Conditions begin to change, however, during the disastrous reign of Sultan Agung's son, Amangkurat I (r. 1646-77), who lacks his father's talents but seeks to further strengthen the realm by centralizing authority, monopolizing control of resources, and destroying all real or imagined opposition.

His misguided efforts to control trade revenues by twice closing the ports of the Pasisir, and even destroying Javanese trading vessels and forbidding Javanese travel overseas, have the opposite effect, in addition to alienating the commercial community and damaging the wider economy of producers.

His obsessive fear of opposition leads him to kill more than five thousand Muslim leaders and their families in a single, well-planned massacre, and to murder hundreds of court officials and members of the aristocracy, including his own family, actions that of course only increase the hatred and intrigues aimed at removing him.

His attitude toward the VOC is ambivalent, for, on the one hand, he admires its apparent wealth and power and considers it a potential ally and protector, yet on the other hand he seeks to bend it to his will and to extract all he can from its representatives in Batavia.

Beginning in the early 1670s, rebellions begin to rise, the most powerful of which is led by Raden Trunajaya (ca. 1649-80), a Madurese aristocrat conspiring with a disaffected son of Amangkurat I and allied with Makassarese and other forces.

Trunajaya's armies win a decisive victory in 1676 and loot the capital the following year.

Mataram is disintegrating.

VOC representatives far away in the archipelago, appointed after 1610 as governors general, tend to see the warring and political involvement as necessary and pursue them anyway, often vigorously.

Even the more ambitious of their efforts, however, are restrained by certain realities.

Above all, the VOC is never big enough or strong enough to dominate the entire archipelago and its people, and indeed the company finds it impossible to enforce its will in local affairs without Indonesian allies, who frequently exact a high price for their assistance and whose loyalty can never be taken for granted.

It is also the case that even when it has its way—for example, by gaining control of specific trading ports or routes, or of the main areas in which particular spices are produced—interventions by the VOC often have unintended short- and long-term consequences that it can do little to control.

Finally, of course, the VOC's fortunes are subject to the vagaries of a trading system that stretches far beyond the archipelago, including the rise and fall in world demand for spices and, later, for other products on which it will come to depend, such as coffee.

In the course of nearly two centuries, the company will fail to control the spice trade and establish the stable conditions necessary for mercantile growth, and will come to rule over only minute patches of territory, except for small areas in Maluku in the seventeenth century and Java in the eighteenth.

Both sides, in the course of this conflict, request assistance from the VOC, which now faces a momentous decision.

The company seeks political stability and a reliable supply of such key products as rice and teak, and it determines for the first time in more than a half-century that, in order to obtain them, intervention in Mataram's internal affairs is necessary.

Company officials view Javanese kingship through a European lens as a relatively absolutist, centralized form of rule that legitimates succession by, if not strict primogeniture, then something very close to it.

This is a misreading of Javanese (and, indeed, other Indonesian) cultural custom, but nonetheless the VOC gradually comes to see itself as the upholder of order (tradition) and to justify its actions in terms of favoring continuity rather than change.

It makes its choices accordingly, often with the ironic result of creating rather than solving discord and of weakening rather than strengthening the sorts of order it hoped to achieve.

In any case, the VOC decides in 1676 to back the forces of Amangkurat I, who dies soon after having fled to VOC-controlled territory on the Pasisir, and then to support his rebellious son as successor, a project requiring five more years of warfare to complete.

The company gains treaties promising, among other things, access to the products and trading rights it sought, as well as repayment of all its military costs.

That these treaty obligations prove difficult to fulfill does not negate the fact that the VOC has now embarked on a course that will slowly and expensively intertwine its own fate with that of Mataram.

The dark legacy of Amangkurat's tyrannical misrule thus lies not only in eighty years of turbulence in Javanese life, punctuated by three destructive wars of succession, but also in the establishment of patterns of Dutch entanglement in indigenous affairs that are to outlive the VOC itself.

