ABSTRACT
Was there a relationship between imperialism and religious belief? The first section of this chapter looks at whether early modern empires played much of a role in achieving mass conversion, focusing on Islam on the western coast and comparing this with Mughal Bengal, as well as Catholicism in Portuguese India. Having shown that conquest seldom led to conversion, the chapter then moves on to consider the relationship of empires and imperial ideology to religious conflict, critically examining the hostility towards ‘Turks’ or ‘Yavanas’, the nature, role, and contemporary understanding of temple desecration/destruction, and how communal or sectarian violence in India compared to other parts of the early modern world, where it was often far more intense. In the third section, attention turns to the management of diversity and the incorporation of different groups, through justice and charity, court-sponsored religious dialogues and projects of translation of Indic texts and their respective traditions, and the promotion of toleration as a ‘policy’. In relating some of these initiatives to the belief in renewal accompanying the impending Islamic millennium, this chapter turns to consider prevalent chiliastic and millenarian ideas across early modern Eurasia. The concluding section links our examination of religion and belief, empire and ideology to the themes of the next two chapters.
