Did Jodhabai Change India's History?
Jodhabai's influence is why we were colonized by the British and not the Portuguese?
I recently found out that Akbar's wife, popularly (but mistakenly) known as Jodhabai, was an accomplished international trader and her business problems possibly resulted in changing the fate of India: ensuring the British colonized India instead of Portugal. So, this is the story of how a Hindu queen's Muslim ship, carrying Hajj pilgrims in Christian waters patrolled by the Portuguese armada resulted in changing the course of Indian History. (Sorry can't find the original source for this wonderful sentence)
If text is not your thing, you can get this in video form on my youtube channel:
Or as a podcast
Her Name Wasn’t Jodhabai
Anyway, before the real story, what do I mean by "mistakenly known as Jodhabai"?
The name of Akbar's wife, mother of Salim (aka Jahangir), was not Jodhabai. Women of the Mughal harem were referred to by their birth place (or place where they were "first viewed with affection by the Emperor"). By the conventions of those days, the name Jodhabai would refer to a queen from Jodhpur, and Salim's mother was not from Jodhpur, she was from Amer (aka Amber which later became Jaipur). She was usually referred to as Mariam-uz-Zamani (a title Akbar gave her after she gave birth to Salim his only heir). Or Mallika-e-Hindustan.
How did everyone end up calling her Jodhabai? James Tod, a British military officer wrote a very popular book (Annals & Antiquities of Rajasthan). In this book, he mistakenly referred to Akbar's wife as Jodhabai. After this, almost everyone started referring to her as Jodhabai. James Tod wasn't a historian and his book contains many mistakes. It's believed that he confused Akbar's wife (Mariam-uz-Zamani) with Salim's second wife—who was indeed from Jodhpur and was called Jodh bai. He is also responsible for much of the perception of Rajputs today
In any case... I've learnt that if a billion people call a thing X and a thousand academics call it Y and insist that X is wrong ... over time X becomes the name of the thing. So I'm going to call her Jodha in this article. Especially because nobody knows her real name. Akbar had just issued a decree that prohibited the mention of the names of women of his harem in public. Harka bai, Jiya rani, Maanmati bai, Hira Kunwari, are all names that have been suggested, but there's no consensus.
Anyway, who was she?
Jodha was the daughter of King Bharmal of Amer/Amber (later Jaipur)1. Bharmal was in deep trouble—he was in the danger of being completely crushed by one of Akbar's governors. To solve this problem, he offered Akbar his daughter in marriage. Akbar, who was around 20 at that time was smitten not only by Jodha’s beauty (who was also around 20) but also her “charm and accomplishments.” He agreed to this marriage and to also fix Raja Bharmal’s other troubles. Jodha was beautiful, and smart, and quickly became very influential. As a result, the status and power of the entire Amer royal family went up tremendously. You would have heard of Raja Man Singh, one of the most powerful generals of the Mughal army: he was her nephew.
Most of this you from the movie. Also the fact that Jodha was probably responsible for Akbar's tolerant religious views and she significantly influenced the culture and fashion of the women of the Mughals. And maybe was the reason why Akbar abolished the unfair Jiziya tax.
What I didn't know is that she was much more than that. One of the earliest recorded women to engage in inland and overseas trade, she built huge ships to trade silk, indigo, and various spices with the Gulf countries. And also to carry pilgrims to and from Mecca. Jodha is the only woman of her time whose involvement in international trade is recorded. She paved the way for later powerful women (like Nur Jahan). She was very influential in the Mughal court even after Akbar's death.
Jodha After Akbar
So, this article can be called "Jodha After Akbar" 😀
In spite of sea-trade being against Jodha's religion (Hindu), she insisted that the Mughals needed a strong navy to avoid being overtaken by the firangis. Mughals came from landlocked Afghanistan and Turkmenistan and didn't have navy in their DNA, but they listened to her.
And, she decided that she wanted to become an international trader. She built some of the biggest ships of that time, and quickly had a staff of financial advisors "mirroring in miniature the emperor's own finance ministry". She was one of only four members of the court (another was the emperor) and the only woman to have the rank of 12,000 calvary.
How is all this relevant to the 'fate of India'? This was the time when the Portuguese and the British were traders who were dependent on permission from the Mughal emperor to trade in India. Who would win out depended primarily on whom the emperor favoured. Jodha and her business-related problems played a crucial role in whom the emperor favoured.
Here are 3 incidents which show her impact—how she first slowed the British down by many years, and then later contributed to the downfall of the Portuguese.