A common historical perspective on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is to portray the VOC as a uniquely powerful military and economic juggernaut that steadily and deliberately constructed the empire that came to be known as the Netherlands East Indies

In the twentieth century, such a view was frequently shared by Dutch colonial officials and Indonesian nationalists, who spoke of "three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule" in the archipelago.

The truth, however, is more modest.

The VOC was neither the "first (modern) multinational corporation," as has sometimes been claimed, nor the instrument of a state policy of colonial expansion.

It was founded in the Netherlands in 1602 as an effort to manage the competition and risk of the growing number of Dutch expeditions to the Indonesian archipelago (ten companies, ten voyages, and sixty-five ships between 1595 and 1601), and to compete with the East India Company, formed by the English two years earlier, for control of the Asian trade.

The VOC's initial charter establishes its sole right among Dutch enterprises to do business in Asia and gives it exceptional powers, such as those of keeping an army and using military force, making treaties with local rulers, building fortifications, and issuing coinage.

In addition, it calls for little government oversight and does not require the new company to pay dividends to investors at the end of each voyage (as had been the practice), allowing it to amass large sums of money over longer periods of time.

The purpose of this state-supported enterprise is primarily to make a profit.

At home the directors, known as the Heeren XVII (Seventeen Gentlemen), recognize that fighting wars, establishing colonies (rather than simple trading posts and fortifications), and becoming involved in local disputes diminishes profits, and they generally warn against such activities.

The VOC had in 1619 seized Jayakerta (Sunda Kelapa), a small but well-protected west Javanese port it had originally contracted from a disgruntled vassal of the sultanate of Banten, renaming it Batavia, forerunner of today's Jakarta.

The resolute Governor General Jan Pieterszoon Coen (in office 1619-23 and 1627-29) had conceived of this port as a kind of fulcrum of the company's far-flung Asian enterprise, and he defends it vigorously against both Banten (allied briefly with England's East India Company) and, in 1628-29, the powerful land and sea forces of the expanding central Javanese state that had taken the name of Mataram, after the ninth-century kingdom.

Mataram's ruler, Sultan Agung (r. 1613-46), is Java's greatest warrior king since Kertanagara nearly four centuries earlier.

Using iron force and a keen sense of traditional diplomatic opportunities, Sultan Agung assembles a realm that consists of all of Java and Madura (including the powerful kingdom of Surabaya) except Banten in the far west and the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Blambangan in the far east.

Sukadana and Banjarmasin on Kalimantan also fall under his sway.

He is not, however, able to dislodge the VOC, and after the failed campaign of 1628-29 he appears to have accepted the Dutch presence as a minor irritant.

Contemporaneous Javanese historical works treat the company more as a potential ally than as a serious threat, a view that will persist among many in court circles for another century or more.

And, indeed, at the time the VOC is neither interested in nor capable of tackling the full force of Mataram, which, despite the destruction and political tensions wrought by nearly forty years of expansion, remains a formidable military power.

The company sees itself as a maritime power, a rival for the control of produce and trade rather than territory, and it seeks stable conditions for its activities rather than upheaval.

The VOC nevertheless has a shaping influence in the archipelago.

In what today is eastern Indonesia, the company—with, it is important to reiterate, the help of indigenous allies—between 1610 and 1680 fundamentally alters the terms of the traditional spice trade by forcibly limiting the number of nutmeg and clove trees, ruthlessly controlling the populations that grow and prepare the spices for the market, and aggressively using treaties and military means to establish VOC hegemony in the trade.

One result of these policies, exacerbated by the late-seventeenth-century fall in the global demand for spices, is an overall decline in regional trade, an economic weakening that affects the VOC itself as well as indigenous states, and in many areas occasions a withdrawal from commercial activity.

Others are the rise of authoritarian rulers dependent on VOC support and unrest among groups—traditional leaders, merchants, religious and military figures—who oppose one or the other or both.

