Q1.
What kind of resources do you think were needed to maintain an army and wage war in those days? Discuss in groups the various types of expenditure involved, from weapons or food for soldiers to animals used in warfare, road construction, etc.
Answer
An army in this period cost far more to keep than to use. Most of the money went not on weapons but on food, animals and pay — and it had to be spent every single day, whether or not there was a war.
| Type of expenditure | What it covered | Evidence in the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| People | Soldiers' pay, rations, tents, clothing; camp followers — cooks, smiths, carpenters, water-carriers, physicians | Aurangzeb kept “large armies for those campaigns” for 25 years in the Deccan |
| Animals | War horses, elephants, camels, and oxen to pull carts and guns; and their fodder, grooms and veterinary care | Mansabdars had to maintain “a precise number of elephants, horses, camels as well as troops”; Rani Durgavati kept 1,000 elephants |
| Weapons and gunpowder | Swords, bows, armour; from the 16th century, field artillery and matchlock guns, plus powder, shot and gun-founders | Babur's victory at Panipat in 1526 “relied heavily on gunpowder, field artillery, and matchlock guns” |
| Forts and sieges | Building and garrisoning forts; siege equipment and the months of supplies a siege consumes | Kumbhalgarh's 36-kilometre wall; Akbar besieged Chittor for more than five months |
| Movement | Roads, bridges, river boats, baggage trains, halting places | The Sultanate saw “progress in infrastructural works, especially roads in north India, bridges”; the Mughals had a large fleet of river boats in Assam |
| Inspection and record | Officials to check that troops actually existed and animals were of the promised quality | “Regular inspections were carried out to ensure compliance” |
Where the money came from — the chapter names three sources: plunder from military campaigns, taxes levied on common people and conquered regions, and engagement in the slave trade. Under the Sultanate the machinery for the first two was the iqta: territories assigned to nobles who collected taxes and, minus expenses, sent the rest to the Sultan's treasury, “needed, in particular, to maintain the army”.
Why it matters: because this cost explains a great deal of the politics in this chapter. Malik Kafur's southern conquests are described as financing “the Sultanate's enormous military apparatus”, which means the army had to keep conquering in order to keep being paid. And at the other end of the period, maintaining large armies in the Deccan “depleted the empire's treasury and put a great strain on the administration” — often considered one of the key factors in the rapid decline of Mughal power after 1707. The army was both the source of power and the thing that consumed it.
For your group discussion: divide the six rows above between group members, and let each person hunt through the chapter for one more example. Then ask the harder question together — which of these costs disappears in peacetime? You will find that almost none of them do, which is exactly why two very different states in this chapter invented ways to avoid a permanent standing army: the Mughal mansabdari system (page 54) and the Ahom paik system (page 48).