You're Dead to Me - India between empires: the long 18th century

Episode Date: September 12, 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 eighteenth century. From the sixteenth century, the dominant power in India was the Mughal Empire. According to the traditional narrative, when the Mughals began to decline in the eighteenth 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 eighteenth 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. If you’re a fan of the history of globalisation, the connections between politics, economics and social relations, and debunking historical myths, you’ll love our episode on the long eighteenth century in India. If you want to know more about the history of India, check out our episodes on the Mughals and Bollywood. And for more eighteenth-century history, there’s our episode on Black Georgian England. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. 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

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Music, radio, podcasts Hello Greg here, just a reminder before we get going that episodes of Your Dead to Me are released on Fridays wherever you get your podcasts, but if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes

28 days earlier than anywhere else first on BBC Sounds. 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 early modern India with a special interest in trade. You might have read one of his wonderful books, India and the Silk Roads, or India and the early modern world, is Dr. Jaggi Lally. Welcome, Jaggeet. 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, Mish. I'm thrilled to be here.

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, the three of us are sort of sat around.

There's a circular seating arrangement, and it is genuinely giving me. me flashbacks to feeling under-prepared in history seminars. I feel under-prepared and slightly damp. And that was my state for most of 2005, six and seven. Lovely. How are you on 18th century India? 18th century India, I've got a loose bit of knowledge.

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 guilty that's my broad that's my broad knowledge of this period of Indian history the only bit of it this specific Indian history I studied

we did a bit of mogul stuff because you know the British warmer you're getting warmer In the British state education curriculum, we like to do stuff before the British turned up. Just to set the scene that it was bad. 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. But that was an elected choice in my A levels. That's the only time I studied the British Empire in the course of my A levels. I don't think that can be the case 22 odd years later. I don't believe history students are still getting to the end of their A-levels without touching the sides of some of the British Empire stuff. You'd hope, right, but I will say this sad intake of breath

from the two historians I'm in a room with is really concerning me because I had sort of assumed that things had, the dial had shifted. It's a process, I think. 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.

And if you're listening from outside of India, 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 Marathra and the Afghan army,

or there's Bajirao Mastani, a tragic love story set at the Maratha Court, or there's Kerala Vama Pazashi 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, and how easy was it to get your coffee fix in 18th century Delhi? Let's find out.

Right, Jagit, can we start with some basics? Because I certainly feel out of my comfort zone here. 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, you know, 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 160 years into a century. That's a bit sneaky. Historians do like to do that.

We do like to have very long centuries. Well, I'm about to enter my 40s. and I will be continuing to be in my 30s for another five years. The long 30. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the long, the long decade, the long century. Time is elastic. Okay, so we've got our sort of a frame of reference. And I mean, you are a politics head.

I mean, you co-host a politics podcast. You study politics university. You are perhaps one of the most political comedians on the circuit, I think. So do you know what political entities are in India at this time? What empires, what states, what kingdoms? Beyond my sort of loose understanding. understanding of the Mogul Empire and the coming of the East India Company, my actual knowledge of what's going on in India in this period is very, very poor, very poor. And also I think

partly that's because my Indian family is from Kerala, which is the right of the southern tip of India. And so in some ways, it's slightly removed from some of these events. They get very animated by communism, which continues to animate Kerala to this day. And then they get then a lot of them get very involved in the independent struggle in the kind of middle of the 20th century. But no, my knowledge of what's going on politically and culturally in 18th century India is very poor. Okay, listeners will know 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, Chakshi. I mean, this sort of superpower, this glorious empire, was on the way down. 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 fill 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 Tumur, or Tamerlane, 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. And despite some setbacks, and there's a brief period of Mughal Interregnum, where the Mughal Emperor is in exile in Iran. Apart from that, 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. Fast forward a couple of decades, 1739, and that's when Nathar Shah marches from Iran into North India, and he sacks the capital city, he carries off all kinds of treasure, including the Coenue Diamond, which is now in the crown jewels, back to Iran.