Among the most prominent examples are those found in the histories of Ternate in the time of Sultan Mandar (r. 1648-75) and the wars against Hitu and Hoamoal (1638-56), and of southern Sulawesi in the era of the ambitious Buginese (Bone) prince Arung Palakka (1634-96) and the wars against the Makassarese (Gowa) and others.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the glories of the spice trade have faded, and the vitality of the large and small states of the post-Majapahit era has been sapped; the weight of affairs has again begun to shift west, to Java.

South Asia (1540–1683 CE)

Imperial Roads, Oceanic Crossroads, and the Rise of Early Modern States

Geography & Environmental Context

South Asia in this age encompassed the northern river plains and highlands of Afghanistan, northern India, and Bengal, and the southern plateaus and island worlds of Deccan India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives—together forming one of the world’s most populous and connected macro-regions. Anchors stretched from the Hindu Kush passes and Indus–Ganges plains to the Krishna–Kaveri river valleys, Ceylon’s cinnamon coasts, and the coral atolls of the Maldives and Chagos. Monsoon-fed agriculture, caravan trade, and maritime routes knit the region into the expanding Afro-Eurasian and global economies.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age introduced cooler winters and erratic monsoon patterns. Western disturbances brought snow to the Afghan ranges, while irregular monsoon rains caused alternating floods and droughts across the Gangetic and Deccanplains. Bengal endured recurrent floods and malaria cycles in its wetlands; Sri Lanka’s dry zone saw irrigation decline. The Maldives and Lakshadweep experienced monsoon oscillations and occasional cyclones, but their small-scale economies proved flexible. Despite climatic strain, irrigation and trade ensured regional continuity and resilience.

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Subsistence & Settlement

Northern South Asia

• Indus–Gangetic core: Mixed wheat–barley farming in the northwest and rice–jute–sugar complexes in the east underpinned Mughal prosperity. Sher Shah Suri and later Mughal emperors expanded canals, wells, and tanks, enabling year-round cultivation.

• Afghanistan and Northwest Uplands: Orchard–grain valleys of Kabul and Peshawar combined with caravan towns along the Grand Trunk Road.

• Himalayan Rimlands: Nepal and Bhutan sustained terrace agriculture and yak–sheep transhumance, exchanging salt and wool for grain.

• Bengal Delta: Multi-crop rice cultivation, palm groves, and fisheries supported dense rural populations; cloth weaving thrived along rivers.

• Arakan and the Chindwin Valley: Maritime Arakanese and Burmese uplanders exchanged rice and slaves with Bengal ports, though by the 17th century Mughal forces pressed westward, curbing Arakanese reach.

Southern South Asia

• Deccan & Tamil–Telugu regions: After Vijayanagara’s fall (1565), Nayaka and sultanate states sustained tank-irrigated rice, cotton, and indigo production.

• Malabar Coast: Pepper and spice cultivation flourished under Portuguese monopoly and local patronage.

• Sri Lanka: The Kandy kingdom controlled uplands and resisted Portuguese encirclement; cinnamon and coconuts drove export wealth.

• Maldives & Lakshadweep: Island economies rested on coconuts, cowries, and tuna fisheries; Chagos remained uninhabited but entered navigational charts.

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Technology & Material Culture

• Irrigation & infrastructure: Sher Shah’s Grand Trunk Road, sarais (rest houses), and bridges improved trade and defense. Mughals built vast canal networks and reintroduced Persian water-lifting devices.

• Architecture: Red-sandstone and marble forts, mosques, and gardens—from Delhi to Agra—combined Persian symmetry with Indic motifs. In the south, temple gopurams, bronze icons, and Nayaka murals flourished.

• Maritime & military technology: Portuguese introduced cannon and ship-mounted artillery to the Indian Ocean; local shipwrights adopted European hull designs while maintaining dhow and teak traditions.

• Textiles & crafts: Bengal muslins, Gujarat cottons, Coromandel chintzes, and Sri Lankan lacquerware became prized commodities in global markets.

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Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Imperial Roads: The Grand Trunk Road linked Kabul to Sonargaon, moving grain, bullion, and armies across the subcontinent.

