You're Dead to Me - India Between Empires (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in early modern India by historian Dr Jagjeet Lally and comedian Nish Kumar to learn all about the subcontinent’s dynamic 18th century.From the 16th century, the dominant power in India was the Mughal Empire. According to the traditional narrative, when the Mughals began to decline in the 18th century, the subcontinent descended into political chaos, and European trading powers – most notably the British East India Company – swooped in to take advantage and (in their words) restore order. But can we trust this story?In this episode, we look at India’s long 18th century not as a period of chaos, but one of dynamic transformation and exciting developments. Taking in the rise of new powers including the Marathas, the Rajputs and the Sikh Empire, and looking at changes in the economy, global trade, artistic patronage and gender relations, we explore what India was really like at this time.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Clara Chamberlain Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are joining a trading caravan and trekking all the way back to the 18th century to learn about Indian political and cultural life in this particular period. And to help us, we have two very special guests in History Corner. He's Associate Professor of the History of Early Modern and Colonial India at UCL. He's a historian of economic and material life in Earth. early modern India with a special interest in trade.

He might have read one of his wonderful books, India and the Silk Roads, or India and the Early Modern World. It's Dr. Jaggi Lally. Welcome, Jagged. Hi, Greg. Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a comedian, presenter and podcaster. You'll have seen him all over the TV on the Mash Report,

QI, mock the week, live at the Apollo, the best ever series of Taskmaster, no arguments. He's also the co-host of Pod Save the UK and a frequent guest on the Bugle podcast and Radio Force and News Quiz. He's very busy, and you might have seen one of his award-winning stand-up shows, including his most recent, Nish Don't Kill My Vibe. It's Nish Kumar.

Welcome, Nish. Genuinely, I'm so excited. I will say I put myself in a bit of a difficult position here because I did study history to an undergraduate level. So, like, there's a lot of pressure on me to at least loosely sound like I know what I'm talking about. And I am feeling the genuine hot flush of panic just for the benefit of listeners.

There's a circular seating arrangement, and it is genuinely giving me flashbacks to feeling up. under-prepared in history seminars. How are you on 18th century, India? Basically, I've got some awareness of 1857, the uprisings and how they... That's not the 18th century. Oh my God, I've got it wrong immediately.

Get out, Nish. This is going to be fun. This is going to be an absolute disaster. I've got almost no knowledge of the 18th century in India. I know the white man turned up and was up to his usual malarkey. The only bit of it that this specific Indian history I studied We did a bit of Mughal stuff Because you know the British

Warmer In the British state education curriculum We like to do stuff before the British turn up Just to set the scene that it was bad And we didn't make things that much worse In the grand scheme of things And then I did a lot of stuff about the partition of India Okay, yeah

So what do you know This brings us to the first segment of the podcast. It's called The So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go. Guessing what you are lovely listener will know about today's subject. This one might be a bit of an unfamiliar topic. 18th century India usually only comes up for British audiences through TV dramas about the East India Company, specifically, like the Tom Hardy Show taboo, or the recent one Nautilus.

If you're a fan of Indian cinema, maybe you've seen the films Panoputs, about the 1761 battle between the Maratha and the Afghan army, or there's Bajira Mastani, a tragic love story set at the Maratha Court, or there's Kerala Vama Passashi Raja, featuring the king of Katayam and his fight against the East India Company. I don't know if I'm murdering these lovely words, but I'm trying my best. But what was really going on in India in this period? How big a role did the British actually play, as Nish has alluded to?

