Mughal Empire and Qing dynasty

Introduction

The Mughal Empire was India's last dynasty before modern India. The Qing dynasty was China's last dynasty before modern China. The Indian Mughals were the wealthiest civilization on Earth at the time, while the Chinese Qing was the most technologically advanced at the time. Both empires were dominated until the 19th century, until Europe finally found a way to defeat Asia! Divide and conquer, lie, cheat, and steal.

Discussion

Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire is among the most influential dynasties in South Asian history. Established in 1526 with the deposing of the Delhi sultanate, under the leadership of generations of charismatic, ambitious, and highly effective emperors, the Mughal Empire experienced nearly 200 years of stable rule over much of the Indian subcontinent (Jalal , 45-55). The empire also facilitated a cultural renascence that blended Islamic and Indic traditions. Today, the legacy of the Mughal era is found in various artistic, literary, and architectural wonders.

Based on the Indian subcontinent and ruled for three centuries by the Muslim Mughal dynasty, this highly successful war state's trading activities stimulated the growth of domestic production in such areas as agriculture and textiles. During the first 180 years of the empire, the Mughals stimulated trading and the growth of the economy with their highly effective centralized administration and their establishment of peace and order throughout the subcontinent. Their patronage of craft industries and royal workshops and their maintenance of a large salaried class to help run the empire also helped promote trade. However, this early success gave way to economic and political decline, and the British eventually subjugated the fractured empire (Ali, 53-59).

The Mughal empire engaged in trade from its outset. The first ruler, Zahirud-Din Muhammad Bâbur, continued the rich trading history of his homeland, the central Asian territory around Kabul. As Bâbur expanded his control from central Asia into the Indian subcontinent, he and later his son, Humâyûn, continued the thriving overland caravan trade. This trade linked the newly conquered northern portions of the Indian subcontinent with Kabul through the Khyber Pass.The caravans originating in Kabul brought horses from Central Asia, porcelain from China, precious metals from the European empires, and silks from China to the markets of Lahore. In return, Indian commodities such as spices and textiles, traveled to markets in Central Asia and Iran. Seaborne trade, already in place through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, also connected the Mughals with overland trade routes to Europe through Egypt or Syria (Subrahmanyam, 78-81).

During the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, dense overland and coastal trading networks linked domestic and regional economies, while from the mid-seventeenth century on, long-distance oceanic routes also linked India with international markets. The early trade routes delivered specialized agricultural products such as spices for sale in cash markets. They also transported goods from the highly organized textile industry, which was known for its enormous range of cotton and silk cloths. Besides spices and cloth, the Mughal empire's overland exports also included narcotics and other agricultural commodities such as indigo ...