• Caravan Routes: Afghan passes and Himalayan trails connected South Asia with Central Asia and Tibet, exchanging salt, wool, and scriptures.

• Riverine & Coastal Networks: Bengal’s river system funneled goods to Hugli and Satgaon; Deccan and Malabar ports tied inland markets to the wider Indian Ocean.

• Oceanic Highways: From Goa and Cochin to Colombo and Aceh, Portuguese and later Dutch VOC fleets monopolized spice routes.

• European Factories: Portuguese forts (Goa, Diu, Colombo), Dutch trading posts (Pulicat, Galle), and English outposts (Surat, Hugli) integrated the subcontinent into global circuits.

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Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

North:

• Mughal Cosmopolitanism: Akbar’s reign fostered Persianate–Indic synthesis through translation bureaus, miniature painting, and musical innovation. His successors patronized art and monumental architecture—culminating in Shah Jahan’s Taj Mahal.

• Devotional Movements: Sufi shrines (Ajmer, Pandua) and bhakti saints (Kabir, Chaitanya, Mirabai) transcended religious divides.

• Sikhism: Founded by Guru Nanak, the Sikh community evolved into a spiritual–martial order under later Gurus, with Amritsar as its sacred and social heart.

South:

• Temple and Court Culture: Nayaka rulers revived Dravidian temple architecture and patronized Tamil and Telugu literature.

• Buddhist & Hindu coexistence in Sri Lanka: Kandy’s kings enshrined Buddhist relics even as Portuguese Catholic missions spread along the coasts.

• Island Islam: The Maldives’ coral-stone mosques and Sufi networks integrated the atolls into the Indian Ocean’s Muslim sphere.

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Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Hydraulic economies: Canals, bunds, and tanks stabilized production in monsoon variability.

• Crop diversity: Rice–wheat–pulse rotations in the north; rice–cotton–spice cycles in the south buffered shocks.

• Social safety nets: Waqf and temple estates financed grain storage and famine relief; merchant credit smoothed lean years.

• Island sustainability: Atoll communities managed coconut, tuna, and coral resources through strict customary law, ensuring long-term resilience.

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Technology & Power Shifts (Conflict Dynamics)

• Sher Shah’s Reforms (1540–1545): Standardized revenue, coinage, and road systems—the durable backbone of Mughal administration.

• Mughal Ascendancy: Akbar consolidated empire through Rajput alliances and revenue reform; later emperors extended control into Bengal and the Deccan.

• Deccan and Southern States: After Vijayanagara’s collapse, regional polities and sultanates competed, while Europeans exploited coastal rivalries.

• European Rivalries: Portuguese dominance waned as Dutch and English companies entered; by the mid-17th century, the VOC controlled Sri Lankan cinnamon and Malacca.

• Island and Frontier Wars: Acehnese–Portuguese clashes in the west, Mughal–Arakanese contests in the east, and Kandy’s defiance in Sri Lanka reflected regional fragmentation amid global intrusion.

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Transition

Between 1540 and 1683, South Asia stood at the heart of an increasingly globalized early modern world.

• In the north, the Mughals built enduring administrative and cultural systems that unified the subcontinent’s plains and highlands.

• In the south, the Portuguese and Dutch transformed coastal trade, even as local powers like Kandy and the Nayakas upheld indigenous sovereignty.

• Across the Indian Ocean, Maldivian sailors, Gujarati merchants, and Bengal weavers sustained networks reaching Arabia, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.

By the close of this era, Mughal grandeur and maritime capitalism had fused two vast worlds—continental and oceanic—laying the groundwork for both imperial consolidation and the colonial incursions that would redefine South Asia in the centuries to come.

Upper South Asia (1540 – 1683 CE): Empires of Conquest, Faith, and Synthesis

Geographic & Environmental Context

Upper South Asia—embracing Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and northwestern Myanmar (the Chindwin–Arakan corridor)—formed the continental hinge between Central Asia, the Iranian plateau, and peninsular India.
Anchors included the Indus and Ganges plains, the Himalayan and Hindu Kush frontiers, the Punjab doabs, and the deltaic Bengal lowlands, each supporting dense agrarian systems and trade networks that connected the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.

