The young emperor Jahangir, for example, boasted of slaughtering 17,000 animals and nearly 14,000 birds, yet he was a great patron of the arts. His successor, Shah Jahan, secured his throne by murdering rivals, yet he was also the romantic who built an exquisite shrine, the Taj Mahal, to the memory of a beloved wife.
Jahangir's father, Akbar, the greatest Mogul emperor, prudently married Hindu princesses, observed Hindu festivals and even placed Hindus in high office. Thus, even those he displaced were inclined to see him not as the head of a Muslim state, but simply as the Muslim head of a nonpartisan India. When Akbar died in 1605, however, the court degenerated into a series of vicious successional struggles animated by an operating principle known as takht ya takhta (throne or coffin). Aurangzeb, whose 49-year rule began in 1658, applied special taxes to Hindus and reputedly demolished Hindu temples, sowing the seeds of the furious Hindu-Muslim animosities that would shadow British India till the end and that poison relations between India and Pakistan to this day.
Against this turbulent background, the British were free to ply their trade as they wished, selling silver and devices like clocks and firearms in return for cotton, spices, silk, indigo, jewels and opium. Before long the East India Company was one of the largest employers in London. In India, its major settlements developed into self-sufficient communities, with forts, warehouses, residents and even their own law courts. To defend these "civil servants," each of the trading posts also kept a company of "military servants.".
The highest authority in each company settlement was a Governor-in-Council (the Governor of Madras from 1687-92 was one Elihu Yale, who a bit later bequeathed his fortune to help found a small college in New Haven) and these officials developed a taste for the regal extravagance of local potentates.
