SASC Colloquium Series “Early modern transitions in northern India: technology and political culture, circa 1450 – 1570” Ramya Sreenivasan

This talk investigates the dramatic increase of political turmoil in northern India between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, before the high noon of the Mughal imperium under Emperor Akbar and his immediate successors. While the historiography has typically noted the absence of centralizing authority and the consequent intensifying of regional rivalries, I suggest that certain other changes – refinements in artillery, the introduction of paper, and an increase in the supply of coinage – may better help to explain the transformation of politics that led to the emergence and consolidation of empire by the later sixteenth century.
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