The Maratha Empire, (also spelled Mahratta), later the Maratha Confederacy, was a state in central India. It was founded in 1674 and existed until 1818.

The Hindu Maratha had long lived in the Desh region, on the Deccan plateau around Pune, and had resisted incursions into the region by the Muslim Mughal rulers of northern India. Under Shivaji, the Maratha became much more aggressive and began to frequently raid Mughal territory, sacking the Mughal port of Surat in 1664. Shivaji felt secure enough to proclaim himself emperor in 1674. The Maratha spread and conquered much of central India by Shivaji's death in 1680, and raided north into the Mughal territory. After 1681, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb turned his attention to on the south, leading an army deep into the Deccan in 1686-7. While the Marathi army was quickly defeated, they turned to guerilla warfare and succeeded in resisting the Mughals. The long running war in the south began to severely drain Mughal finances. The battle with the Hindu Maratha also began to fray the religious tolerance that had marked the Mughal period. This conflict eventually lead to the collapse of Mughal power in India.

After a peace of several years concluded by Aurangzeb's successor, Bahadur Shah, The Maratha resumed their attacks on the Mughal empire. In the 1720's, they succeeded in separating the former southern Mughal province of Hyderabad from the rest of the Mughal empire. They conquered Malwa decisively in 1738, and shortly thereafter conquered Orissa in eastern India and attacked Bengal. Provincial Maratha leaders established considerable autonomy from the center, however, and the empire became a loosely-knit confederacy under the nominal control of a leader in Pune entitled the Peshwa. After 1750, Maratha power was distributed among five centers: the Peshwa in Pune, the Gaekwar in Baroda, who controlled much of Gujarat; the Bhonsla in Nagpur, who controlled much of central India; and the Holkar and Sindia families in Indore (Malwa) and Gwalior, respectively.

Mughal power was collapsing in the 1750's, and in 1756-1757 Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan sacked the Mughal capital, Delhi. The Peshwa sent an army to challenge the Afghans, and the Maratha army was decisively defeated on January 13, 1761 at the Third Battle of Panipat. The battle was the final nail in coffin of Maratha power, and had a similar effect on Marathas as Waterloo had on Napolean. In fact, even today the phrase 'meet your Panipat' in Marathi, has the exact same meaning as the phrase, 'meet your Waterloo', in English.

After 1761, the confederacy dissolved into five autonomous Maratha states. The British East India Company, from its base in Bombay, intervened in a succession struggle in Pune, which became the First Anglo-Maratha War, ending in 1782. The Maratha put up some of the stiffest resistance to the British conquest of India in the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-1805) and Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818) but by 1818 they had been forced into submission. The Maratha states of Pune and Nagpur came under direct British rule, and the Maratha states of Baroda, Gwalior, and Indore became princely states that acknowledged British sovereignty.

The name of the empire is today preserved in the Indian state of Maharashtra, which was created in 1960 as a Marathi-speaking state.