(^156) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
beyond diem. More, they found themselves well placed to penetrate
and pillage a far richer place than Indonesia. India, next to China, was
the most populous country in Asia. We have no censuses, but one es
timate gives the figure of 100 million for the late sixteenth century, and
this may well be low.^9 India possessed large fertile territories, notably
the great river valleys of the northern plains—the Indus, Ganges,
Brahmaputra—and was far from densely settled. One Indian scholar
describes it as land-abundant and assumes that in the seventeenth cen
tury, it was still able to confine agriculture to the most productive
areas; also to profit from pasture and waste to keep large numbers of
livestock.^10 (On the other hand, India got far less from its cattle than
it might have, even less than nothing, because of religious taboos.)
India also—far more than Indonesia—had a large and skilled industrial
workforce, whose products circulated throughout the region. As a re
sult, the Indian economy yielded a substantial surplus that supported
rulers and courts of legendary opulence:
The annual revenues of the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1701) are
said to have amounted to $450,000,000, more than ten times those of
[his contemporary] Louis XTV. According to an estimate of 1638, the
Mogul court of India is supposed to have accumulated a treasure equiva
lent to one and one-half billion dollars.^11
India's reputation for wealth in palaces and temples attracted one in
vader after another—in particular, Turkic nomads, horse-mounted war
riors, who rode from the plains of central Asia to plunder the sedentary
societies on their periphery. The last of these Turkic rulers of India were
Moghuls (Mughals), the dynasty of Babar (1483-1530), a descendant
of the terrifying Timur (Tamerlane), driver of human cattle, heaper of
skulls. It was Babar's grandson Akbar (reigned 1556-1605) and great-
grandson Jahangir (reigned 1605-27) whom the English found on
the throne when they first came to India.
The Moghuls were Sunni Muslims, different then from their neigh
bors to the west in Shiite Persia. They generally tolerated and even de
pended on the Hindu majority, but gave northern India a Muslim cast
that marked it off from the south. The Moghuls, of course, held the
land as a despotic occupier and commanded no loyalty. Their rule was
repeatedly challenged by the indigenous Hindu states and subverted by
rebellions and palace conspiracies. Brothers killed brothers; children,
fathers; fathers, children. In a world of competing claims to legitimacy,
one could trust strangers litde, though more than relatives.^12
nora
(Nora)
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