It has a really interesting history of how it ends up in the crown jewels. But that's for another show maybe. It is, yeah. And it's that invasion of 1739 that really emboldens people who are hungry for a bit of power of their own

to maybe show a little bit less deference to the Imperial Centre. Start going it alone a little bit because, of course, that invasion really dense the prestige of the Mughal dynasty and the Mughal family. So I would say there are two really important turning points.

I mean, historians hate turning points, but there are two really important turning points One is the death of Orang's Erb in 1707, and I guess the other would be Nardosha's invasion in 1739. And we also have an Afghan ruler, Ahmed Shah Abdali as well. He's sort of coming in from a different direction. Same direction. Same direction. Ahmed Shah actually is part of that invasion in 1739. So he's a military general who is co-opted by Nathar Shah.

And in 1747, when Nathar Shah is assassinated. Spoiler. Yeah. Ahmid Shah Abdali creates his own kingdom in Afghanistan and he creates his own empire. We call it the Durrani Empire. It means pearl of pearls. Where is that happening?

The capital is in Kandahar. Oh, okay. It then expands into bits of what is now Iran and into North India. Wow. And he in Amid Shah conquers bits of India. He has these series of raids into North India. India, including in 1757, he reaches the imperial capital at Delhi. And he sort of holds the

imperial nobility to ransom. Wow. That takes some serious... Kandahar to Delhi is not a short journey. No, it's not a... I'm not a geographer. But even I know, that's a long way. It is a long way. And a lot of treasure gets, falls off the wagons on the way back from Delhi to Kandahar. It's fall off the wagon a euphemism for stolen. Yeah. Like how where Eric Trotto sold some things that had fallen off a wagon. Yeah. Back of a lorry, yeah.

Okay, good. So we've got various independent states throughout India there 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 Hidurabad, we've got Sikhs in Punjab. There's different powers rising or perhaps just rising to prominence. Yeah.

And there's a real range of different kinds of people who have. seizing the moment there. So some of the states that you've mentioned, Bengal, Hyderabad, other, these are created by real insiders. So these are men who were appointed as provincial governors of Mughal provinces who slowly, slowly start to sort of cut their ties,

maybe stop paying tribute, maybe being less deferential to the Imperial Centre and basically create sort of hereditary or personal kingdoms of their own. Is that because they're post, after Aangzeb dies? No, it's really after 1739. It's really after Nathar's invasion.

Right. What's going on in Kerala at this point? What are my ancestors up to? Yeah, it's really hard to slot that into the story. It really fit. What are my lads up to? Yeah, there's a lot of really exciting stuff, but it's not really post-Mougal.

It doesn't really fit into that story. It has a really exciting independent story of its own. I'm always trying to figure out what's going on with my life. We're always off doing our own thing. Let's talk about one of the rising powers then. This would be the Maratha. Is it 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. Is that right? What would you like to know about him, Greg? I would like to know. Well, actually, I'm going to ask Nish. Why do you think he has fallen out with the moguls? Well, he, Shivaji, as a name, suggests that he's Hindu. So is it a religious schism with the moguls?

Interesting, yes. No. Oh. Listen, it's nice to have... I should laugh at people's mistakes. No, no. It's not what I... I wouldn't even say that's a mistake.

I think there's a sense of my suggestion. Listen, I'm here to learn. No, in fact, actually, Shivaji, like many people of many different faiths 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.

In fact, he serves a number of Muslim masters. His family are from fairly humble stock. Within a couple of generations, they've served Muslim rulers in the south of India. in the Deccan, and they've risen up the ranks, they've been made land a gentry of a sort. 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 18th 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 end, it doesn't really matter because what Shivaji 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 Chhatrapati, a lord of the umbrella, which is kind of like a kind of lordly title. It's a baller move. Get yourself crown king. I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often. Listen, if you're listening right now and you own your own home, congratulations to you.

Why not declare yourself the king of it? And see how you go from there. It's as made up as the actual king. So Shivaji found essentially that the Maratha kind of empire. I mean, it rises, it grows, it expands. it suddenly becomes a dominant power in the central region, the Deccan Peninsula. And what's the political arrangement? So, yeah, the empire is expanding.