Let's find out. Right, Jack Jit, can we start with some basics? When exactly are we talking about, and why is this such an exciting moment in Indian history? Well, I love the 18th century so much that I like to think of a really long 18th century. So longer than just 1,700 to 179. I really want everyone to get their value for money. So for me, the long 18th century probably started around the 1680s,

when the Mughals are expanding the empire into the south, into the Indian Peninsula. We can say it probably ended around about the 1820s, maybe even the 1840s, when the last of those great post-Mughal kingdoms were conquered by the East India. company. And in between that, there's a whole lot of stuff going on. It's a really exciting time of economic and cultural change and political change. I suppose another reason why I'm interested in a long 18th century is because we think of that kind of time period when we think about British history. So Britain from the glorious revolution through to the Industrial Revolution or Queen Victoria's reign. And I think that's quite a useful framing for comparison to what's

going on in India. And one final reason why I like this long. 18th century, is because we associate that period with the Enlightenment, with coffee houses, all kinds of new material culture, and a lot of that stuff is going on in India too. It helps to think about all of that, I think. Okay, so we've got our sort of frame of reference. We've done a Mughal's episode before, and if you want to listen to that, you can. It's a good one. But by the 1700s, they were in trouble, Chechchee. Yeah, it's definitely a bit of a turning point compared to what came before. So a bit of a recap, since you need to fit in some of the blanks. The founder of the

Mughal Empire, he's born in Central Asia, and he's a descendant of both Genghis Khan and Timur, or Tamerain, as some people might know him, these two great world conquerors. His name is Barber, and he defeats the Sultans of Delhi to establish what we call the Mughal Empire in North India in 1526. The empire basically grows in fits and starts through to about the end of the 17th, early 18th century to the death of the 6th Emperor Orangzeb. We used to talk about decline quite a lot, and what historians have really tried to emphasise is that there's a process of change and transformation that occurs

after the empire starts to retreat territorially. The Emperor Orangzeb, he dies, and there's a period of factionalism at court, there's a lack of clear leadership, and that's when I think the imperial centre starts to lose, a grip over some of the outlying provinces. So we've got various independent states throughout India, because as the moguls sort of retrench, not necessarily decline,

but as they, you know, their territories reduce, perhaps. So we've got independent states in Bengal, we've got Awad, we've got Hiderabad, we've got Sikhs in Punjab. Let's talk about one of the rising powers then. This would be the Maratha in the Deccan Peninsula. That's in a sort of centre of the Indian subcontinent. They've got a leader by the name of Shivaji. Shivaji, like many people of many different phases,

in this period serves masters of other faiths. Right, yeah, yeah. These kinds of distinctions of between different religious groups are being made in this period, but there may be not as hard as and rigid as they've become today. Yeah, right. So we can kind of look back and we can sort of over-determine these kinds of religious conflicts. That's not to say that there aren't religious conflicts,

but these religious boundaries are becoming ossified in this period. when the Mughals start moving into the South, into the Deccan, they start trying to expand their empire into the peninsula. Shiverty thinks this might be a good moment for him, so he tries to sort of broker an agreement with the Mughals. But I don't think the Mughals take him perhaps as seriously as they should have taken him. And I think that's where one of the falling outs happens. Wouldn't be the first time that the Mughals think of outsiders in this manner.

I mean, they write about Afghans in this way. They write about various groups who over the 18. century are coming to power in and around Delhi. They see them as sort of people who are outside of the Mughal order, who people are uncivilised or a bit rough around the edges. In the other it doesn't really matter because what Shibhiji does is he has himself coronated as a king. And in 1674, he assembles a group of Brahmin priests who perform all the necessary rituals in order to have him crowned as a chatrapati, a lord of the umbrella, which is kind of like a kind of lordly title. The empire is expanding and I think the maratis really seized the moment after

Orangzeb's death and the political instability in the imperial court, as well as the lack of clear leadership to expand in the south. Let's talk about the Rajput empire as well, because this is another power rising and suddenly having a good time. Where is this in the geography of India? Are we in the north? The Rajputs that most people think about when they think about the Rajputs, I'm sure lots of people are thinking about the Rajputs a lot of the time. Roman Empire for Brown people. I just thought about them again. Oh, my goodness.