Incident #1: The British Mess With the Wrong Woman
William Hawkins was the first officer of the British East India Company (EIC) to land up in Jahangir's court. In 1610, as part of his trading activity, he sent one of his men (William Finch) to buy indigo from a place near Agra, and Finch committed a costly mistake—he made the strategic error of buying indigo from one of Jodha's suppliers by paying them more than Jodha. Jodha, who had a ship waiting to depart, and was depending on this consignment, suffered a great loss as a result. Furious, Jodha made Jahangir kick William Hawkins out of his court in 1611. This marked the unsuccessful end of the first British EIC voyage to India. This also made the Portuguese happy.
Incident #2: The Portuguese Mess With the Wrong Woman
In 1612, the next British EIC voyage came to India. They reached Surat where the Portuguese immediately tried to fight them off but the British won a minor naval battle and managed to stay. They asked Jahangir permission to build a factory in Surat which he allowed. This made the Portuguese unhappy and they decided to throw their weight around a bit to display their displeasure. In 1613, they seized the Mughals' ship Rahimi, which was carrying goods worth $500 million (in today's currency) and 700 Haj passengers.
The Portuguese were known for such excesses. “The Mughal court had grown used to the rapacious brutality of the Portuguese and would react by ignoring it or accommodating it.” As a result, the Portuguese expected no real fallout from this action. But this time was different: Rahimi was Jodha's ship and the Portuguese discovered to their horror the downsides of crossing Jodha.
Jodha went to Jahangir and Jahangir took action.
Jahangir ordered the halt of all traffic through Surat, the major Indian port for sea-going trade, the seizure of the Portuguese town of Daman, the closing of the Jesuit church in Agra, and the suspension of all allowances to Portuguese priests in Mughal India. The Portuguese panicked and managed a peace deal with the Mughals. But it was too little too late and this incident marked the start of the decline of Portuguese influence in the Mughal court and the increase of British influence.
You don't have to take my word for it. William Foster, considered one of the foremost authorities on the history of early British relations with India, has this to say about this incident: "The Great Mogul's mother was a great adventurer, which caused the Great Mogul to drive the Portingals2 out of this place."
Incident #3: The British Get Into Jodha’s Good Books
The third instance is relatively minor but equally telling. In 1617, English pirates in the Bay of Bengal tried to seize Jodha's next ship (the one she built after the Rahimi) again. This time, the official English fleet showed up just in time, and got rid of the pirates.
Why is this important? In the words of Sir Thomas Roe, English Ambassador in Jahangir's court: it was lucky they could protect the ship, because if not, all prospects of English trade in India would be "utterly lost".
So, the British learnt an important lesson ("do not mess with Jodha") from a relatively minor error, while the Portuguese made a much more serious error, and I can argue that this was a key turning point in the relative influence of British vs Portuguese designs in India.
Would it be any Different if India Were a Portuguese Colony?
Is that really a big deal? If India had been colonized by the Portuguese, would that be so different? The answer is, probably yes. And not in a good way: you might think that the entire country being like Goa would be a good thing, Right?
Nope.
Sure, being a British colony was terrible for India. But being a Portuguese colony would have been worse. The British strategy with their colonies was: let the locals rule as long as they listened to the British and allowed the British to extract what they wanted. They allowed freedom of religion, limited local self government, and even setting up of low-end local industry. The Portuguese not into any of these things. History shows that ex-Portuguese colonies are, on an average worse off today than British: they got freedom much later (1970s), their governments are not stable, more violence and instability, and bad economies because they’re mostly based on exploitation of natural resources.
Example: Angola, Mozambique have prolonged conflict, weak institutions, shattered economies, and poor human capital development, leading to instability and civil wars. Compare with, Ghana, Kenya which are much better off.
Summary and References
To summarize, Jodha (who was really Mariam-uz-Zamani), wasn't just Akbar's love interest but was an international trader. And European powers who pissed her off discovered painfully that they shouldn't have done that. And that's why this thread is in English and not Portuguese.
I originally found this in @UnamPillai's book “The Courtesan, The Mahatma And The Italian Brahmin : Tales From Indian History” in the story “'Jodhabai' More Than Akbar’s Wife”.
Other sources:
A History of Jaipur by Jadunath Sarkar
Annals & Antiquities of Rajasthan by James Tod
The Capture of Maryam-uz-Zamani's Ship: Mughal Women and European Traders by Ellison Findly
Wikipedia on Mariam-uz-Zamani
I found this article in which the Karni Sena claims that Raja Bharmal was from Mewar and not from Amer/Amber. But I can’t find anyone else claiming this, so I’m not sure if the Karni Sena is really claiming this or it was just a typo in the article.
I included this quote simply because I loved the word “Portingals”