And I think the Marathas really seized the moment after Orenzeb's death and the political instability in the imperial court, as well as the lack of clear leadership to expand in the South. A really key development is the sharing of power with the Pesuals. And the Pesulas are basically, they're like prime ministers, and they basically become the de facto rulers of the Marata lands, which are kind of expanding through the 18th century. And they do lots of really great stuff.

So they, I sound like I'm on their payroll. They attract talented, literate elites. They entice them to work in their bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is becoming kind of more streamlined and more efficient. And it's also under the Marata Peshwaz, but relatively poor banking and credit facilities in the South are improved. And that's really important for trade and for the health of the economy as a whole.

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. It's like the Roman Empire for Brambley. 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 Rajasthan. One of the preeminent Rajput kingdoms is Mehwar or Udehpur, 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. Tennis player. The main Indian guy in octopus is Vijay Amrath Raj. He's a tennis player. As well as the Udaipur Rajputkot at Marwar, there are the Rathars, with their capital at Jodpur, and then the Kachahas 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 documents. 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 empire as the Sikh Empire, which I guess is almost into Afghanistan as well. I mean, we're in north-west India now. The Sikh Empire does abut Ahmad Shah's and his descendants' kingdom. So at its height, the Sikh Empire reaches towards what is now called the Northwest 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 Gounanuk and his descendants. Grunach was actually alive at the time that the first Mughal emperor came to. 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 White's here. It wasn't just actually the British. There was the Dutch as well, right? Oh, good knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, it was. There was a Dutch East India Company as well. It was. Yeah. Yeah. Why didn't none of these people have their own names?

What would you have pitched as a name? I don't know. I'm trying to think of a Dutch reference and all I can think of is Dennis Bergkamp, the Arsenal Holland Footballer. The Dennis Birdgown. Camp Empire. You're right about the Dutch. 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 Vasco da Gama's famous voyage to Asia. He gets to India in 48 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. Yeah, why are all these companies packing heap? Like, that's what, that's the thing that I've always struggled to wrap my mind around, you know, like, because especially as we sort of live in an era where now large multinational corporations are starting to sort of almost supersede the nation state. Like, are we going, are we about to go back to, like, Amazon having a private drone army or something? Please know. All those data centers are bad enough. In the interest of BBC impartiality, other companies could have a drone army. The metamorines.

Yeah. 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. Oh, good. 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 the Netherlands?

The French? There we go. Yeah, it's the French. They're 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 influence in different parts of India. I mean, JG, there are obviously huge conflicts in Europe between Britain and France, between various powers. And then, of course, they're also meeting each other in battle in India. Are those things links? Are they separate? You know, what's going on? Yeah. So there's the war of the Austrian succession, which is fought in Europe between 1744 and 1747. And then there's the seven years war between 1756 and 1763. That is seven years. It's not a long sentence.

And these conflicts roughly overlap with what are known as the Carnatic Wars, which are fought in India. between 1746 and 1763. And, yeah, there is a sort of spillover of these European rivalries and conflicts into the international arena in this period. The East India Company is a private company, has shareholders, but it's also a national interest. Yeah. And it's closely related to the state.

So the East India Company can't avoid getting embroiled in some of these conflicts. and some of these walls that are fought in the south of India are basically proxy wars between the British and the French. There's also another European country that pops up, quite a surprising one. My God, these people. No offence. You've already guessed 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, what, 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 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. It says in the script here that they were trading with as far away as Bristol. How do we know that?

How is Bristol trading with India in the 18th century? Well, by the 18th century, there's definitely trade, I think, between, between England and India. There's trade between England and India direct trade once the East India Company is formed. There are times when goods are not allowed into Britain. So there's this real craze for cotton cloth, cotton textiles from India, calicoes.

And there's such a kind of fever for it that there's a fear that it's putting British textile manufacturers out of business. And so goods are smuggled in from the coast. Bristol is an important port. But also Mexico City, right? You know, so there's this idea that there's trade happening between India and Mexico City, which is literally the new world, you know, in the 16, 17th century parlance.

