NCERT Class 7 History Chapter 10 - Eighteenth-Century Political Formations

Chapter 10 Eighteenth-Century Political Formations

Question and Answers
Question 1: Why did Nawab of Awadh and Bengal try to do away with jagirdari system?
Answer: The Nawabs of Awadh and Bengal tried to do away with the jagirdari system in order to reduce the influence of the Mughals in their states.

Question 2: What were the policies adopted by Asaf Jah to strengthen his position?
Answer: After being the actual ruler of the Deccan, Asaf Jah began to adopt some policies in order to strengthen his position:
1. He brought skilled soldiers and administrators from northern India who welcomed the new opportunities in the south.
2. He appointed mansabdars and granted jagirs.
3. He ruled independently without Mughal interference. The Mughal emperor merely confirmed the decisions already taken by Asaf Jah.

Question 3: How did the later Mughal emperor lose their control over their nobles?
Answer: The efficiency of the imperial administration broke down under the later Mughal emperors. It became increasingly difficult for them to keep a check on their powerful Nobles appointed as governors often controlled the offices of revenue and military administration as well. This gave them extraordinary political, economic and military powers over vast regions of the Mughal empire. As the governors consolidated their control over the provinces, the periodic remission of revenue to the capital declined.

Question 4: Divide the states of the 18th century into 3 overlapping groups.
Answer: The state of 18th century can be divided into 3 overlapping groups:
1. States that were old Mughal provinces like Awadh, Bengal and Hyderabad.
2. States that enjoyed considerable independence under the mughals as watan jagirs.
3. The last group included states under the control of Marathas, Sikhs and others like Jats.

Question 5: How were the Sikhs organised in the eighteenth century?
Answer: In the eighteenth century, the Sikhs organized themselves into a number of bands called jathas, and which later came to be known as misls. Their combined forces were known as the grand army (dal khalsa). The entire body used to meet at Amritsar at the time of Baisakhi and Diwali to take collective decisions known as resolutions of the Guru (gurmatas). Guru Gobind Singh had inspired the Khalsa with the belief that their destiny was to rule (raj karega khalsa). Their well-knit organization enabled them to put up a successful resistance to the Mughal governors first and then to Ahmad Shah Abdali who had seized the rich province of the Punjab and the Sarkar of Sirhind from the Mughals. The Khalsa declared their sovereign rule by striking their own coin again in 1765. The Sikh territories in the late eighteenth century extended from the Indus to the Jamuna, but they were divided under different rulers. One of them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, reunited these groups and established his capital at Lahore in 1799.

Question 6: What was the geographical and economic importance of Awadh?
Answer: Awadh was a prosperous region, controlling the rich alluvial Ganga plain and the main trade route between north India and Bengal.

Question 7: Give an account of the Maratha expansion occurred between 1720 and 1761.
Answer: The Maratha empire expanded between 1720 and 1761. It gradually chipped away at the authority of the Mughal Empire. Malwa and Gujarat were seized from the Mughals by the 1720s. By the 1730s, the Maratha king was recognised as the overlord of the entire Deccan peninsula.
After, raiding Delhi in 1737 the frontiers of Maratha domination expanded rapidly-into Rajasthan and the Punjab in the north, into Bengal and Orissa in the east, and into Karnataka and the Tamil and Telugu countries in the south. These were not formally included in the Maratha empire, but were made to pay tribute as a way of accepting Maratha sovereignty.

Question 8: Write a short note about Jats.
Answer: The Jats were prosperous agriculturists. Like other states they also consolidated their power during the late 17th and 18th centuries. Under the leadership of Churaman they acquired control over territories situated to the west of the city of Delhi. By the 1680s they had begun dominating the region between the two imperial cities of Delhi and Agra. Towns like Panipat and Ballabhgarh became major trading centres in the areas dominated by them. Under Suraj Mal the kingdom of Bharatpur emerged as a strong state.

Question 9: Why did the Marathas want to expand beyond the Deccan?
Answer: Marathas wanted to expand beyond the Deccan because of the following reasons:
*They wanted to clip away the authority of the Mughal Empire.
*Maratha king to be recognised as the overlord of the entire Deccan peninsula.
*To possess the right to collect Chauth and sardeshmukhi in the entire region.

Question 10: Define the following:
a) Rakhi - A system which introduced offering protection to cultivators on the payment of a tax of 20 per cent of the produce.
b) Chauth - 25 per cent of the land revenue claimed by zamindars. In the Deccan this was collected by Marathas.
c) Sardeshmukhi - 9 - 10 per cent of the land revenue paid to the head revenue collector in the Deccan.