The Mughal Empire at War: Babur, Akbar and the Indian Military Revolution, 1500-1605

221 Pages·2016·2.92 MB·English

The Mughal Empire at War
The Mughal Empire was one of the great powers of the early modern era,
ruling almost all of South Asia, a conquest state, dominated by its military
elite. Many historians have viewed the Mughal Empire as relatively back-
ward,theEmperortheheadofatraditionalwarbandfromCentralAsia,with
tribalism and the traditions of the Islamic world to the fore, and the Empire
not remotely comparable to the forward looking Western European states of
the period, with their strong innovative armies implementing the ‘military
revolution’.Thisbookarguesthat,onthecontrary,themilitaryestablishment
built by the Emperor Babur and his successors was highly sophisticated, an
effective combination of personnel, expertise, technology and tactics, drawing
on precedents from Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and
that the resulting combined arms system transformed the conduct of warfare
in South Asia. The book traces the development of the Mughal Empire
chronologically, examines weapons and technology, tactics and operations,
organization, recruitment and training, and logistics and non-combat opera-
tions, and concludes by assessing the overall achievements of the Mughal
Empire, comparing it to its Western counterparts, and analyzing the reasons
for its decline.
Andrew de la Garza is an Instructor in the Department of History and
Geography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA.
Asian States and Empires
Edited by Peter Lorge, Vanderbilt University
The importance of Asiawill continue to grow in the twenty-first century, but
remarkably little is available in English on the history of the polities that
constitute this critical area. Most current work on Asia is hindered by the
extremely limited state of knowledge of theAsianpastingeneral,andthehis-
tory of Asian states and empires in particular. Asian States and Empires is a
book series that will provide detailed accounts of the history of states and
empires across Asia from earliest times until the present. It aims to explain
and describe the formation, maintenance and collapse of Asian states and
empires,andthemeansbywhichthiswasaccomplished,makingavailablethe
history of more than half the world’s population at a level of detail compar-
able to the history of Western polities. In so doing, it will demonstrate that
AsianpeoplesandcivilizationshadtheirownhistoriesapartfromtheWest,and
provide the basis for understanding contemporary Asia in terms of its actual
histories,ratherthan broad generalizationsinformed by Western categories of
knowledge.
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The Mughal Empire at War
Babur, Akbar and the Indian military
–
revolution, 1500 1605
Andrew de la Garza
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
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ISBN:978-1-138-64258-4(hbk)
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Contents
List of figures x
Introduction 1
1 A Mughal military revolution? 5
2 Changing ways of war 22
3 Tools of war: Weapons, equipment and technology 64
4 Waging war: Tactics and operations 84
5 Learning war: Recruitment and training 129
6 Supporting war: Logistics and non-combat tasks 157
7 An unfinished revolution 182
Conclusion 200
Index 205