Yeah, 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, world, sometimes by crossing the Pacific, and sometimes by using the route that goes around Africa, into Europe and then to the Americas. 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. Amazing. So it's mainly textiles. Or textile spices, a combination of a bunch of things. Textiles and spices, definitely. Indigo is a big one, isn't it? Is that going global? Indigo? Oh, I've got a good story about indigo. Oh, go on then. Yeah, give us your... I don't know if it's a good story. No, you've got it to deliver now. Oh, I know. So Indigo, it's called Indigo because it comes from India. You got to go India to get it. There is an airline in India called

Indigo. You want Indigo, you got go indie. 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, they're 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 this is also happening in other places where indigo can be produced and where rulers want the revenues that come from tax on valuable goods like indigo. There's also salt peter is a big export as well, which is, I mean, using gunpowder, right? Yeah, that's why you need it. Yeah, if you want to blow things up, you need salt peter. Another one will be the growth of the coffee house culture. We've done an episode on the history of coffee quite recently,

if listeners want to kind of check back in on that. But coffee house culture is an arrival into India in the 18th century. Coffee is one of many new goods that are making their appearance in India in the 17th and 18th centuries. So we know by the 18th century that there are coffee houses in places like Delhi. I want to work on this a bit more, actually. I want to know more about these coffee houses. Were they like the original coffee houses in the Ottoman world,

which gave us the kind of prototype for the coffee house or where they're different? What was there like Gunther working there? And like everyone hanging out talking about whether Ross and Rachel were on a break. What bits of coffee house culture? Did people have a muffin with their coffee? I mean, those are all the really important questions. Yes. Was Phoebe on guitar?

Yeah, it was Phoebe playing guitar. That's what we need to know. These are the questions we need to know. And the interesting thing that we're, I mean, I'm going to have to use the dreaded C word now. Capitalism. Oh, right? The 18th century is the era in which people, would often say capitalism is invented, some would say slightly earlier, but there's the idea

that this is the era of like hardcore finance, almost as we think of it, like, you know, where corporations and nation states are using money almost as a weapon somehow. But 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, you know, 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.

I suppose 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. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas,

and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. And there are also, sometimes they're always, family members are part of that bureaucracy too.

And as well as banking, as well as merchants and 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 emerged. 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. So, no, mercenaries. Hey, here 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, probably, after the pugilist as well. Jagheed, who was? Amir Khan, the Afghan mercenary. He's a big deal, right? Yeah, he began his rise by serving the Marathas, 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 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, actually. 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, yeah. You sort of feel with mercenaries, it's probably going to end quite badly. So we talked about monarchs, we talked about merchants, We talked about mercenaries. We talked about mirth makers. Thank you, Nish.

Let's discuss how society was structured. Was there a rigid class system? Did it change during the 18th century? What most people think of when they think of India and a rigid class system isn't class, it's probably caste. And this is the subject of quite a lot of debate. So we know that caste is associated with what we today call Hinduism. We know that the Vedic texts talk about a fourfold moral order, which is comprised of Brahmans who are a priestly caste, kashatryas, who are rulers and warriors, Vyashyas who are involved in commerce, and then Shudras, who are various kinds of labouring groups.

That much we know. What's debated is when this system came to dominate Indian society and how much it dominated Indian society. So at one extreme is the view that is existed from time immemorial. It's always been really important. At the other end is the view, that at the other extreme is the view that it's

the East India Company, it's the British who completely misunderstand caste and they make it much more of a thing than it ever has been or ever was. But in between that is probably where the consensus is about caste, that actually it's through the 17th and the

18th centuries that caste is coming to become more important in more places in more parts of India than it ever was before. And Shivaji's coronation is a good example of this, right? Because he he's from fairly humble stock but he wants to be a Kashyatria because

