Moving East, Moving West

By 1570, Akbar’s armies established their hold over the heart of North India. Using this landmass as their base, they projected their power in different directions in the following decades. As they ventured increasingly away from their political heartland, they encountered new adversaries as well as radically different environmental conditions. The result was very different military experiences and political results across the different theatres of war. The present chapter unravels these diverse histories by focusing on six regions—the Bengal Delta, the Brahmaputra Basin, the Lower Indus Basin, the Himalayas, Qandahar, and Balkh–Badakhshan. It shows that varying conditions of terrain, ecology, and climate precipitated tremendous military heterogeneity with respect to tactics, strategy, logistics, and deployment of technology. In light of this, it becomes necessary to understand Mughal war-making and empire-building as highly adaptive and accommodative processes that constantly evolved in response to the diverse conditions they encountered.