Mughal vs. Maratha

The Mughals were Muslim/Islamic and the Marathas were Hindu, and both struggled against each other for dominance in the Indian subcontinent. From my understanding it, Aurangazeb saw the zenith of expansion of the Mughal Empire c. 1700s but also the resurgence of the Maratha military under Shivaji Bhosale. By 1739, the Mughals were defeated by the invading armies of Nadir Shah, and the booty was enough that Nadir suspended taxation in his empire for three years.

With the crumbling of the empire, the Marathas had routed Moghul armies, and won over several Mughal provinces from the Deccan to Bengal, and internal dissatisfaction arose due to the weakness of the Mughal Empire's administrative and economic systems, leading to the declaration of independence by the Nawabs of Bengal, Bhopal, Oudh, Carnatic, Rampur, the Nizam of Hyderabad and Shah of Afghanistan.

Is it possible that the Mughal Empire can instead be shocked/forced into a revival following Nadir's death? That it can reestablish itself as the premier power of India? And if it were to do that, how would European colonization of India be affected?

Thoughts?
 

Razgriz 2K9

Banned
The Mughals were Muslim/Islamic and the Marathas were Hindu, and both struggled against each other for dominance in the Indian subcontinent. From my understanding it, Aurangazeb saw the zenith of expansion of the Mughal Empire c. 1700s but also the resurgence of the Maratha military under Shivaji Bhosale. By 1739, the Mughals were defeated by the invading armies of Nadir Shah, and the booty was enough that Nadir suspended taxation in his empire for three years.

With the crumbling of the empire, the Marathas had routed Moghul armies, and won over several Mughal provinces from the Deccan to Bengal, and internal dissatisfaction arose due to the weakness of the Mughal Empire's administrative and economic systems, leading to the declaration of independence by the Nawabs of Bengal, Bhopal, Oudh, Carnatic, Rampur, the Nizam of Hyderabad and Shah of Afghanistan.

Is it possible that the Mughal Empire can instead be shocked/forced into a revival following Nadir's death? That it can reestablish itself as the premier power of India? And if it were to do that, how would European colonization of India be affected?

Thoughts?

Probably in its core territories, but by then it's too late, because by the time of Nadir's Death, you have a pitifully weak Mughal Empire surrounded by the Marathas, the Nawabs and the Afghans of the Durrani Empire...Long story short, the Mughals at this point are doomed.
 
Shah Alam II was in the process of revitalizing the empire. And the nawabs didn't declare independence- imperial firmans were the source of their legitimacy- they just became de facto independent. And even still the nawabs tended to continue paying certain sums to the emperor.

From this point onwards, however, the Mughal Empire would notgo back to being centralized; instead it would probably be an alliance of the independent nawabs with the emperor acting as common head.
 
Something I've been wondering, courtesy of watching netflix's Marco Polo, is if it were possible for the Moghuls/Marathas to create a state in India - perhaps lasting at least until the dawn of the 20th century - much like the Chinese or Japanese Empires: i.e. Europeans have permission to trade in the Moghul/Maratha Empire, maybe even to make converts among the Hindi/Muslim/whatevers to Christianity, but the Emperor is still in a position of power (much like the Japanese Emperor following the Tokugawa period), rather than there being a splintering of states that were eventually swallowed by the Britannic Indian Empire.
 
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