Kashyatryas are the warrior caste. The Rajputs are all Kashyatiyahs. So if he wants to be recognised as a kind of prestigious king, he has to be a Kashyatria. Who does he get to invest him as a Kashyatria? Brahmans, who are the priestly caste? So this whole coronation sort of reifies and consolidates caste

and the caste order. Can we talk quickly about gender relations and you know, the idea of perhaps masculinity, femininity, do we see any changes or evolutions in how relationships between men and women might be expressed? There's some really great new work which suggests that there's not only a relationship between rulers of states, kings, Kashathtra sometimes, and merchants, but also between them and Brahmans. And that what's happening in this period is that caste society is being

made and the kind of caste order that's coming into being is much more patriarchal. That women are seen as a kind of property and that their bodies, their bodily forms, freedoms are becoming much more regulated as a result. But the evidence comes from Rajasan, and I think whether we can generalise that picture across all of India, well, we have to wait and see. What we do know about other parts of India is that, you know, like in much of the pre-modern world, like, you know, today,

women are really vulnerable if they don't have independent means. And so we see women in this period, increasingly as we get through the period, trying to build up their personal wealth. Royal women, gentry women, occasionally some ordinary women too. So they are investing in property or in trade and so on, in order to, in cultivation, in order to amass a fortune of their own. The political and economic dynamism of this era was reflected in the arts. In what way?

Well, there are lots of different arts. The one that we know most about is painting, probably, because it survives in a way that more ephemeral art forms like music maybe don't survive. Comedy, yes. Oh, comedy. Well, when it's written down, people write about it sometimes. Terrible, two stars. Yeah, exactly.

The lasting memory is a one and a half star review I got from the Herald Sun in Australia in 2014. And in painting, we see in this period a real growth of regional styles. One of the things that's happening in the early part of the century is that lots of imperial artists who are in the working in the imperial workshops, they basically need a new job because things aren't so great in the centre. and so they look for patronage opportunities further afield. In fact, this process is starting maybe in the late 17th century before Orenzeb's death. And those painters, they end up in regional courts, they train others and so on. And what you start to see is a blending of the imperial style, which lots of rulers really like. They have seen it at the imperial court.

They associate it with imperial majesty with regional traditions or local traditions of painting. And so you get this kind of hybrid styles that are very, very unique to different particular places, you also get a sort of proliferation of the kinds of things that are people are painting. What kind of stuff are we painting? Nudes. What kinds of nudes? Actually, there are nudes. Are there? Gotta be nudes. Artists are turning out pictures of famous people. So the ruler, his Klansmen, other notables in society. This is a very, something that, you know, they pick up from Mughal tradition.

there are hunting scenes. Lots of the Rajabit rulers paint, lots of hunting scenes. There are paintings of important manuscripts. That's where you, you know, things like the Kama Sutra, but also other manuscripts. Paintings of like the Indian Raghas. And also paintings of the kingdom itself. Right. So sort of nature imagery, something about that.

Yeah. And at Udipar, there's Amar Singh I. The second, he's well known for patronising architectural paintings. He's kind of interested in. buildings and whatnot? Yeah, he localises lots of those other kinds of compositional forms to his kingdom. So you'll see

the landscape of his kingdom in the hunting scenes or in some of these important texts that are illuminated illustrated. But also, he just has pictures of his palaces, his lakes, the dam

and in the state and all kinds of things painted as well. And they're really impressive pictures. Damn fine taste. It's too cheap. Have you seen my dam? It's an incredibly boring conversation piece. Look at this painting of a dam. Oh my God, he's going on about the dam again.

Oh, God. Damn, not the dam again. There's also a poetry scene, Nish, but it's a battling poetry scene. It's a competitive. What, like rap battling? Rap battles. Oh, that's exciting. That's very exciting.

