Please join us at this event where Sudev Sheth, University of Pennsylvania, will discuss his new book “Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India.”
About the book: By the 1660s, the mighty Mughal Empire controlled the Indian subcontinent and impressed the world with its strength and opulence. Yet hardly two decades would pass before fortunes would turn, Mughal kings and governors losing influence to rival warlords and foreign powers. How could leaders of one of the most dominant early modern polities lose their grip over empire? Sudev Sheth proposes a new point of departure, focusing on diverse local and hitherto unexplored evidence about a prominent financier family entrenched in bankrolling Mughal elites and their successors. Analyzing how four generations of the Jhaveri family of Gujarat financed politics, he offers a fresh take on the dissolution of the Mughal empire, the birth of princely successor states, and the nature of economic life in the days leading up to the colonial domination of India.
Speaker: Sudev Sheth is a Senior Lecturer of International Studies at The Lauder Institute and a faculty member in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sheth’s work explores the social and cultural history of South Asia, business history, and family enterprise, and has been published in journals such as the Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient, Manuscript Studies, and Business History Review.
Moderator: Gautam Nair is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is a faculty affiliate of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for International Development.
This event is sponsored by the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Business and Government.
