AHC: Mughal Comeback

Challenge: With a starting time from 1700 to 1760s, have the Mughal Empire become a powerful again, controlling the North, and competing with the Europeans, Maratha Empire, and the Sikh Empire.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
The wounds were too deep by then. The Hindu and Sikh Empires and their Sufi and Shia Muslim people would no longer trust the Mughals after a persecution that took place after Shah Jahan died. The European powers easily took hold with this situation. The works of their ancestors was ruined during and after Aurangzeb. With all his foolish decisions and persrcutions,he made the situation get worse and worse. And coinciding this,European powers appeared. It would hence be ASB for this to happen.
 
The wounds were too deep by then. The Hindu and Sikh Empires and their Sufi and Shia Muslim people would no longer trust the Mughals after a persecution that took place after Shah Jahan died. The European powers easily took hold with this situation. The works of their ancestors was ruined during and after Aurangzeb. With all his foolish decisions and persrcutions,he made the situation get worse and worse. And coinciding this,European powers appeared. It would hence be ASB for this to happen.
Have auragzeb die in 1700, have his son Muhammad Azam shah win the succession struggle and become emperor. There. The Mughals have half a chance
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Have auragzeb die in 1700, have his son Muhammad Azam shah win the succession struggle and become emperor. There. The Mughals have half a chance
I doubt. Aurangzeb was already a person with ill will and intent. By the time he died,the dynasty was already in trouble. But for this to work you need Aurangzebs son to be brought up by somebody good than himself.
 
It’s definitely possible. Aurangzeb may have had a plan to partition the empire between three of his sons. In particular, according to this plan, Kam Baksh was to be given control of the Deccan conquests, and I suspect that the other partition (between Delhi and Agra) would just end after one brother defeats the other (a typical succession war). This smaller Deccan empire would be more capable of fighting off the Maratha onslaught, while the Mughals in the north could better deal with the various rebellions - the Mughals made great progress against the Sikhs at around this time, for instance, and there were even attempts to compromise with them (for instance, Kapur Singh was made Nawab of Punjab).

Even if you don’t believe this partition plan existed, Kam Baksh made an attempt to rule over the Deccan conquests after the death of Aurangzeb, so if he had succeeded (maybe had he been governor of Bijapur before the death of Aurangzeb), he would have had a stronger footing in his attempt to break away.
 
I mean personally, I think the very latest this is achievable is 1720, and even then the past ten years would definitely be seen as a catastrophe of the highest order with a fair bit of Mughal prestige lost, and likely territorial losses. I’d suggest the Hindustani faction of the Sayyid brothers being given total support from emperor Farrukhsiyar, as their policies of conciliation were restoring diplomatic relations between the Sikhs, the Marathas and gaining Hindu support by re abolishing Jizya.
The Marathas were definitely willing to work within the Mughal system if given enough prestige and power, akin to how Akbar conciliated the Rajputs and they could probably be dealt with diplomatically. If they can sort that out, the real problem becomes reforming the tax collecting systems so it’s fairer for the peasants, ideally at the expense of the tax collecting jagirdar class, as a lot of the rebellions can also be interpreted as agrarian revolts against corrupt Mughal officials. There was a trend in 18th century India towards dynamic fiscally oriented centralised bureaucratic states and if the Mughals can reform towards that, it would definitely help. All of these states delayered the government and built support amongst the peasantry in a way that Mughal successor states in the north never managed, due to the cronyism and renter class that emerged from the decay of imperial institutions. If they can do for the Marathas what they did for the Rajputs they have a decent chance of avoiding Nader Shahs invasion altogether and maybe halting it at the Khyber pass if it does come, and thus there’s no real drive for an Afghan polity either, reducing a lot of tension on the northwest frontier and securing trade routes vital for the urban economy
 
I doubt. Aurangzeb was already a person with ill will and intent. By the time he died,the dynasty was already in trouble. But for this to work you need Aurangzebs son to be brought up by somebody good than himself.

I agree, by his time, the dynasty was already in trouble, but the effects he personally had have been vastly overstated compared to for example the disincentives the jagirdar system created for mansabdars to listen to imperial authority, the inflation caused by excess European silver of the same vein that caused Ming collapse, the fact that after him, very few emperors had been trained to rule and if they were they came to the throne at sixty, the taxfarmjng and bankruptcy of the empire most contributed to by Shah Jahans pointless attempt to conquer Samarkand, the corruption and factionalism at court, the lack of any sort of military discipline, the lack of popular support due to prevalence of foreign born courtiers in positions of power and a lot of other things that Aurangzeb at the very maximum only made worse and didn’t make, and were present in some cases basically from Akbar onwards
 
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