It's basically eight mile, but probably it's slightly fancier, I guess. Yeah. one's in a court. It's not quite as scuzzy as a Detroit basement. Well as the arts, we've also got patronising of science and scholarship as well. I mean, Jaising the second is renowned for the patronage of thinkers and, you know, people who study things. Yeah, Jessing builds these impressive observatories. They don't really look like observatories as we would sort of imagine an observatory, like one building with the telescope. They're off the made of a collection of different buildings, a couple of stories high, that are used to calculate

the movement of the celestial bodies. And that's why they're called Jantramanthas, so which literally means calculation instruments. And he builds them, there's one in Jaipur, there's another in Delhi, but he also builds others across Mughal, North India. So to make all the calculations that he needs, Jersing employs scholars, expert in knowledge found in Sanskrit, in Persian, in Arabic treatises on astronomy and mathematics. And they use their data to prepare a text that Jersing dedicates to the Mughal Emperor, but it's used widely across North India

and other parts of the Islamic world. What's in the text? It's a series of data tables. Oh, wow. That's kind of disappointing. If you spend quite a lot of money and then... They're really important, though. I know, but you're like, come on.

It's a spreadsheet, mate. Come on. I was hoping for a picture of a dam. I dedicate the spreadsheet to the emperor. Shout out to my main man. If you look at column B12, it's actually a really interesting data. So we have multi... Rough audio book to listen to as well. Really rough audio book.

So we've got scholarship. We have multilingual manuscripts. We have, you know, say Persian, Arabic. English? German, French, Latin, Bengali, Hindi. Okay. So it's a really multicultural, multi-faith, multi sort of traditional world we're talking about here. India is all sorts of things happening

simultaneously. Well, Jessing definitely, yeah. This is just at his court. Well, there are other observatories and other kinds of learned astronomers doing important things in other parts of India. It's just that we know much more about Jessing because he makes these massive observatories and he writes this much more interesting book than we're giving him credit for him. He's also into city planning, Jesseing. He's big on kind of the ideal city. Nish, what would be your ideal city. If you could start from scratch ambition, if you could build Nisthropolis.

I think when you go through the grid systems in American cities, you think, well, that does make a lot of sense. If you can plan that out, it does mean that you'll never fully lost, but then you do lose something of the charm

of, the thing that I think is interesting about London is it's never been planned. And actually I would say Mumbai has the same energy. There's no one has planned these cities. Like these were cities that sort of just grew sort of organically.

And it looks like a kind of wild tree stone. When you actually look at it from above, whereas North American cities were sort of, you know, they operate on a grid system. And I can see the logic of that. But I do sort of like, I like,

I enjoy the charm of a city that's sort of like a wild bush, essentially. There's just like grown outward. from a river. Like I, so if I'm honest, whilst on paper I can see the grid system would really help me. I quite like the wildness of streets that just curve round. If you're in the middle of London and you follow a street that you think is parallel, you get lost so quickly.

Because when you look at it from above, you realise some, let's face it, probably drunk guy, just drew a sort of line that loops off into the middle of, like it just sort of curves neatly off. So yeah, I would definitely say green space, I think is essential. especially if you want a lot of housing and the easiest way to build a lot of housing is to build sort of apartment blocks and so if you're doing that you absolutely need to have public green space

you've got to have a cinema but I suspect that's obviously we're 100 years off for anyone having that conversation so I can understand that that might not have made the cut you've got to have a cinema you've got to have parks you've got to have a theatre

preferably around 800 to 900 seats depending on your population size for me to do tour shows in and you've also got to have some kind of transportation system that isn't rail. All very sensible. All I heard really there was you wanted your wiry bush. That's all I heard.

As soon as you said that, my brain just went, Nish is Wiery Bush. And that's what we're calling the city. So I'm really sorry, Nish. It was a lovely answer. Jake Jete. Actually, Jay Singh's city was a grid system. It was a grid, yeah.

Was it really? But what you didn't say was a grid where every bit of the, every quadrant relates to one of the planetary bodies in Vedic scientific treatises and where the intention is to produce and cultivate particular affects and particular, you know, something in the inhabitants of those quadrants. Right, okay. Which is because the city is a sort of microcosm for the kind of moral and cosmic order. Right, okay.

Why didn't you say that? So you would have said, so New York would be a lot more chill if they built it on those There's very little relaying to the moral and cosmic order in New York. Very little of that is... Yeah, I'm walking here. Yeah, very little of that is related. Unless there's a bit of the Vedic text that I've not come across that involves someone openly urinating on a rat's house.

