16.1 Political Affairs · Part 2

any part of the city. This frustrated their ambitions to follow the Portuguese model. The English acquired the islands of Bombay in , and set up their headquarters in Bombay in . Their primary objective was to develop Bombay as an alternate base for their operations. But Surat under the protection of the Mughal state still remained the preferred centre of commercial activity for the merchants. - : South India after Vijayanagar South India, especially the Tamil region, presented a sharp contrast to the centralized stability of the Mughal empire in these decades. Politically the region was fragmented and unsettled. Under Vijayanagar rule, three Nayak kingdoms had been set up in the Tamil region: in Madurai, Thanjavur and Senji. The objective was to provide financial and manpower resources to the empire. After the defeat of Vijayanagar in in the Battle of Talikota by the combined forces of the rulers of Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golkonda, the central authority of the once dominant kingdom became very weak. The Nayak kingdoms became virtually autonomous, though they made a ritualistic acknowledgment of the XI History - Lesson - - The Coming of the Europeans overextended Mughal empire soon began to reveal its inherent weakness. This became most apparent when the Marathas, under Shivaji, began to grow in power and military strength. They attacked Surat with impunity in , though it was soon abandoned. But their second raid in devastated Surat and its trade took several years to recover. This seriously challenged the claim of Mughal invincibility and it sounded the beginning of the gradual disintegration of the Mughal empire. After the attack on Surat, Shivaji turned his attention to south India, and defeated the Nayaks of Senji and Thanjavur. Though Senji was conquered by the Mughals a few years later, Thanjavur survived as a Maratha-ruled state. The Maratha kings, with their inclusive policy of assimilating Tamil intellectual and cultural traditions, made Thanjavur the cultural capital of the Tamil region. - : The Mughal Empire and the Successor States Aurangzeb, the last of the “great Mughals”, died in . One of the