Machine summary:
Briefly, the hypothesis is this : that the rise and florescence of the Mughal empire as a political, economic, and cultural process was connected with the florescence from the early sixteenth century of a prosperous merchant middle class; and that the decadence of that middle class in the seven• teenth century left the empire to be based only on the landed upper class, whereupon that empire reverted to a purely feudal 2 organization which became disorganization, and presently collapsed.
But the fact that there were the two instances, in swift succession, makes not improbable the suggestion that a large centralized State was, at this time, 'struggling to be born'; and was not to be frustrated or held back by the administrative incompetence of Humayim or of Islam Shah and his successors.
If that phraseology seems mystical, let us say that apparently conditions developing in India at that time were favourable to a large unified State ; and that a ruler who had the intelligence and ability of a Sher Shah or an Akbar could make .
Those which will be brought forward here are : the size of the States ; their centraliza• tion, and administrative system; the attitude of the nobility to centrali• zation ; standardization of weights and measures ; Sher Shah's road• building ; his police policy ; the standardization of the currency; and the rise of a money economy, especially as evinced by Akbar's land-revenue system.