In the half-century after Aurangzeb the Mughal empire dissolved into successor states, foreign invaders looted Delhi twice, and the question of who would succeed the Mughals — Maratha, Nawab or Company — was left for the new century to answer.
§1Why the Empire Broke
The collapse was not a single event but a system failure. The jagirdari crisis — too many nobles, too few jagirs — set court factions at each other's throats; endless Deccan wars had emptied the treasury; peasant revolts of Jats, Satnamis and Sikhs shook the countryside; and the later Mughals — twelve emperors in the half-century, most the puppets of king-makers like the Sayyid Brothers — could no longer command obedience.
§2The Successor States
Real power devolved to the provinces: Murshid Quli Khan in Bengal, Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah in the Deccan (founding Hyderabad, 1724), and Saadat Khan in Awadh governed as hereditary nawabs while formally honouring Delhi. The Mughal emperor's farman of 1717 — granting the English East India Company duty-free trade in Bengal for a token payment — was the fatal seed of Plassey. These successor states preserved Mughal administration and culture; they were less 'dark ages' than the laboratories of the next India.
§3The Invasions
Twice in a generation the empire was publicly gutted. In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia smashed the Mughal army at Karnal in three hours, massacred Delhi, and carried away the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor — the wealth of two centuries stripped in fifty-seven days. Then came Ahmad Shah Abdali, raiding yearly between 1748 and 1767, annexing the Punjab and destroying the Maratha host at Panipat in 1761.
The outcome was a vacuum, and into it moved three claimants: the Maratha confederacy, the nawabs — above all of Bengal, the richest province — and a trading company with ships, credit and disciplined infantry. Within four years of Panipat, the Battle of Buxar would answer the question of succession not for the Mughals' heirs, but for the English.
End of Chapter 17 · Volume II