I don't know which bit of the Vedic text, that's it. But there's very little moral and cosmic things going on in that city. Amazing. 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 Jagicke 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. Jajit. 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 rock 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 they portrayed the company as the font of order and peace and prosperity. That conquest would help Indians out of the chaos that supposedly reigns 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,

and they started to look at new kinds of sources in order to do that, including those or their poor paintings, in fact. Now, the first part of this work was really about state building, 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 showing 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 once. Nish, final thoughts on.

18th century India, have you? This has been great. Like, this is a, you know... We should do 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 progress. 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. So what do you know now? So it's time now for the sort of you know now. This is our quickfire quiz for Nish to see how much he has remembered and learned. Oh boy. Nish, are you feeling confident. You have taken ex-sidentive notes. How many pages are we talking here?

We're talking one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. 10, 11, 12, 13, 13 pages. Competitive, aren't you? You have eclips, Sally Phillips. I was literally like, I've got no idea what's going on. I better write everything. Sally Phillips, I think, did 12 pages. You've gone 13.

Suck it, Phillips. You've gone, you've written your own doctorate over here, this thesis. Amazing. Okay, we've got ten questions for you. So, question one. Which famed Indian Empire was founded by Babur in the early 1500s? The Mogul Empire. Oh, very good, straight in.

Question two. Which surprising European country, had Indian trading outposts and let merchants borrow its flag. Denmark. It was Denmark. I love that story. That's a wild piece of knowledge, man. That's a really wild piece of information. Question three, name two commonly exported Indian goods in the 18th century.

Textiles and spices. Very good. You could add indigo and saltpeter as well. Question four. What profession did Amir Khan, the third most famous Amir Khan, belong to? Mercernery. He was. He loved it all day long. Question five, which Northern Empire made by Uniting 12 missiles was formed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1799.

The Sikh Empire. Very good. Question six. What kind of paintings were popular at the Oudapur court? Let me have a little look at my notes. It was actually, it was just mentioned. Tick-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-Otaintings of landscapes. It was, landscapes, buildings and dams, of course.

Oh, yeah, the dams. Yeah, question seven, which Rajput ruler was known for his patronage of art, astronomy, and learning. That was my main man, Jay Singh. It was the second, very good. Question eight, what was the name of the 17th century Malata leader who had himself crowned king? That would be Shivaji. Very good. I mean, the note system is working very well. The note system is really paying off for. Question nine. What was distinctive about Jay Singh's plan for the city of Jaipur? It was divided into the four Vedic quadrants. Nine, yeah, nine divisions, yeah. I'll give you that. I mean, this for a perfect 10 out of 10,

and I've even got a bonus question for you. Question 10, in which Rajput capital was the 1983 James Bond film, Octopusy film? It was in Udaiput. It was. 10 out of 10. Can he get 11? A bonus point.

Which Indian tennis player starred in the movie? Vijay Amrith Raj. 11 out of 10. He's done it. What I will say is this has been, it's showed me in some ways my intellectual capacity has not moved on from when I was a student

because this is basically what I was like as a student, knew nothing, knew absolutely nothing, and then was able to retain quite a lot of information in quite a short-term period and then did really well on exams. I fear that if we met tomorrow and you asked me those same questions, I would only get the one of our octobertsy correct.

That's the beauty. It's recorded. Yeah, exactly. You can listen to it again and again. Every day. You can just play it to people to say, I know this stuff because that's me on the recording. But that whole episode in microcosm is what I was like as a student

and absolutely knew nothing and then right at the end would just quickly retain a lot of information regurgitate it and then move on You are not the only comedian to have said that Well thank you so much, Nish Thank you so much, Jaggede 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. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner.

We have the incredible Dr. Jaggeet 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. It was very educational. I hope to remember some of it. Octopusy. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time

as we shine new light 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 Melanie Jones, and we'll direct you through the intertwined worlds of films. television and streaming. In the new series, we'll look at Studio Ghibli and summer blockbusters and start with cinema's fascination with doppelgangers. Helped by the one and only Richard Iowardy.

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