The Rise and Fall of a Brown Water Navy: Sarkhel Kanhoji Angre and Maratha Sea Power on the Arabian Sea in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Sarkhel Kanhoji Angre fought the English, Portuguese and Siddis on and off the Konkan Coast for more than three decades till his death (1729). His descendants kept these powers and the Peshwa at bay till 1756 by skillfully using a ‘brown water’ navy. The combined deployment of land and sea power by the Angres is unique to Indian history and salutary to anyone interested in the early modern local contexts of the Indian Ocean World.

Professor Anirudh Deshpande teaches early modern and modern history at the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, Delhi University.