The period between the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 witnessed the decline of Muslim rule in India and the growth of semi-independent ‘country powers’ owing little more than a vague allegiance to the enfeebled descendants of the Great Moguls at Delhi. The resultant anarchy enabled the French and English trading companies to intervene in Indian affairs. Their struggles for commercial and territorial supremacy ended in the victories of Clive by means of which the French were ousted from the Carnatic and the English East India Company became the de facto ruler of Bengal. It would, however, be incorrect to suppose that the disintegration of the Mogul Empire began with the death of Aurangzeb, for the anarchy that ensued was merely the acceleration of a decline that had been taking place for at least half a century. This cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of Akbar's policy.

The wise and necessary policy of the great Mogul Emperor Akbar was reversed by his immediate successors, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. He had deliberately accepted compromise as the basis of his empire, and by his policy of sulh-i-kull (universal toleration) and his abolition of the jizya, the detested poll-tax on non-Muslims, he had striven to conciliate the subject Hindu population and to secure their loyalty to his rule. It was his successors' gradual departure from the main principles of his rule, culminating in the religious and political intolerance of Aurangzeb, that eventually produced a far-reaching Hindu reaction and provoked the Marathas of the Deccan and the Rajputs, Jats and Sikhs of northern India to raise the standard of revolt, from the Maratha principality of Tanjore in the south to the plains of the Panjab in the distant north.