How many times today? Oh, five times at least. Wow. That's a slow day today. So the grandest of all the Rajpur royal houses are the ones that are in what's today of Rajasthan. One of the preeminent Rajput kingdoms is Mewar or Udaipur, which was ruled by the Sissodio dynasty.

Incidentally, Udepur is where the James Bond film Octopusy was filmed. If you go there, you can pretty much see it on loop. every single night. One of the boldest casting choices in human history. They needed to cast an Indian. Who did they go to? One of the actors from the second biggest film industry in the world, I think, at the time. No, tennis player.

The main Indian guy in Octopus is Vijay Amrith Raj. He's a tennis player. As well as the Udaipur Rajhqatul at Marwar, there are the Rathas, with their capital at Jodpur, and then the Kachajahas in neighbouring Jepur. You know, Udaipur and Jaipur and Jodpur, these are the places that lots of people go to on holiday. They're on countless documentaries. They give us that image of Royal India's sort of castles and palaces and elephants. So they are the Rajput sort of dynasties that we think of.

Let's add another empire into our catalogue of empires. The Sikh Empire, which I guess is almost into Afghanistan as well. We're in northwest India now. The Sikh Empire does abut Ahmad Shah's and his. descendants' kingdom. At its height, the Sikh Empire reaches towards what is now called the North West Frontier. But the Sikh Empire is one that's formed quite late in the 18th century, in fact, right at the end of the century, which is why I like the idea of a long 18th century. What's happening beforehand is also, I suppose, really important. So if you don't know,

the Sikhs are followers of the teachings of Grunanuk and his descendants. Grunanik was actually alive at the time that the first Mughal emperor came to march down to North India and conquered India from the Delhi Sultans in 5026. And after his death, the Sikhs are led by a succession of other gurus and some of them choose to militarise the Sikhs. The Sikhs are in conflict with the Mughals but also other powers and sometimes amongst themselves in the early 18th century.

The Sikh rulers form a number of different kingdoms of their own based around their military units or missiles. and then it's in 1799 that these missiles are united by Ranjit Singh into the Sikh Empire. So it's 12 missiles that combined into an empire. So Maharaja Ranjit Singh captured Lahore in 1799. That's your big year that you wanted to sneak into the long 18th century, right? Yes, and he is alive until... Wait, what year we snuck in?

1799, which, you know, is right at the tail end, but then... No, come on, that's in the century. It's like when a movie comes out in 1989, you're like, it's an 80s movie. It's an 80s movie. Sure. But he keeps ruling for ages, right? Yeah, he dies in 1839, and his descendants are also on the throne for a couple more years, but that's when the East India Company sort of swoops in.

We'll get to that bit later, Jackie. But yeah, he sort of rules for almost four decades. He's kind of parallel to, I guess, almost the beginning of Queen Victoria, isn't he? He really sort of sees a huge amount of history there. And now it's time to introduce the cameo that we've all been waiting for into the story. Who am I talking about Nish? The East India Company.

Yes. The whites are here. It wasn't just actually the British. There was the Dutch as well, right? Oh, good knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, there was a Dutch East India Company as well. Yeah.

Why didn't none of these people have their own names? There's actually several European nations who are elbowing their way in. They're not invited in, right? So, I mean, can you sort of run us through some of them? It all began, of course, with Vasudeau. Gamma's famous voyage to Asia. He gets to India in 1498 and a year later, he's already back in Portugal. And in the decades that follow for much of the 16th century, the Portuguese are exploiting this new knowledge of how to get to Asia. They're creating trading enterprise

that runs between Portugal and Asia. Not just India, other places too. And other Europeans want to get in on the act. So that's when a group of English merchants get together and formed the East India Company in 1600, and then in the Netherlands, the Dutch East India Company is created in 1602. And then there's a whole bunch of others as well. Some of them are private enterprises, some of them are state-run enterprises and sometimes there are things in between. One country we haven't mentioned, actually, Nish, do you want to guess another European power? Whenever you talk about European colonizers, the Belgians are always acting up. The Belgians are always acting up. They're always gifting countries to their stupid kings.

