Transacting Politics in the Maratha Empire: An Agreement between Friends, 1795

Abstract

Diplomacy was a principal site of cultural exchange in the early modern Persianate world. Focusing on the karārnāmā, or agreement, this paper explores how a repertoire of documentary genres, binding formulae, and graphic procedures enabled legal, commercial, and diplomatic transactions in eighteenthcentury western India. The exchange of written agreements facilitated interstate relations as well as profit-sharing contractual arrangements between individuals. Despite their centrality to interactions between European and South Asian polities, these instruments met with limited success in establishing rights to property under the legal regime of the East India Company-state and instead acquired new functions in colonial revenue administration.