Peshwas

1. Origins: from ministerial office to political leadership

Peshwa, a title of Persian origin, designated the principal minister in the Maratha state. Under Shivaji, the Peshwa belonged to the Ashtapradhan, or council of eight ministers, and assisted in general administration. These ministers were royal appointees, not a modern cabinet collectively responsible to a legislature. The later dominance of the Peshwas should therefore not be projected backwards onto Shivaji’s reign.

After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, Shahu’s release from Mughal custody intensified the contest with Tarabai over Maratha leadership. Balaji Vishwanath helped Shahu consolidate his position by negotiating with influential chiefs and managing competing interests. Appointed Peshwa in 1713, he established the political foundations of his family’s ascendancy. His dealings with the Sayyid Brothers secured imperial grants in 1719 recognising important Maratha claims, including rights to collect chauth and sardeshmukhi in the six Mughal subahs of the Deccan.

Baji Rao I succeeded his father in 1720, making the office effectively hereditary. Its growing authority rested on military leadership, fiscal management and control over patronage. After Shahu’s death in 1749, the Peshwa’s predominance became clearer. Nevertheless, the Chhatrapati at Satara remained the formal sovereign: the Peshwas exercised effective power without simply replacing the royal title.

2. Expansion under Baji Rao I and Balaji Baji Rao

Baji Rao I used highly mobile cavalry, rapid marches and attacks on enemy supplies rather than relying exclusively on sieges or pitched battles. At Palkhed in 1728, he outmanoeuvred the Nizam of Hyderabad and compelled a settlement. His campaigns strengthened Maratha influence in Malwa, Gujarat and Bundelkhand. Assistance to the Bundela ruler Chhatrasal also opened opportunities in Bundelkhand. A march towards Delhi in 1737 demonstrated how vulnerable Mughal authority had become.

Expansion depended on commanders who developed territorial and fiscal bases of their own. The Scindias became influential in the Gwalior region, the Holkars around Indore, the Gaekwads in Gujarat and the Bhonsles at Nagpur. These houses were not merely salaried provincial officials. Their military resources, negotiated obligations and regional interests gradually produced a confederate political structure in which the Peshwa’s leadership required bargaining.

Balaji Baji Rao, known as Nanasaheb, succeeded in 1740. Maratha influence expanded substantially, but northern commitments brought conflict with Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Ahmad Shah Durrani. At Panipat in 1761, the Maratha army under Sadashivrao Bhau suffered a devastating defeat. Extended supply lines, inadequate local support and difficulties sustaining a large army contributed to the disaster. The Peshwa himself was not the battlefield commander; his son Vishwasrao died in the battle.

3. Administration, revenue and the Maratha confederacy

Pune emerged as the principal centre of Peshwa administration, with Shaniwar Wada symbolising its authority. The administration maintained extensive correspondence and accounts, often in Marathi using the Modi script. Officials, accountants, bankers and military intermediaries connected the central establishment with districts and villages. Hereditary local functionaries, including patils and kulkarnis, remained important in village management and revenue collection.

Land revenue from directly administered territory must be distinguished from chauth and sardeshmukhi. Chauth was conventionally a claim to one-fourth of an assessed revenue demand; sardeshmukhi was an additional one-tenth associated with a superior hereditary claim. Their bases and collection varied in practice. Rights to these levies did not necessarily mean uniform occupation or direct administration, and they should not be treated as ordinary taxes imposed identically throughout Maratha-controlled regions.

Military service was supported partly through assignments of revenue, often described as saranjams. Such arrangements enabled expansion without a uniformly centralised bureaucracy, but also strengthened chiefs controlling local resources. The term Maratha confederacy captures this negotiated structure, not a modern federation with a written constitutional division of powers. Especially in the later eighteenth century, common leadership coexisted with rivalry over territory, tribute and succession.

4. Society, economy and cultural life

Peshwa rule operated within a predominantly agrarian society structured by caste, hereditary rights and unequal access to resources. The prominence of a Chitpavan Brahmin ruling family increased opportunities for particular administrative and patronage networks. However, Maratha power depended on a much broader social base: cultivators, cavalrymen, local landed groups, artisans, merchants and banking houses. Caste hierarchy and restrictions affecting subordinated communities remained significant features of social life.

Village economies combined cultivation with hereditary service arrangements, including the balutedari system, under which service and artisan groups received customary shares or payments. Commercial activity and credit were essential to military mobilisation. Bankers financed campaigns and transferred funds, while growing urban demand sustained crafts and markets. Pune’s expansion generated new peths, or urban quarters, and supported merchants, service providers and religious establishments.

Elite patronage supported temples, Sanskrit learning, religious festivals and residential architecture, especially the courtyard-based wada. Cultural history also includes wider Marathi devotional and performance traditions rather than court culture alone. Women’s experiences differed sharply by status, caste and household position. Elite women sometimes exercised influence over property, succession and diplomacy, but such examples should not obscure the broader patriarchal organisation of society.

5. Recovery, factionalism and British intervention

Madhavrao I, Peshwa from 1761 to 1772, restored authority after Panipat through improved administration and campaigns against regional rivals. Maratha forces returned to Delhi and restored Shah Alam II there in 1772. This recovery shows why Panipat should be understood as a major setback rather than the final destruction of Maratha power. Madhavrao’s early death, however, reopened conflicts within the ruling family.

Narayanrao’s murder in 1773 and Raghunathrao’s claim to power produced a succession crisis. Raghunathrao sought Bombay Company support through the Treaty of Surat in 1775, helping trigger the First Anglo-Maratha War. A ministerial coalition associated with Nana Fadnavis supported the infant Madhavrao II. The Treaty of Salbai in 1782 ended the war without British control over the Peshwa’s government, although the Company retained Salsette.

The decisive shift came after Holkar defeated the forces of Baji Rao II and Scindia near Pune in 1802. Baji Rao II accepted British subsidiary protection through the Treaty of Bassein on 31 December. Resistance by Scindia and the Nagpur Bhonsle contributed to the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–1805. During the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817–1818, the Company defeated the Peshwa. He surrendered in June 1818, was pensioned at Bithur, and his office was abolished. The outcome reflected British military-fiscal strength as well as divisions within the confederacy.

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