How Did The Marathas Fall Into The Hands Of The British?

 How Did The Marathas Fall Into The Hands Of The British?    

The Marathas themselves were great warriors, and in fearlessness and courage they had no equal in the world. However, despite these qualities, the Marathas could not resist the British. 

For a time, the military successes of the Marathas gave rise to the feeling that they would fill the void left by the Mughals and put on an imperial cloak. However, they retained their hegemony in the Deccan until the end of the century. During this period, the Marathas controlled most of western and central India and, as mercenaries, wielded power over vast lands, including Mughal Delhi. During the reign of Muhammad Shah, the empire began to disintegrate, and vast areas of central India passed from the Mughals to the Marathas. 

Delhi and much of northern India passed into British hands in 1803, as did the protectorate of the Mughal family still nominally ruling most of India, a legal fiction espoused by both the Marathas and the British. The third war with the Marathas gave the British control of almost the entire country. The British wanted to control the southern territories, which were dominated by Maratha chiefs. 

In 1775, the British East India Company, from its base in Bombay, intervened in the struggle for the Pune succession on behalf of Raghunatrao (also called Ragobadad), who wanted to become a peshwa of the empire. After the British were defeated by Mysore in the first two Anglo-Mysore Wars, the Maratha cavalry assisted the British in the last two Anglo-Mysore Wars starting in 1790 and eventually helped the British conquer Mysore in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799. year. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh were under the Scindia sovereignty of the Maratha Empire and after the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–1805, the Marathas ceded these territories to the British East India Company. 

The three wars between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire are known as the Great Maratha Wars or the Anglo-Marathi Wars. It was under Peshwar that the Maratha Empire came to an end in 1818 with the official annexation of the British Empire by the British East India Company. The Second War (1803-05) was caused by the defeat of Peshwa Baghirao II. Peshwa Holkars (leader of the Maratha clan) and he received British protection under the Watershed Treaty in December 1802. 

After the Battle of Pune, the flight of the Peshwa left the Maratha state government in the hands of Yashwantrao Holkar. The supreme power at this time passed into the hands of Bajirao II and Baulatrao Scindia. From that moment on, the Mughal emperors became puppets in the hands of their Maratha rulers. 

The Mughal Empire reached the peak of its territorial expansion during the reign of Aurangzeb and also began its final decline during his reign due to the military resurgence of the Marathas under Shivaji Bhosal. In the latter period, the Mughal capital of Delhi was repeatedly sacked and the Mughals relied on the Maratha armies to keep control of northern India. However, the British did not become the dominant power in India until after the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which took place between 1817 and 1818. It was not until after the settlement of 1818 that the British rise in India really began. 

By the middle of the 18th century, the Marathas had become the most powerful entity in India and often allied themselves with the British against southern Indian states such as Hyderabad and Mysore, both of which were closer to the French. The Marathas, especially during Peshwai times, were the main Hindu power in India prior to the British conquest of the subcontinent and came closest to replacing the Mughals; with their native pentarchy, the Marathas ruled a vast territory from Pune, stretching on its mightiest peak from Delhi to the outskirts of Madras, from Bombay to the outskirts of Calcutta. 

The Marathas were the military elite of western India who came to power under Shivaji Bhonsla, the crowned king, or Chhatrapati Maharaj, in 1674. Shivaji founded the Maratha kingdom in Konkan (coastal and western regions of Maharashtra). With the decline of central power, the Maratha families founded the states of Baroda, Gwalior, Indore and others. 

By the mid-18th century, the Marathas had defeated the Mughal army and conquered several Mughal provinces from Punjab to Bengal.[23] Due to the weak administrative and economic system of the Mughal Empire, internal Dissatisfaction arose, which led to the Nawab of Bengal, the Oders, the Nizams of Hyderabad, the King of Afghanistan and other small states declaring their empires disintegrated and their former provinces declared independent. 

If we think of the first half of the 18th century as a period when the Marathi established their own regime, partly by fighting the Mughal claims in western India, then in the second half of the 18th century his position changed. In the case of the Mughal dynasty, the Mughal century of the 18th century was part of the secular empire that preceded the 18th century (1526-1858), while the Maratha Empire was related to the 18th century in Europe. Even in the 1800s, the Maratha Empire controlled much of western, central, and northern India, and its population was estimated to be around 168,160,000 people, including the territory it administered on behalf of the Mughal dynasty, which was second only to the empire The largest territory in the world. If he acts strategically and in solidarity, he can gain a foothold in the subcontinent. 

Thus kicked off a half-century-long war of mutual aggression between the Mughals and Marathi, with occasional efforts to assimilate, culminating in the creation of the Maratha Empire, the most important successor to 18th-century India. countries, with the possible exception of the status of the East India Company. The empire officially existed in 1674[note 1], Shivaji was crowned Chhatrapati and it ended in 1818 with the British East India Company defeat of Peshwa Bajirao II. According to Percival Speer in The Oxford History of Modern India, 1740-1947, most of the other states in central and western India that were tributaries to Maratha had additional treaties with the British at this time, including Bhopal, Jaipur, Udaipur and Jodhpur. 

In 1784, a French mercenary bought weapons there for the Maratha chief Mahaji Scindia. The British suspected that the Marathas were assisting the Pindari, mercenaries fighting for the Marathas.