Board: OCR | Unit: Y211 | Component: 2 (Non-British Period Study)
About this option
The Rise and Decline of the Mughal Empire covers the history of north India from Babur’s victory at Panipat in 1526 to the collapse of central Mughal authority in the early eighteenth century. Students trace the establishment and consolidation of a Turco-Mongol dynasty in the subcontinent, its transformation under Akbar into one of the early modern world’s most sophisticated empires, its cultural and architectural apogee under Shah Jahan, and the long crisis of authority that followed Aurangzeb’s overextension and death. The option asks students to engage with questions of religious legitimacy, the relationship between imperial power and regional elites, and the causes of political fragmentation.
Key themes
- Babur and the establishment of Mughal power: the Panipat campaigns, the consolidation of north Indian rule, and the reign of Humayun
- Akbar’s reign: administrative reform, the mansabdari system, alliances with the Rajputs, and religious policy including the Din-i-Ilahi
- Imperial consolidation under Jahangir and Shah Jahan: court culture, architecture, and continued territorial expansion
- Aurangzeb’s reign: the reversal of Akbar’s religious policy, the Deccan wars, and the fiscal and military overextension of the empire
- The role of the Rajputs and Marathas in supporting and then challenging Mughal authority
- The fragmentation of the empire after 1707: regional successor states, the decline of central revenue, and the limits of Mughal legitimacy
What the exam asks
Y211 is a depth study. Questions require analytical depth within a defined period, focusing on causation, significance, and historical judgement. Students are expected to engage with historical debate and are rewarded for the ability to challenge or qualify interpretations rather than simply describing events.
Historiography
The Mughal Empire has generated rich and contested scholarship. Key debates include:
- Akbar’s religious policy: genuine syncretism or pragmatic statecraft? The debate between scholars who see the Din-i-Ilahi as a serious theological project and those who read it as political management of a diverse empire
- The causes of Mughal decline: Aurangzeb’s religious policies (Satish Chandra), structural fiscal crisis and agrarian revolt (Irfan Habib), or the rise of regional powers and the limits of the mansabdari system (M. Athar Ali, J. F. Richards)
- The Mughal agrarian system: Irfan Habib’s Marxist analysis of the agrarian crisis and peasant revolts as structural causes of decline
- Revisionist readings: historians who emphasise the continued vitality of regional Mughal culture and the successor states rather than framing the eighteenth century as simple decline