But I don't think there's any Belgian. I don't believe there's any Belgians that turn up in India, but obviously I could be... Well, it's not Belgium and isn't in the Netherlands. The French? There we go. Yeah, it's the French. Their French are in India too, which is not just...

It's not well known here in the UK. Oh, that's why they're Pondicherry. Yeah. Yeah, right, right. I've been to Pondicherry and you're like, why is this stuff in French? And you're like, why... Let's not start asking those questions because, you know,

I've got a British passport, I'm in trouble if we start pulling at the thread of why are there a European and influence in different parts of India. There's also another European country that pops up, quite a surprising one. My God, these people. No offence. You've already guessed at Belgium, which I thought was a pretty, slightly outlandish guess, but do you want to go even more unexpected?

The Spanish? I mean, that's too sensible, I guess, arguably. Right, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's weirder than that. I think so. What, does Luxembourg turn up for us dust up? Charmingly. No, Denmark.

How does Denmark even get there? I mean, I'd love to know. It's a long old commute, isn't it? Yeah. All the way around. Yeah, Denmark show up. And their plan, Nish, is quite a charming one in some ways. They took advantage of the Anglo-French wars and rivalry.

Yeah. And they offered merchants the ability to fly, well, the ability to sail under the neutral flag of Denmark. So they wouldn't be attacked by either side. They were basically a maritime VPN service. But the important thing to stress, and I think you want to stress, you're a historian, you're a historian of trade, aren't you? I mean, the Mughal Empire was already plugged into global trade networks. It's not that European powers showed up and said, oh, let's do trade. Yeah, it's happening before the 18th century, and it's happening before the Europeans show up.

So India is really plugged into trade networks in every direction. So there's the caravan routes, which I've worked on a bit between India and Central Asia, Iran, parts of Russia, so towards the north. And then going towards the west, there are all the ports in the Arab Peninsula, the Red Sea region and East Africa. And then, of course, there's Siam and the Spice Islands to the east. And these are just some of the places where you either find Indian goods or you find Indian merchants. There's trade between England and India direct trade once the East India company is formed. There's lots of really exciting new research, which has been not just about trade between Asia and Europe, but trade at a more global level. And the Spanish are

moving goods between Asia and the new world. And what we're starting to kind of realize is that the reach of some of these goods are really global. So it's not just the rich in England who are decorating their country houses with fine Chinese wallpapers and Indian textiles and so on. It's also this, you know, it's a kinds of cloth that are used in the transatlantic slave trade between Africa and the Americas and Indian cloth is a medium of exchange in the transatlantic slave trade

but there are also fairly ordinary Mexicans who are buying Indian and Chinese goods. Indigo is a big one, isn't it? Is that going global? Indigo, because that's a... Oh, I've got a good story about Indigo. Oh, go on then, yeah, give us your... Well, I don't know if it's a good story. No, you've got to deliver now.

Oh, I know. So Indigo, it's called Indigo because it comes from India. You've got to go India to get it. There is an airline in India called Indigo. You want Indigo, you got Go, Indy. So the Europeans... For listeners, I'm considered to be an intelligent comedian. So that tells you what the intellectual capacity is for the rest of my profession.

Okay, so Indigo, yes. Europeans are buying indigo from India in the 17th century. It's all going great. And then they decide to transplant... indigo production to the Americas, so to the Carolinas, to the Caribbean. And there they quote unquote improve how the dye is produced. So you have to grow a plant and then you have to turn the plant into a dye. And that combined with other factors puts lots of indigo production and indigo producers in India out of business. There's also like a terrible famine in the 17th century

and all kinds of other factors. But that doesn't mean that people who are using indigo dye within Asia stop needing indigo dye. And one of the things that happens in this period is that new places start to produce indigo dye in this period. So in parts of Punjab near Afghanistan, there are relatively new, in fact, probably entirely new indigo fields, fields planted with indigo and dye that's being produced there

