The Marathi-speaking power of the western Deccan that, rising under Shivaji against the Deccan sultanates and the Mughals, broke Mughal dominance in the eighteenth century and spread across much of India — only to lose, divided among rival houses, to the British East India Company by 1818.
In 1674, a Marathi warrior crowned himself king on a hilltop fort in the western Deccan, claiming the right to rule in his own name against the vast Mughal Empire. His name was Shivaji. Within a century his successors had drained the Mughals, raided as far as the gates of Delhi, and made the Marathas the strongest power in India. Then they lost it all to a trading company from across the sea.