Why Did the Mughal Empire Collapse? The Empire That Ran Out of Money

Why did the Mughal Empire collapse? In 1707 it ruled almost all of India and produced close to a quarter of the world's output. Thirty-two years later a Persian king sat on its Peacock Throne in Delhi. This documentary follows the money, the succession wars and the betrayals behind the fall of the Mughal Empire. Under Aurangzeb the empire reached its greatest size, from Kabul almost to the southern tip of India. But it was paid for by the mansabdari and jagir system: nobles held ranks, kept cavalry, and were paid with the right to collect land revenue from districts. The system only worked while there was always more land to give away. In 1681 Aurangzeb marched into the Deccan and spent twenty-six years at war with Bijapur, Golconda and the Marathas. The war became a bottomless bill, the nobles multiplied faster than the good land, and historians call the result the jagir crisis. Revenue fell, peasants fled, and Rajput, Jat and Sikh revolts spread. When Aurangzeb died at Ahmednagar on 3 March 1707, the real decline of the Mughal Empire began. Every succession was a civil war. In twelve years six emperors sat on the throne in Delhi; the Sayyid brothers, the kingmakers, blinded and strangled Farrukhsiyar in 1719. In 1717 that same emperor signed a farman giving the English East India Company duty-free trade in Bengal for 3,000 rupees a year — a small document that would change India. Under Muhammad Shah "Rangila" the provinces stopped sending money home. In 1724 Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I won the battle of Shakar Kheda and became master of the Deccan — the origin of the Nizams of Hyderabad. Bengal and Awadh followed. The Marathas under Peshwa Baji Rao I collected chauth across central India and reached Delhi in 1737. Then came the Nader Shah invasion. On 24 February 1739 the Persian ruler crushed a divided Mughal army at Karnal, entered Delhi, ordered the massacre of 22 March and carried away the Peacock Throne, the Koh-i-Noor and the Darya-i-Noor. And then — the first twist — he gave the crown back. He had proved the empire was hollow. After Ahmad Shah Durrani and the third battle of Panipat (1761), the merchants moved in. How did the British take over India? At Plassey in 1757 Robert Clive won with a deal: Mir Jafar's troops did not fight. After Buxar in 1764, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II granted the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in the Treaty of Allahabad (1765). In 1788 Ghulam Qadir blinded the emperor; in 1803 the British took Delhi. The last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, became the symbol of the 1857 uprising and died in exile in Rangoon in 1862. So why did the Mughal Empire collapse? Not one bad emperor and not one invasion: it ran out of land to pay its nobles, every succession was a civil war, and the men who held the money learned they no longer needed Delhi. ▶ WATCH NEXT — What Happened to the Nizam of Hyderabad's Fortune?:    • What Happened to the Nizam of Hyderabad's ...   ▶ Vijayanagara Empire: Why Did the Richest City in India Fall in One Afternoon?:    • Vijayanagara Empire: Why Did the Richest C...   CHAPTERS 0:00 The Peacock Throne in Persian hands 0:45 Aurangzeb wins the crown 1:46 The mansab and jagir machine 2:13 The Deccan war 3:11 The jagir crisis 4:11 Aurangzeb dies, 1707 4:59 Six emperors in twelve years 5:47 The 1717 farman 6:36 Nizam-ul-Mulk and the provinces 7:54 Nader Shah and Karnal 8:46 The massacre and the plunder 9:34 Nader Shah gives the crown back 9:59 Durrani, Panipat, Plassey 11:02 The diwani of 1765 12:01 1788, 1803, 1857 13:10 Why the Mughal Empire collapsed SOURCES Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia (2006); William Dalrymple & Anita Anand, Koh-i-Noor (2017); William Dalrymple, The Anarchy (2019); Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court; John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire (1993); Encyclopaedia Britannica. IMAGE CREDITS Image credits: historical images from Wikimedia Commons (public domain / CC0 unless noted; graded and cropped for this video). Attribution required: Lahori Gate, Red Fort — Lucky181993 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mughal Empire in 1700 map — TuberGotTubed (CC BY-SA 4.0); Golconda Fort — Bernard Gagnon (CC BY-SA 3.0); Shivaji statue, Raigad — Cj.samson (GFDL 1.2); Diwan-i-Khas, Red Fort — Jakub Hałun (CC BY-SA 4.0); Farrukhsiyar, gouache — Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0); Portrait of Asaf Jah I — Natasha Khaitan (CC BY-SA 4.0); Bajirao I & Shahu I — Pratishkhedekar (CC BY-SA 4.0); Indus River at Attock — The MJ Productions (CC BY 2.0); Mazar of Bahadur Shah Zafar — EmeraldRange (CC BY-SA 4.0); Red Fort, Delhi — A.Savin (Free Art License); Chowmahalla Palace — Bernard Gagnon (CC BY-SA 3.0). Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ — full list with file links in the pinned comment. Other stills: AI-generated archival-style illustrations (Google Gemini / Google Flow) for scenes without surviving images. Music: royalty-free background bed. SFX: house whoosh. #MughalEmpire #History #Documentary