for the caravan trade to Afghanistan and Iran and Central Asia. And the interesting thing that I mean, I'm going to have to use the dreaded sea word now, Capitalism. The 18th century is the era in which people would often say capitalism is invented. Some would say slightly earlier. What does capitalism mean and how is it arriving into India or has it been there all long? Well, we think of capitalism as this uniquely European invention,

that it's something that emerges in Europe. You know, these Tuscan bankers are creating banks and that's the kind of master narrative. But one thing is we've known for quite a while now is that there are similar developments in banking and finance and trade and the market that are happening fairly simultaneously across Europe, but also the Middle East and parts of Asia, including India. And this is not a new development in the 18th century. This is something that has been unfurling for a long time for at least two centuries by the 18th century.

But I think it comes to a kind of crescendo in the 18th century. Two things stand out. One is that the market has really encroached people's lives much more by the 18th century. People's awareness of the value of real estate and their assets, for example, has intensified by this period. People are really fighting over them and they're getting in bits of paper signed and notarized because they know what the market for properties like, for example, and that's just one example. The second thing that comes to mind is the growing power of merchants and bankers. And they don't form a bourgeoisie like they do in Europe.

but they are becoming more important and their relationship to the state is becoming much closer. And that's partly because of what's happening in India in the 18th century. So you have these new rulers and some old rulers too, rulers of these states who are building up their kingdoms and what do they need? They need money and how are they going to get money? They're going to get money by having a bureaucracy that doesn't leak money

and by increasing the amount of production and trade that's happening within their kingdom. So they bring land under cultivation, they try and attract new kinds of cultivation there that maybe didn't happen previously, try and create new trade routes, maybe have new kinds of manufacturing. And merchants and bankers are financing that,

and they're also, sometimes their family members are part of that bureaucracy too. And as well as banking, as well as merchants, as well as insurance firms and so on, that sort of thing, We also get another profession beginning with M. An important profession, a beloved profession. Do you want to guess what they would be, Nish? Mourthmakers.

The first comedians emerge. There are lots of those actually in the 18th century. Really? Yeah. I don't know if there are more, but they're definitely more prominent. Wow. No, I said beloved. No, mercenaries.

We get the mercenary class who show up. Nish, have you ever heard of Amir Khan? Well, Amir Khan? Yeah. Boy, you mean the incredibly famous actor? Not that one from Lagan. And not the boxer either. Have I heard of Amir Khan?

Of course I've heard of Amir Khan. No, this is the third most famous Amir Khan, after the pugilist as well. Jagheet, who was Amir Khan the Afghan mercenary? He's a big deal, right? Yeah, he began his rise by serving the Marathes, who gave him a royal title. And they gave him some land that he formed into a kind of principality.

he then joined the Maharaja of Jodhpur's service, Jodhpur again, but his scheming got him into trouble, which is unsurprising given that he was implicated in poisoning one of the king's favourites. And so he's expelled from Jodhpur in 1815. But he wasn't unusual. I mean, there are lots of mercenaries. There's what I've called a whole market for violence, which already exists by the 18th century,

but in the 18th century, when there is all this competition over land to, you know, fashion your own kingdom and make your own state, when so much is at stake, those kinds of actors are becoming more powerful, more important. And it's not uncommon for some of them to be given land in return for their loyal service and to form principalities of their own, making this even more complicated, this whole patchwork of different states. I mean, in the end, it doesn't work out for him, right? I think he sort of just like goes to Tonk, which is his principality, and he just retreats and has a nice retirement. Oh, really? Okay.

Does he really? I don't know. Right, yeah. It's just you don't associate mercenaries with like winding down. He doesn't. When you hear mercenary, you don't think gentle retirement getting into gardening. And if you do, they're up to something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You sort of feel with mercenaries it's probably going to end quite badly. The nuance window! Well, it's time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Nish and I pull out our paintbrushes and poetry books for two minutes. while Dr. Jagheet takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about India in the 18th century. My stopwatch is ready. So take it away, Dr. Jagg-Git.

