Marāṭhā Wars
The Marāṭhā Wars were a series of three significant conflicts between the Marāṭhā Empire and the British East India Company, occurring from 1775 to 1818. The wars were rooted in the power struggle following the decline of the Mughal Empire, particularly after the Marāṭhās faced a decisive defeat by Afghan forces in 1761. The First Marāṭhā War began in 1775, sparked by internal strife within the Marāṭhā leadership, leading to a complex engagement with the British that resulted in the Treaty of Salbai in 1783, restoring the status quo.
The Second Marāṭhā War (1803-1805) arose from renewed tensions, particularly influenced by the ambitions of British Governor-General Richard Wellesley. This conflict saw British forces achieve several decisive victories, leading to the Treaty of Surji Argaon, which diminished Marāṭhā power. The Third Marāṭhā War erupted in 1817, culminating in the defeat of the Marāṭhā forces, including the surrender of Peshwa Bājī Rāo II. Ultimately, these wars resulted in significant territorial gains for the British and marked the decline of Marāṭhā autonomy, although some Marāṭhā states continued to exist until India's independence in 1947.
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Marāṭhā Wars
At issue: Hegemony in Central India
Date: 1775–1818
Location: Central India
Combatants: Marāṭhā Confederacy vs. East India Company
Principal commanders:Marazha, Mahadji Shinde, Bājī Rāo II (r. 1796–1818); British, Lord Gerard Lake (1744–1808), Richard Wellesley (1760–1842), Arthur Wellesley, later duke of Wellington (1769–1852)
Principal battles: Wadgaon, Gwalior, Aligarh, Delhi, Laswari, Assaye, Argaon
Result: East India Company victorious; Marāṭhās reduced to mediated status
Background
In the early eighteenth century, the Marāṭhās of the northwestern Deccan under their peshwas seemed about to replace the Mogul Empire with their own. However, in 1761, they were decisively beaten by an invading Afghan army at the Third Battle of Pānīpat. Thereafter, Marāṭhā territorial ambitions and those of the British East India Company proved incompatible, resulting in three Marāṭhā Wars (1775–1783, 1803–1805, and 1817–1818).
Action
In 1773, the peshwa was murdered by his uncle, Raghunath Rāo, who fled to the British in Bombay and offered territorial inducements for them to make him peshwa in the Treaty of Surat (1775), which marked the beginning of the First Marāṭhā War. A British force, advancing on Poona (the peshwa’s capital), was ambushed at Wadgaon (1779) and forced to capitulate. Although the East India Company’s governor-general in Calcutta, Warren Hastings, had originally disowned the conduct of the Bombay government, he felt that the company’s prestige throughout India was at stake. He sent forces to march from Bengal to Ahmadabad, and then Bassein (1780), as other forces achieved the feat of taking the hitherto impregnable fortress of Gwalior by escalade (1780). Subsequently, Mahadji Shinde’s forces were defeated at Sipri (1781). Shinde brokered a general peace (the Treaty of Salbai, 1783), in which the status quo before the war was restored. In this way, the East India Company gained twenty years of peace with its most formidable rivals in the subcontinent.
In 1794, Shinde died and was succeeded by his nephew, Daulat Rāo Shinde, and in 1796, Bājī Rāo II became peshwa. Both leaders lacked experience and judgment. Meanwhile, an aggressive new governor general, Richard Wellesley, fearing a revival of French influence, determined to crush the Marāṭhās. Bājī Rāo provided the opportunity. Both Shinde and Jaswant Rāo Holkar sought to control the peshwa, but before either could, Bājī Rāo seized Jaswant Rāo’s brother and had him trampled by an elephant in the streets of Poona. An enraged Jaswant Rāo captured Poona (1801), and Bājī Rāo fled to the British in Bombay and signed, in return for his restoration, the Treaty of Bassein (1802), which made him a British puppet. Once back in Poona (1803), he repented of this agreement and allied with Shinde and Raghuji II Bhonsle I of Nagpur against the East India Company, resulting in the Second Marāṭhā War. To deal with Shinde, Wellesley dispatched an army from Calcutta under the command of Lord Gerard Lake, which won a series of victories at Aligarh, Delhi, and Laswari (all 1803). Meanwhile, in the Deccan, Arthur Wellesley, the governor general’s brother and future duke of Wellington, defeated the combined forces of Shinde and Raghuji Bhonsle at Assaye and Argaon (both 1803). By the Treaty of Surji Argaon (1803), Shinde was reduced to being a mediated prince and the peshwa was returned to Poona. However, a colonel’s disastrous retreat in 1804 and Lake’s reverse below the walls of Bharatpur (in 1805) led to the governor-general’s recall.
The reversal of Wellesley’s “forward policy” left the Marāṭhās weakened, but the East India Company’s campaigns against the freebooting Pindaris (1817–1818) tempted them to renew hostilities. The Third Marāṭhā War began in 1817, when Bājī Rāo attacked the British Residency in Poona. Defeated at Kirkee, he fled south and eventually surrendered to Sir John Malcolm in 1818. Meanwhile, Jaswant Rāo Holkar had been defeated at Mahidpur (1817), as was Appa Sahib, the new Bhonsle ruler, at Sitabaldi (1817).
Aftermath
Bājī Rāo’s surrender marked the end of the wars between the Marāṭhās and the East India Company. Bājī Rāo was granted a generous pension and honorable retirement at Bithur on the Ganges, where he died in 1853. The East India Company made substantial territorial acquisitions. The Bhonsle state survived until 1854, the other Marāṭhā states until 1947.
Bibliography
Bennell, Anthony S. The Making of Arthur Wellesley. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman, 1997.
Malcolm, John. The Political History of India from 1784 to 1823. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1826.
Thompson, E. The Making of the Indian Princes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943.