Andrew de la Garza - The Mughal Empire at War (Asian States and Empires)

The Mughal Empire at War

The Mughal Empire was one of the great powers of the early modern era, ruling almost all of South Asia, a conquest state, dominated by its military elite. Many historians have viewed the Mughal Empire as relatively backward, the Emperor the head of a traditional warband from Central Asia, with tribalism and the traditions of the Islamic world to the fore, and the Empire not remotely comparable to the forward looking Western European states of the period, with their strong innovative armies implementing the military revolution. This book argues that, on the contrary, the military establishment built by the Emperor Babur and his successors was highly sophisticated, an effective combination of personnel, expertise, technology and tactics, drawing on precedents from Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and that the resulting combined arms system transformed the conduct of warfare in South Asia. The book traces the development of the Mughal Empire chronologically, examines weapons and technology, tactics and operations, organization, recruitment and training, and logistics and non-combat operations, and concludes by assessing the overall achievements of the Mughal Empire, comparing it to its Western counterparts, and analyzing the reasons for its decline.

Andrew de la Garza is an Instructor in the Department of History and Geography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA.

Asian States and Empires

Edited by Peter Lorge, Vanderbilt University

The importance of Asia will continue to grow in the twenty-first century, but remarkably little is available in English on the history of the polities that constitute this critical area. Most current work on Asia is hindered by the extremely limited state of knowledge of the Asian past in general, and the history of Asian states and empires in particular. Asian States and Empires is a book series that will provide detailed accounts of the history of states and empires across Asia from earliest times until the present. It aims to explain and describe the formation, maintenance and collapse of Asian states and empires, and the means by which this was accomplished, making available the history of more than half the worlds population at a level of detail comparable to the history of Western polities. In so doing, it will demonstrate that Asian peoples and civilizations had their own histories apart from theWest, and provide the basis for understanding contemporary Asia in terms of its actual histories, rather than broad generalizations informed by Western categories of knowledge.

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10. Warfare in Pre-British India 1500BCE to 1740CE

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11. The Eurasian Way of War

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12. The Mughal Empire at War

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The Mughal Empire at War

Babur, Akbar and the Indian military revolution, 15001605

Andrew de la Garza

First published 2016

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Andrew de la Garza

The right of Andrew de la Garza to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-1-138-64258-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-62986-5 (ebk)

To John

Contents

The Mughal Empire was one of the great powers of the early modern era. It eventually grew to include almost the entirety of South Asia, from Afghanistan to the southern tip of India and from the Indus River to the frontiers of Burma. It accounted for more than a fifth of the worlds total economic output. This great expansion in both political and economic wealth was due in large part to success on the battlefield. The Mughal Empire was a conquest state dominated by its military elite, with a government where military and civilian administration were closely interconnected. It devoted a substantial portion of its total resources to expansion and defense. War and readiness for war were essential elements in the shaping of the Mughals political, social and cultural identity. Despite these basic facts there have only been a handful of books dedicated to Mughal military history ever written, with a gap of nearly a century between William Irvines colonial-era study and the works of later scholars like Jos Gommans and Dirk Kolff. Most general works on the Empire devote relatively little space to military matters, and even dedicated works of military history in this period primarily address background and context how an army was funded, its social and cultural foundations, the political implications of its expenses and actions. There has been little exploration of how the Mughals and their enemies actually fought.

The primary purpose of this work is to bridge that gap. It explores the creation of a new military system by the Empires founder, Babur, its continued evolution under successors like Humayun and the Afghan usurper Sher Shah Suri, and its growth into a mature institution during the reign of Akbar. The emphasis is on the practical aspects of Mughal warfare technology, tactics, operations, recruitment, training and logistics. I argue that events in India during this period in many ways paralleled the early stages of the ongoing Military Revolution in early modern Europe. The Mughals effectively combined the martial implements and practices of Europe, Central Asia and India into a model that was well suited for the particular demands and challenges of their setting. Contrary to conventional wisdom based on the idea of Western exceptionalism, South Asia during this era was no backwater. It was a center of military innovation and achievement. Likewise, the Mughal Empire was not simply a loosely confederated medieval kingdom expanded to enormous size. It was a highly capable and organized early modern state, as evidenced by its successful integration of new concepts and technology and its mastery of complex systems.