Climate of Conquest: War, Environment, and Empire in Mughal North India

What can war tell us about empire? Climate of Conquest is built around this question. Here the author eschews the conventional way of writing about warfare primarily in terms of battles and technologies. Instead, he unravels the deep connections that Mughal war-making shared with the broader dynamics of society, culture, and politics. In the process, he offers a new analysis of the Mughal empire from the vantage point of war. Climate of Conquest closely studies the dynamics of the military campaigns that helped the Mughals conquer North India and project their power beyond it. The author argues that these campaigns unfolded in constant negotiation with the diverse natural environment of South Asia. The empire sought to discipline the environment and harness its resources to satisfy its own military needs. At the same time, environmental factors like climate, terrain, and ecology profoundly influenced Mughal military tactics, strategy, and deployment of technology. The book also explores the world of non-elite labour that spearheaded Mughal military logistics, the process of formation of imperial frontiers, and the empire's legitimisation of war and conquest. What emerges is a fresh interpretation of Mughal empire-building as a highly adaptive, flexible, and accommodative process.