Coronation of Shivaji and the founding of the Maratha Empire

Date

6 June 1674

Category

Politics & governance

Region

Western India (Maharashtra, Deccan)

Era

Early Modern

Significance

On 6 June 1674 Shivaji Bhonsle was crowned Chhatrapati (sovereign) at Raigad fort, formally establishing the Maratha state in western India.

Rising from a Deccan warrior family, Shivaji had spent decades seizing hill forts, building a navy and waging mobile guerrilla warfare against the Sultanate of Bijapur and the Mughal Empire of Aurangzeb. His coronation, attended by tens of thousands and officiated by the brahmin Gaga Bhatt, asserted an independent Hindu kingship (Hindavi Swarajya) and legitimised Maratha sovereignty in Sanskritic-Hindu terms. Shivaji's innovations in revenue administration, fortification and light cavalry created a resilient polity that outlasted him. Under later Peshwas the Marathas expanded into a confederacy that became the principal indigenous power in eighteenth-century India, contesting Mughal decline across the subcontinent until their defeat by the British in the early nineteenth century. The coronation remains a foundational moment in Indian political memory.

Empires active in 6 June 1674

• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE to 1857 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE to 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE to 1974 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE to 1976 CE
• Ottoman Empire
  1299 CE to 1922 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE to 1912 CE

Related politics & governance events

• Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War
  October 1648
• The Declaration of Independence
  4 July 1776
• The United States Constitution drafted and ratified
  17 September 1787
• The storming of the Bastille and the outbreak of the French Revolution
  14 July 1789
• Louis XIV moves the royal court to Versailles
  6 May 1682
• Louis XIV Promulgates the Code Noir
  March 1685

Essential reading

• Battle of Feyiase and the rise of the Asante Empire
  1701
• Founding of the Bank of Amsterdam (Wisselbank)
  31 January 1609
• Qing conquest of the Dzungars and the creation of Xinjiang
  1755 to 1759
• Shah Abbas I and the golden age of Safavid Isfahan
  1598 (capital moved to Isfahan)

Further reading

The Mughal Empire

The wider story

The Mughal Empire

John F. Richards

The standard scholarly survey (New Cambridge History of India).

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