Neither empire nor confederacy fully fits the Maratha state
Rising from Shivaji's seventeenth-century Hindavi Swarajya, Maratha power grew into a sprawling early modern polity often labeled empire or confederacy. Historian Barbara Ramusack notes neither word fits cleanly—one overstates central control, the other implies a stable surrender of power that rarely held.
Shivaji (1630–1680) of the Bhonsle clan seized Torna in 1645, built a kingdom centered on Raigad, and was crowned Chhatrapati in 1674. At his death the realm held roughly 4.1 percent of the subcontinent yet about 300 forts, some 40,000 cavalry, 50,000 soldiers, and a west-coast navy. Aurangzeb's Deccan drive after 1681 brought a half-million-strong imperial host; Sambhaji was captured at Sangameshwar on 1 February 1689 and executed on 21 March. Rajaram and then Tarabai kept resistance alive from forts such as Gingee and Sinhagad until Mughal politics shifted after Aurangzeb's 1707 death.
Released Shahu claimed the throne against Tarabai, creating rival seats at Satara and Kolhapur. Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath (appointed 1713) secured Mughal recognition and, in 1719, rights rights plus Shivaji-era lands from a puppet emperor after a Delhi march. His son Baji Rao I (from 1720) is credited with expanding Maratha control from about 3 percent to 30 percent of modern India's landscape by 1740, winning at Palkhed (28 February 1728), raiding Delhi in 1737, defeating the Nizam at Bhopal, and taking Vasai from the Portuguese under Chimaji Appa.
After Shahu's 1749 death, hereditary Bhat peshwas dominated while Scindia, Holkar, Bhonsle, and Gaekwad houses carved northern and central spheres under Pune's nominal lead. Post-Bhopal (1737) stable borders ran from Maharashtra to Gwalior and Orissa—about a third of the subcontinent, some 2.5 million km². Panipat's 1761 defeat by the Durrani Empire stalled expansion; Madhavrao I recovered much within a decade before chiefly autonomy deepened. Peshwa Baji Rao II's 1802 turn to the British East India Company led to the confederacy's ruin by 1818 once the later Anglo-Maratha wars concluded. Stewart Gordon prefers neither "empire" nor "confederacy," stressing power that reshuffled almost decade by decade.
Source: Maratha Empire
