In the early sixteenth century, northern India, being then under mainly Muslim rulers, falls again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors.

The resulting Mughal Empire does not stamp out the local societies it comes to rule, but rather balances and pacifies them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralized, and uniform rule.

Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals unite their far-flung realms through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to an emperor who has near-divine status.

The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency, causes peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.

The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the seventeenth century is a factor in India's economic expansion resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.

Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gain military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gives them both recognition and military experience.

Expanding commerce during Mughal rule give rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India.

As the empire disintegrates, many among these elites are able to seek and control their own affairs.

The "single most important power" that emerges in the early modern period is the Maratha confederacy.By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, a number of European trading companies, including the English East India Company, have established coastal outposts.

The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology lead it to increasingly flex its military muscle and cause it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; both these factors are crucial in allowing the Company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies.

Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enables it to annex or subdue most of India by the 1820s.

India is now no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but is instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials, and many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period.

By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and itself effectively made an arm of British administration, the Company begins to more consciously enter non-economic arenas such as education, social reform, and culture.