Climatically, the period lay within the waning centuries of the Little Ice Age.

• The monsoon fluctuated in strength, producing alternating cycles of flood and drought.

• Himalayan glaciers and rivers maintained high seasonal flows.

• Agricultural expansion—rice in Bengal, wheat in the Punjab and upper Ganges, and orchard crops in Kashmir and Kabul—flourished under imperial irrigation and canal building.

This environmental diversity underwrote both imperial cohesion and regional distinctiveness, shaping a vast arena where faith, architecture, and statecraft intertwined.

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Political Landscapes and Imperial Consolidation

The era opened amid fragmentation and reconquest.

• In 1540, the Mughal dynasty—founded by Bābur but briefly displaced by the Afghan Sūr Empire under Sher Shāh Sūrī—regained control of the Indo-Gangetic heartland when Humāyūn and his son Akbar returned from Persian exile (1555).

• From Akbar’s accession in 1556, a century of consolidation began:

  • His campaigns secured the Punjab, Gujarat, Bengal, and Kashmir.

  • The Rajput principalities were integrated through diplomacy and marriage alliances.

  • Administrative reform (the mansabdār system, revenue surveys by Todar Mal) bound local elites into an imperial bureaucracy.

• Successors Jahāngīr (r. 1605–1627), Shāh Jahān (r. 1628–1658), and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) expanded and transformed the empire, stretching from the Hindu Kush to the Deccan plateau.

Meanwhile, beyond Mughal frontiers:

• The Safavid Persians contested Qandahār and Herat.

• Tibet and Bhutan evolved as Buddhist theocratic polities.

• The Ahom kingdom of Assam, Arakan (Rakhine), and the Mughal–Burmese borderlands linked South and Southeast Asia.

By 1683, Mughal authority encompassed nearly all northern India but faced growing internal strains—fiscal exhaustion, regional autonomy, and religious tension.

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Economy, Trade, and Urbanization

Upper South Asia reached one of the world’s economic peaks in this period.

• The monetized agrarian system, based on silver from global trade, financed monumental construction and military campaigns.

• Textiles, particularly cotton muslins from Bengal and Gujarat, became prized exports to Europe and Southeast Asia.

• Kabul, Lahore, Agra, Delhi, Patna, and Dhaka emerged as global metropolises, connected by caravans and rivers.

• European trading companies—Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French—established factories in Surat, Hugli, and Balasore, integrating the region into the early modern world economy.

• Irrigation canals (the Shāh Nahr and others) and terraced fields transformed landscapes; deforestation and salinization in some regions foreshadowed later ecological stress.

This prosperity rested on complex labor systems—peasant cultivators, bonded artisans, and enslaved or captured soldiers from Central Asia and Africa—woven into a lattice of imperial dependence and local resilience.

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Society, Religion, and Culture

Cultural life reached dazzling heights, marked by religious pluralism and aesthetic synthesis.

• Akbar’s reign fostered intellectual dialogue (Sulh-i kul, “peace for all”) among Muslims, Hindus, Jains, and Christians. The Dīn-i Ilāhī, though short-lived, embodied this syncretic impulse.

• Sufi orders and Bhakti poets—from Kabīr to Tulsīdās, Mīrā Bāī, and Guru Nanak—bridged devotional worlds.

• Sikhism emerged as a disciplined community (Panth), gaining militarized form under Guru Hargobind and Guru Gobind Singh after persecution under Aurangzeb.

• Persian language and art, blended with Indic motifs, dominated courtly culture; Urdu/Hindustani evolved as a lingua franca across the plains.

• Architecture reached iconic refinement: Fatehpur Sīkrī, Lahore Fort, the Shālimār Gardens, and the Tāj Maḥal reflected both imperial grandeur and mathematical precision.

• Miniature painting, calligraphy, music (dhrupad, qawwali), and garden design expressed a vision of paradise ordered through geometry and faith.

