The direct provocation for Abdali’s 1759 invasion was the Maratha conquest of Punjab in 1758. Raghunath Rao’s forces had driven out Abdali’s son and viceroy, Timur Shah, from Lahore. Abdali viewed this as a personal insult and a direct threat ...
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The First Anglo-Maratha War (1775–82) was essentially a stalemate. It concluded with the Treaty of Salbai (1782), which restored the status quo ante bellum. While the Marathas achieved a major tactical victory at the Battle of Wadgaon, the British balanced ...
James Grant Duff, a British soldier and historian who served as the resident at Satara, used this famous metaphor in his book “A History of the Mahrattas.” He viewed the emergence of the Maratha power as an abrupt, explosive event ...
Mahadaji Scindia was the first major Maratha leader to realize that traditional guerrilla tactics were insufficient against modern European armies. He hired European mercenaries, most notably the Frenchman Benoit de Boigne, to raise and train elite “Compagnies d’Infanterie” equipped with ...
The British “Subsidiary Alliance” system was the most effective tool for dismantling Maratha power. By offering military protection to individual Maratha chiefs in exchange for control over their foreign policy and a British resident at their court, the British neutralized ...