Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar. A new history of the Mughal Empire by Jagjeet Lally

Some see the Mughal regime as a benign entity, others as one harmful to India’s long-term development. But by fixating on the king’s actions rather than those of his subjects, have we been looking at the issue the wrong way round? In this talk, I want to turn conventional wisdom on its head and show that it was the empire’s bankers, moneylenders, merchants, middlemen, artisans and all manner of ordinary folk who held the power to make – and eventually break – the might of the Mughal Empire. To appreciate this more fully, we must look through the eyes of numerous real-life characters and make a detour or two into the empire’s rich marketplaces. By doing so, we can also see more clearly a world rapidly changing thanks to a fresh wave of globalisation from the sixteenth century, and the ever-more exotic and enticing goods available for purchase, as well as a new ethos – and a new set of anxieties – towards business. India was changing as market forces spread further and further during the Mughal era, and how ordinary Indians responded shaped the empire’s history well into the eighteenth century.

About the Speaker: Jagjeet Lally is Associate Professor of the History of Early Modern and Colonial India at University College London, where he is also Director of the UCL Centre for Transnational and Global History and Co-Director of the UCL Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World. He studied the social sciences at Oxford before training as a historian, first at the London School of Economics and then at Cambridge. He is the author of three books: India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World (2021), India and the Early Modern World (2024), and the recently published Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar: Commerce and Everyday Life in the Mughal World. Beyond academia, he worked on the award-winning South Asia Gallery at Manchester Museum, has worked with the British Museum and the Royal Collection, and had contributed to radio and TV programmes made by Channel 4 and the BBC.

Meeting Point: Sarmaya Arts Foundation, 2nd Floor, Lawrence & Mayo Commercial Premises Co-op. Society Ltd., 276, Dr. D.N. Road, Fort, Mumbai - 400001Landmark: Next to Khadi Bhandar

Age group: Open to All

Seating will be first come first basis. Refreshments at 5:30 PM.