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Technology & Material Culture

• Firearms, cannon casting, and stone fortification matured into hybrid Indo-Islamic warfare systems.

• Advances in hydraulic engineering sustained irrigation and urban waterworks.

• Textile looms, indigo vats, and shipyards in Bengal and Gujarat revealed technological dexterity.

• Everyday material culture—from ornate carpets to inlaid metalwork and glazed tiles—carried both regional style and Persianate influence.

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Movement & Interaction Corridors

Upper South Asia stood at the center of early modern connectivity:

• The Khyber and Bolan passes linked Mughal India to Central Asia.

• The Indus and Ganges rivers served as arterial highways for trade, pilgrimage, and administration.

• Indian Ocean ports—Surat, Lahori Bandar, Chittagong—bound the empire to Arabia, East Africa, and the Malay world.

• Pilgrimage and scholarship connected Mecca, Mashhad, Delhi, and Benares; Hindu and Muslim intellectuals circulated ideas across linguistic and sectarian lines.

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Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Canal irrigation and flood-control embankments stabilized yields in monsoon-volatile landscapes.

• Agrarian communities diversified crops—wheat, rice, pulses, and cotton—to hedge against drought.

• Steppe frontiers in Afghanistan and the Thar Desert sustained nomadic herding economies that fed urban markets.

• Himalayan polities relied on transhumance and forest products, balancing ecology with trade in salt and wool.

Such regional specialization maintained overall resilience despite recurring famine and war.

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Transition (Toward 1683 CE)

By the early 1680s, Aurangzeb’s campaigns in the Deccan strained imperial finances and provoked religious and regional dissent.
While Mughal administration remained formidable, cracks appeared in its pluralistic foundations: heavy taxation, temple destructions, and growing Maratha resistance foretold the empire’s slow unraveling.

Yet, at its zenith, Upper South Asia was one of the most sophisticated civilizations on Earth—cosmopolitan, literate, and materially rich, a realm where Persian, Sanskrit, and vernacular traditions coexisted and cross-pollinated.

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Summary Insight

Between 1540 and 1683 CE, Upper South Asia reached the apogee of its imperial, artistic, and intellectual flowering.
It was an age of Mughal consolidation and cultural synthesis, when the subcontinent’s river plains, mountain valleys, and deltaic coasts formed a continuous sphere of exchange linking Europe and Asia.
The region’s unity—political and aesthetic—would endure in memory long after its empire fragmented, standing in The Twelve Worlds as the classic example of how diverse ecologies and faiths could briefly harmonize under a single, visionary order.

English company agents become familiar with Indian customs and languages, including Persian, the unifying official language under the Mughals.

In many ways, the English agents of this period live like Indians, intermarry willingly, and a large number of them never return to their home country.

The knowledge of India thus acquired and the mutual ties forged with Indian trading groups give the English a competitive edge over other Europeans.

The French commercial interest—Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company, founded in 1664)—comes late, but the French also establish themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their competitors as they found their enclave at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) on the Coramandel Coast.

Economic competition among the European nations leads to the founding of commercial companies in England (the East India Company, founded in 1600) and in the Netherlands (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie—the United East India Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim is to capture the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in Asia.

Although the Dutch, with a large supply of capital and support from their government, preempt and ultimately exclude the British from the heartland of spices in the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), both companies manage to establish trading "factories" (actually warehouses) along the Indian coast.

The Dutch, for example, use various ports on the Coromandel Coast in South India, especially Pulicat (about twenty kilometers north of Madras), as major sources for slaves for their plantations in the East Indies and for cotton cloth as early as 1609. (The English, however, establish their first factory at what today is known as Madras only in 1639.)

Indian rulers enthusiastically accommodate the newcomers in hopes of pitting them against the Portuguese.

In 1619 Jahangir grants them permission to trade in his territories at Surat (in Gujarat) on the west coast and Hughli (in West Bengal) in the east.

These and other locations on the peninsula become centers of international trade in spices, cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter, calico, and indigo.