Mughals and the Early Modern World

Catalog description

This course examines early modernity through the Mughal empire of northern India (ca. 1526-1857), which ruled over a 100 million subjects from diverse social, linguistic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Contemporary to other Islamic empires, namely the Ottomans in the Mediterranean and the Safavids in Iran, the Mughal world encompassed the Indian Ocean, where the Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Danish also arrived at the turn of the 16th century. The course examines Mughal ideologies and state institutions, law, economic changes, religious interactions, and court culture through primary sources (in translation) such as chronicles, poetry, memoirs, administrative documents, legal treatises, travelogues, and material culture. The course will conclude with a brief reflection on the afterlives or the contested legacies of the Mughals today and the stakes of writing about the Indian subcontinent's pre-colonial pasts in the present. Primary source readings include Baburnama, Sidi "Ali Reis" Mirror of Countries, Abu'l Fazl's Akbarnama, A Jesuit Treatise on Emperor Jahangir's Court, and François Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire.