The Peshwas : Chhatrapati Shivaji was succeeded by his son Shambhāji (1680-89), then his second son Rajaram (d.1700), then Shambhāji’s son Shivaji-II better known as Shahu, who after an internecine war with Rajaram’s queen Tārā Bai, adopted Rajaram’s son Ramraja or Shivaji-III. In 1713, Bālāji Vishwanath Bhat, one of eight ministers of Shahu, became the first Peshwa or Prime Minister in 1713. (In one account Bālāji V. Bhat was preceded by five distinguished Prime ministers: Moro Pant Triambakrao Pingle, Moreshwar Pingle, Rāmachandra Pant, Bahiroji Pingle, & Parashurāma Triambakrao Kulkarni). On Bālāji’s death in 1720 Shahu appointed his son Bājirao I to the office of Peshwa. Bāji Rao laid the foundation of the Maratha Confederacy which under his son Bālāji Bāji Rao could have replaced the Mogul empire with a Hindu one but for the wily British octopus & the perfidy of the Mogul emperor’s governor. In 1749, on the death of the childless Raja Shahu, the history of the Peshwas became the history of the Confederacy. As long as Nana Fadnavis was alive he managed to hold together both the Peshwaship & the Mahratta Confederacy. “With his death in 1800,” writes the British historian Grant Duff, “departed all the wisdom & moderation of the Mahratta Confederacy”. One after the other, the Gaekwad, Peshwa Bājirao II, the Bhonsle, the Sindhia, & the Holkar signed fatal bi-lateral-treaties upon treaties with the Octopus which by 1818 reduced them each in its own sweet time & wily means to its pitiable feudatories with not even an iota of the power they had under the greatest Peshwa Bājirao I.
... times through the heroic period represented by the traditions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the effort of the imperial Mauryas and Guptas up to the Mogul unification and the last ambition of the Peshwas, until there came the final failure and the levelling of all the conflicting forces under a foreign yoke, a uniform subjection in place of the free unity of a free people. The question then is whether... although a new life seemed about to rise in the regional peoples, the chance was cut short by the intrusion of the European nations and their seizure of the opportunity created by the failure of the Peshwas and the desperate confusion of the succeeding anarchy and decadence. Two remarkable creations embodied in the period of disintegration the last effort of the Indian political mind to form the... ancient form and spirit, but it failed, as all attempts to Page 443 revive the past must fail, in spite of the spiritual impetus and the democratic forces that assisted its inception. The Peshwas for all their genius lacked the vision of the founder and could only establish a military and political confederacy. And their endeavour to found an empire could not succeed because it was inspired ...
... left of the power of the Śungas, arrived at the same picture as Rapson: he 1 concluded that "when the princes of the Śunga family became weak, the Kānvas usurped the whole power and ruled like the Peshwas in modern times, not uprooting the dynasty of their masters but reducing them to the character of nominal sovereigns". He urged this view in spite of believing that the Purānas' 30 Āndhra rulers ...
... empire and firmly established the British as one of the arbiters of India's fate. A generation later, Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) and his galloping guns had crushed the power of the Peshwas and Britain no longer had any serious rivals to its Indian domination. Sometimes by design, at other times almost by accident the area controlled by the British increased, until by 1857 everything ...
... of Shivaji's empire and just when it seemed that a new life was about to rise in the regional peoples, there came the intrusion of the European nations, in particular the British. The failure of the Peshwas and the confusion and anarchy that followed, gave the British the opportunity to take over the whole of India. Page 24 ...
... and intolerant of any centre of strength in the country other than itself as the British bureaucracy. There were three actual centres of organised strength in pre-British India,—the supreme ruler, Peshwa or Raja or Nawab reposing his strength on the Zamindars or Jagirdars; the Zamindar in his own domain reposing his strength on his retinue and tenants; and the village community independent and sel ...
... The Nawab of Oudh entered into a subordinate alliance with the British against the Marathas. The Rajput rulers wanted protection against the Marathas. Raghoba sold himself to the British to fight the Peshwa in Poona. The Nizam's forces marched against those of the British in the fight against Tipu. The British took full advantage of the divisions in India. Right from the beginning they ...
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