention in this field, and our understanding of non-colonial institutional paths of state development are limited. Through the lens of conflict, this book studies the Mughal empire to show a dynamic and localised institutional structure which was less rigid than in other regions. The book demonstrates that the Mughal government was under constant internal pressure which increased significantly over the course of the 17th century. It shows that the Mughal state’s institutions were designed to be flexible where the state structure changed significantly over the seventeenth century. The analysis demonstrates increasingly larger conflicts saw not a centralisation of the state, but a localisation in the face of high administrative costs. A key finding of the text is how pre-existing cultural and environmental diversity influenced the broader institutional development of government.

    Chapter 5 of the book (on which the presentation is based) studies the Mughal state’s personnel employment and recruitment practices and how this changed over the course of the dynasty. Using a dataset of over 10,000 Mughal government appointments, the chapter shows that the Mughal government went through a phenomenal restructuring over the course of the seventeenth century. Whilst the total number of recorded officials seemed to increase almost exponentially, the total expenditure on Mughal officials did not. Further analysis of the data demonstrates that the Mughal government began hiring localised officials who were better equipped to manage the disturbances ongoing in the regions where they were based. In the face of conflict, it is shown that the Mughal government did not centralise but rather decentralised as a mechanism of devolving control to decrease expenses and increase administrative capacity. The chapter considers the benefits of centralisation relative to localisation (incorporation of local actors into the state’s apparatus) to create a permeable institutional connection with local populations and societies, hire skilled state officials and increase the administrative capacity of the state.