Well, I think what we've, has become clear by now is that the 18th century was a really exciting, really dynamic time. It's full of lots of opportunities, some hazards too. But this isn't how we've always seen the 18th century. And to grasp just how much our understanding has changed, I think it pays to go back to the period itself. Now from the point of view of Mughal writers, anyone who rocked the boat was tarred as a rebel and often seen as being a ruffian from outside the Mughal order. Another important set of source materials we have on the 18th century are those histories that are written by men working for the East India Company

after the colonial conquest had begun. And these writers had a vested interest in helping the company legitimate its new spoils and so they portrayed it as the, they portrayed the company as the font of order and peace in prosperity. That conquest would help Indians out of the chaos that supposedly reigned supreme. So these two very different groups of writers, some writing in Persian, in and around the Mughal court, those writing in English on behalf of the company, gave us a very similar and very negative picture of the century. And that picture more or less persisted until around about the late 1970s, when historians started to turn their attention to all these new regional courts that

we've been talking about. Now, the first part of this work was really about state buildings, It's about revenue management and so on. And it showed that these new rulers and their collaborators, like merchants and bankers, were creating a political order and islands of economic prosperity at a very regional level. More recent work in the wake of the cultural turn has focused on court culture, art, poetry, music, intellectual life, and it's shown us just how vibrant these regional centres were. What's maybe been missed in some of this is detail about the lives of fairly ordinary people and how that was changing. That kind of social history is something I've been fascinated by ever since I wrote my first book,

and I'm sure the archives can tell us much more. Wonderful. Two minutes on the dots. Well done. Wow. That was bang on. Yeah. Give a lot of lectures. Two minute ones. Nish, final thoughts on 18th century India, have you? This has been great. Like, this is a, you know.

She's doing it more often. Yeah. This is really filling in like a total gap in my historical. knowledge and really like reframing the way I think about the sort of East India Company and even what I was saying I think one of the things I think is interesting about this idea

of this independent sort of capitalism springing up is that even in kind of what you would identify as politically progressive history of the region we still talk about it as we still have this like victim narrative around it that Western capitalism

in cohorts with Western governments took over these countries and we only focus on them as conquered lands essentially even when we're trying to write positive histories about them. And actually it really benefits to understand that there was a whole independent culture and country that was evolving and to look at it through a non-European lens, even when the European lens is trying to be progressive and post-colonial anti-capitalist. Thank you so much, Nish. Thank you so much, and listener, if you want more Indian history, check out our episodes on the Mughal Empire

or on the history of Bollywood cinema. That was a fun one. And if you want a different perspective on the 18th century, why not listen to our episode on Black People in Georgian England? And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, but I'd just like to say huge thank you to our guests in History Corner.

We had the incredible Dr Jagjeet Lally from UCL. Thank you, Jack Jee. Thanks, Greg. It's been an absolute hoot and in Comedy Corner. We have the fantastic, Nish Kumar. Thank you, Nish. Thank you very much for having me. me, it was very educational. I hope to remember some of it.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we shine new lights on historical periods. But for now, I'm off to go and make my fortune by investing in Indigo. Hopefully, I'm not hundreds of years too late. Bye! Your Zed to me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. screenshot it gave me as an actress just what i was craving they were both very mature as filmmakers this was a film that spoke to a red state blue state divide i'm mark kermode and i'm elenny jones and we'll direct you through the intertwined worlds of film television and streaming in the new

series we'll look at studio jibbley and summer blockbusters and start with cinema's fascination with doppelgangers helped by the one and only Richard Iowardy. I'd quite like to meet more Norwegian-Nigerians. In fact, if there's a meeting, I'll happily attend. Screenshot from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.