Few Indian cities have transformed as dramatically as Pune, known historically as Poona. In the early 1700s it was a modest market town on the Deccan plateau. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had become the nerve centre of the most powerful political force in the subcontinent. This rise was not an accident of geography or trade. It was the deliberate creation of the Peshwas, the hereditary prime ministers of the Maratha Empire, who turned a riverside settlement into a planned capital city. The story of Poona offers one of the clearest examples of how political power can reshape urban form, and how quickly that same form can be absorbed by a new ruling order.
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From kasba to capital
Poona began as a small kasba, a fortified market town, settled along the banks where two rivers met. The confluence of the Mutha and Mula rivers gave the early settlement reliable water and fertile surrounding land, which supported both agriculture and a stable population. The original core of the town, Kasba Peth, still survives as one of the oldest neighbourhoods in modern Pune.
The town’s fortunes changed with the rise of the Marathas in the seventeenth century. Chhatrapati Shivaji spent part of his early life here, and the region became closely tied to Maratha ambitions. The real transformation, however, came in the eighteenth century. When the Peshwas chose Poona as their base, they set in motion a century of growth that contemporaries and later historians have often described as the city’s golden age. The Peshwas served as prime ministers to the Maratha Chhatrapati, but over time they accumulated enough authority to become the empire’s effective rulers. As the office of Peshwa became hereditary from the time of Balaji Vishwanath, Poona naturally became the capital of a vast and expanding state.
What makes this rise remarkable is how little natural advantage the site offered. Poona had no major port, no famous pilgrimage centre, and only a modest hinterland. Its importance was created almost entirely by political decision rather than by trade or religion. This is precisely what makes it such a useful case study for understanding pre-colonial urbanisation.
Planned growth under the Peshwas
The Peshwas did not allow Poona to expand randomly. They organised the city into peths, which were distinct wards or neighbourhoods, each developed for particular communities and economic functions. This deliberate zoning is one reason urban historians treat Poona as an early Indian example of systematic city planning.
The peth system
The peths gave the city its enduring shape. Up to seventeen peths developed in central Pune during Maratha and Peshwa rule, and several were named after the days of the week in Marathi. The logic was practical: traders and craftsmen in a given locality often conducted their main business on a specific day, so the ward took that day’s name. Names like Shaniwar Peth (Saturday), Somwar Peth (Monday), and Budhwar Peth (Wednesday) reflect this rhythm of weekly commerce. Other peths were named after the rulers or officials who founded them.
This arrangement allowed the Peshwas to settle merchants, artisans, weavers, and service communities in an orderly way as the population grew. New peths were added under successive Peshwas through the eighteenth century, and together they formed what is still called the old city of Pune today.
Shaniwar Wada and the Huzur Daftar
Two structures captured the city’s new status as a seat of power. The first was the magnificent Shaniwar Wada, a fortified palace complex built in 1732 by the first Peshwa, Bajirao I. The fort served as both the residence of the Peshwas and the seat of government. Its massive stone foundations, heavy gates, and ornate teak woodwork made it the architectural symbol of Maratha authority, and the palace gave its name to the surrounding Shaniwar Peth.
The second was the Huzur Daftar, the central secretariat of the Maratha state. This was the administrative engine of the empire. The Peshwa government ran on a three-tier system, with the central administration at Poona, provincial governments below it, and district administration at the base. The Huzur Daftar housed several offices and specialised bureaucratic departments, including accounts departments that managed the financial records of a state stretching across much of India. The systematic record-keeping organised here represented a sophisticated administrative culture for its time.
A bureaucratic-military city
Most pre-modern Indian cities grew around trade routes or religious sites. Poona was different. Historians often describe it as a bureaucratic-military city, meaning one that existed primarily to serve the administrative and military needs of a state rather than to function as a commercial hub.
This character shaped daily life. The city’s population was dominated by people tied to government and warfare: administrators, clerks, soldiers, weapon makers, suppliers, accountants, and the families and service communities that supported them. Commerce existed and the peths thrived as markets, but the underlying purpose of the city was governance and military organisation. Political and military priorities, more than trade, set the tone of urban life.
The rise of the Chitpavan Brahmins
The most striking social feature of eighteenth-century Poona was the dominance of the Chitpavan Brahmin community. The Peshwas themselves belonged to this group, originally from the Konkan coast, and their rise carried the wider community to positions of exceptional power. The Chitpavans, sometimes called Konkanastha Brahmins, had been held in relatively low esteem by older established Brahmin communities of the region before the eighteenth century. Their fortunes changed dramatically once the Bhat family of Balaji Vishwanath became the de facto rulers of the Maratha Empire.
In Poona, members of this community served as military commanders, bureaucrats, and bankers, often linked to one another through marriage alliances. Their concentration in administration, the army, and finance gave the Peshwa capital a distinctive social hierarchy. It is worth noting that some scholars argue the political influence of the Chitpavans has been exaggerated, pointing out that even powerful Peshwas did not enjoy the full trust of every level of the administration. Still, the association between the community and the Peshwa state remained a defining feature of the city.
Decline and British conquest
Poona’s century of dominance did not end gradually. It was undone by a sequence of military disasters and internal divisions that the British East India Company learned to exploit.
The shock of Panipat
The first great blow came in 1761. At the Third Battle of Panipat, an invading Afghan army under Ahmad Shah Abdali decisively defeated the Marathas. The losses in men and leadership were enormous. The third Peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, could not recover from the shock and died shortly after the defeat in June 1761. The Marathas regained military strength within a decade, but the unity of the confederacy was permanently weakened, and rival chiefs increasingly pursued their own interests.
The Anglo-Maratha Wars
These divisions opened the door to the British. A succession struggle after 1761 split the Marathas into factions, and the dispute over the office of Peshwa drew the East India Company into Maratha politics. This led to the three Anglo-Maratha Wars fought between 1775 and 1818. The first war, beginning in 1775, ended in stalemate after a British force advancing on Poona was forced to surrender at Wadgaon. The second war, between 1803 and 1805, saw British victories that significantly reduced Maratha power.
The fall of Poona in 1818
The final confrontation came with the Third Anglo-Maratha War. In November 1817, the last Peshwa, Baji Rao II, attacked the British and set fire to their residency at Poona. He was defeated nearby at the Battle of Kirkee, also known as Khadki. A further defeat at the Battle of Koregaon followed in January 1818. Baji Rao II eventually surrendered, the office of Peshwa was abolished, and he was pensioned off to Bithur near Kanpur as a British retainer. By 1818, Poona had passed firmly into British hands and was absorbed into the Bombay Presidency.
Under colonial rule, the city’s role changed. The British established the Poona Cantonment as a separate military settlement with wide streets and bungalows, creating the lasting division between the dense old peths and the spacious “camp” that still marks Pune’s layout. Yet the urban foundation laid by the Peshwas proved durable. The peth system survived, many religious and cultural institutions continued, and the administrative habits of the Maratha state left their mark on the city that followed.
What do you think? Why do you think a city with so few natural advantages was able to become the political capital of an empire, and what does that suggest about how cities grow in general? If the peth structure built in the eighteenth century still shapes Pune today, how much does early urban planning really determine a city’s long-term character?
References
- https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/the-peshwas-secretariat-at-pune-poona-the-pivot-class-10-social-science-cbse-5fcd357eda46832f5eb6feb1
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peths_in_Pune
- https://www.worldhistory.org/Anglo-Maratha_Wars/
- https://graphsearch.epfl.ch/en/concept/2456520
- https://lotusarise.com/anglo-maratha-wars-upsc/
- https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/maratha-wars
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