Latest / Aurangzeb: The Emperor Who Expanded and Broke the Mughal Empire — Fexingo History / How Aurangzeb Bankrupted the Mughal Empire
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked about Aurangzeb's wars, his architecture, his spy network, but one thing that often gets overlooked is the economic engine behind it all — and how it eventually broke down. The Mughal empire under Aurangzeb was like a massive machine, and by the end, it was running on fumes. Luna: I've read that the Deccan wars alone cost more than the entire Mughal revenue at times. Is that true? Lucas: Close. By the 1680s, the yearly cost of the Deccan campaign was around 50 million rupees, while the total imperial revenue was maybe 80 to 100 million. So yes, it was consuming half or more of the state's income. And it went on for nearly three decades. Luna: How did they even sustain that? They must have been borrowing or squeezing taxes. Lucas: Both, but mostly squeezing. The Mughal revenue system was based on land tax — the zabt system — assessed on crop productivity. Under Akbar, it worked pretty well, but by Aurangzeb's time, the bureaucracy had bloated, and corruption was rampant. The amils, the tax collectors, often pocketed a big share. Lucas: There was also the jagirdari system — assigning revenue rights to nobles in lieu of salary. But as the empire expanded, there weren't enough productive jagirs to go around. Many nobles were transferred constantly to new, less valuable lands, which caused them to squeeze the peasants even harder. Luna: So the system itself was creating the crisis. Lucas: Exactly. And Aurangzeb made it worse by centralizing control. He turned much of the land into khalisa, crown land directly managed by the state, but the officials there were no better. The result was that peasants were overtaxed, often to the point of abandoning their villages. Lucas: One of the worst results was the famine in the Deccan around 1702. It was partly due to drought, but the heavy taxes had stripped the region of any reserves. Contemporary chroniclers like Bhimsen Saxena describe seeing entire villages empty, with people eating bark and leaves. Luna: And this is while Aurangzeb is still campaigning? It feels like he was blind to it. Lucas: He wasn't completely blind. He tried to introduce new taxes — like the jizya, which he reinstated in 1679. That was partly ideological, but also fiscal. It brought in maybe 4 to 5 million rupees a year — a drop in the ocean compared to the war costs. And it inflamed Hindu opinion, of course. Luna: So it was bad policy and bad economics at the same time. Lucas: Right. And then there were the banjaras — the nomadic grain merchants who supplied the army. They were essential, but they also gouged prices because they knew the army was desperate. Aurangzeb tried to regulate them, but it was impossible. Luna: It sounds like the whole system was running on borrowed time. Lucas: It really was. And at the same time, the English and other European companies were draining silver bullion from India to buy textiles and spices. That meant less coinage in circulation, which made tax collection even harder. Luna: That's a really important piece. I never connected the European trade to Aurangzeb's fiscal problems. Lucas: It's one of those indirect effects. By the late 1690s, the Mughal treasury was so depleted that Aurangzeb started melting down gold and silver from the harem and from captured temples. He even started issuing copper coins more widely, which caused inflation. Lucas: You know, this conversation reminds me — if you've been coming with us through these episodes on Aurangzeb and the Mughals, you might have noticed how much depth there is to these stories. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, and it really makes a difference. Every little bit helps keep the show ad-free and focused on the real history. Lucas: Back to the economics — the crisis came to a head after Aurangzeb's death. The nobles who held jagirs were essentially bankrupt, the peasants were impoverished, and the treasury was empty. It's no wonder the empire fragmented so quickly under his successors. Luna: So the seeds of decline were sown long before the Marathas or the British arrived. Lucas: Exactly. Aurangzeb's own policies — the relentless expansion, the fiscal centralization, the reliance on a broken system — created the perfect storm. It's a cautionary tale about how even the mightiest empire can be undone by its own economic logic. Luna: And it's a side of Aurangzeb that doesn't get as much attention. Most people think of him as a religious zealot or a brilliant general, but he was also a disastrous manager of the economy. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's the thing — history is never simple. The same emperor who expanded the empire to its greatest extent also broke its financial backbone. Lucas: If you want to dig deeper, the maasir i alamgiri has a lot of detail on land revenue and jagir assignments, and there's a modern study by W.H. Moreland on Mughal finances that's still the standard. Luna: I might check that out. It's fascinating how much of history is really about money and resources. Lucas: It almost always is, underneath the battles and the politics.