Third Anglo-Maratha War ends Maratha power

In 1817 and 1818 the British East India Company defeated the Maratha Confederacy in the Third Anglo-Maratha War. The Peshwa, Baji Rao II, the chief minister who led the confederacy, attacked the British Residency at Pune in November 1817, was beaten at Khadki, and fled. Other chiefs, the Bhonsle of Nagpur and Holkar of Indore, were defeated at Sitabuldi and Mahidpur. Baji Rao surrendered in June 1818, and the Peshwaship was abolished.¹²

The Marathas had been the dominant power in India in the decades after the Mughal decline, beating the Mughals and reaching Delhi, though Panipat in 1761 had cost them heavily. The confederacy was a loose group of chiefs, with the Peshwa at Pune as its nominal head, and its members often quarrelled. The Company had already beaten Sindhia and Bhonsle in the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803 to 1805, and the Governor-General, the Marquess of Hastings, chose in 1817 to suppress the Pindaris, bands of raiders based in Maratha lands, which drew the chiefs into war. Baji Rao was given a large pension and settled at Bithur, near Kanpur. His adopted son Nana Sahib would be a leader of the 1857 rebellion. The Company annexed much of the Peshwa's territory into the Bombay Presidency, and left a small state at Satara for a descendant of Shivaji.¹²³

After 1818 no Indian power could challenge the Company by force. Except for the Punjab and Sindh, which fell in the 1840s, it was the paramount power from the Sutlej to Cape Comorin, ruling directly or through treaties with princes.¹⁵