What are the common causes for the rise and decline of great powers in the past? What conditions were important in sustaining their international power, and what conditions eventually eroded their primacy?

This chapter explains the Mughal and Qing empires’ diverging fates over the eighteenth century, owing to variations in their ability to accommodate cultural diversity over the course of territorial expansion. The Mughal Empire failed to extend its regime of syncretic incorporation as it expanded into the Deccan, prefiguring imperial overstretch, a legitimation crisis and subsequent decline. Conversely, the Manchus extended their diversity regime of segregated incorporation as they conquered vast new territories on the Eurasian steppe. The resulting divergence opened up opportunities for the East India Company’s later rise in India, even while continued Manchu dynamism limited Western expansion in mainland East Asia. The chapter proceeds as follows. The first section sketches the Mughal Empire’s fall, canvassing existing explanations for its decline, before advancing an alternative account in the second section. The third and fourth sections then respectively narrate and explain the Manchu Empire’s further expansion during the eighteenth century. The fifth section reviews the legacies of these empires’ divergent trajectories in shaping their respective regions’ subsequent evolution.