International Conference « The Empire that Made India: 500 Years of the Mughals » — EHESS Paris, 3-4 June 2026

International Conference

The Empire that Made India: 500 Years of the Mughals

 

3-4 June 2026

École des hautes études en sciences sociales

54 Boulevard Raspail 75006 Paris

 

The year 2026 marks half a millennium since the foundation of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857), the last great precolonial power, which governed most parts of the Indian sub-continent. In its heyday, the Mughal dynasty ruled over a population of more than 100 million subjects. The Mughal Empire has remained at the centre of major debates in Indian historiography on issues as diverse as the nature of political and administrative institutions, fiscal and economic systems, literary and artistic cultures as well as inter-religious cohabitation prior to colonial rule. The international conference commemorating the 500-year anniversary of the empire’s foundation critically engages with various historiographical approaches while proposing potential avenues for future research.

3 JUNE

9: 30-10 Introduction and Welcome Remarks

 

Romain Huret, President, EHESS

Naveen Kanalu, EHESS-CRH

 

10-11:30

Keynote: Absolutism or Condominium? The Mughals and Modes of Power-Sharing

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Distinguished Professor of History and Irving & Jean Stone Chair in Social Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles

 

13:30-15:00

Panel 1: CONQUEST AND CONSOLIDATION OF EMPIRE

Chair: Jean-Frédéric Schaub, EHESS-Mondes Américains

 

The Mughal Conquest of Gujarat: A Reappraisal

Jyoti Gulati Balachandran, Pennsylvania State University

 

Mughal Delhi under Akbar and Jahangir

Corinne Lefèvre, CNRS, CSH Delhi

 

15:30-17:00

Panel 2: GOVERNING THE IMPERIAL SPACE

Chair: Olivier Bouquet, Université Paris Cité-CESSMA

  

Routes of Regulation: Transit Permits, Everyday Life, and the Afterlives of Mughal Archives

Subah Dayal, New York University

The Mughal Information Economy: Coordinating the Imperial Grid of Governance from Southern India (ca. 1690s)

Naveen Kanalu, EHESS-CRH

4 JUNE

 

9: 30-12:00

Panel 3: ISLAM IN PRACTICE

Chair: Anna Joukovskaia, CNRS-CERCEC

 

Juristic Habitus or Judicious Kingship? Revisiting the Crisis of 1579 via Islamic Legal Theory

1. ShirazAli, University of California, Berkeley

 

Law and Social Communication in Mughal India: State-Society Interactions in Legal Spaces

Farhat Hasan, University of Delhi

 

Spectral Conversions: Becoming Muslim in Mughal India (c. 1658-1707)

Munis D. Faruqui, University of California, Berkeley

 

13:30-15:00

Panel 4: ECONOMIC LIFE: PEASANTS AND MERCHANTS

Chair: Catarina Madeira-Santos, EHESS-IMAF

Peasants as Hunter-Gatherers in Mughal India

Ali Anooshahr, University of California, Davis

 

“Without a king’s farman it is difficult to negotiate here”: The Dutch East India Company Factory in Mughal Agra, 1621-1730

Maarten Draper, European University Institute, Florence

Mike O’Sullivan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 

15:30- 17:00

Panel 5: FRONTIERS OF EMPIRE

Chair: Marc Aymes, EHESS-CETOBaC

 

Revenue Collection in the Border Provinces of the Mughals and Marathas in the Eighteenth Century

Michihiro Ogawa, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo

 

Courting the ‘Other’: Occult and Political Culture beyond Mughal Hindustan, 1720-1750 CE.

Samyak Ghosh, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru

 

17:00

Final Discussion

To attend the event, please register at the following address by 25 May:

https://evento.renater.fr/survey/participation-au-colloque-the-empire-that-made-india-500-years-of-the-mughals-8m1l046y

Mughal Conference 2026 Booklet

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