This book presents an in-depth study of Mughal relations with the rulers of Jodhpurs, major state of Rajasthan during the first half of the eighteenth century. Based on the eighteenth-century Persian and Rajasthani sources, the study focuses on the workings of the Mughal alliance with the Jodhpur Chiefs: the imperial power’s efforts to conciliate and incorporate the Rathor Chiefs of marwar in order to make them reliable, committed and zealous participants in the governance of the empire that they had earlier been, and the response of the Rathor Chiefs to such efforts as well as the problems facing the empire. The author shows how the forces of imperial collapse changed the patterns of power as well as the political behaviour of the nobels of the empire. Affiliation with the dominant section of the nobility actually controlling the powers of authority, and not loyalty to the emperor, accounted for securing imperical patronange. The study shows the bitter struggle among court nobels for power, the rapidly shrinking imperial domains accompanied by declining resources narrowed the prospects in imperial service and made the bellicose Rathore Chiefs to subvert the imperial control and become tied to their principality and drawn into mutual conflicts with their neighbouring chiefs ad the Marathas.
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