Editing Ranjit Singh (section)

===Decline===
[[File:Fresco of Maharaja Ranjit Singh meeting with his potential heirs.gif|thumb|Fresco of Maharaja Ranjit Singh meeting with his potential heirs]]
Singh made his empire and the Sikhs a strong political force, for which he is deeply admired and revered in Sikhism. After his death, the empire failed to establish a lasting structure for Sikh government or stable succession, and the Sikh Empire began to decline. The British and Sikh Empire fought two [[Anglo-Sikh War (disambiguation)|Anglo-Sikh wars]] with the [[Second Anglo-Sikh War|second]] ending the reign of the Sikh Empire.<ref name="Oberoi1994p207">{{cite book|author=Harjot Oberoi|title=The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dKl84EYFkTsC |year=1994|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-61593-6 |pages=207–208 }}</ref> Sikhism itself did not decline.<ref name="Oberoi1994p208">{{cite book|author=Harjot Oberoi|title=The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dKl84EYFkTsC |year=1994|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-61593-6 |pages=208–216 }}</ref>

Clive Dewey has argued that the decline of the empire after Singh's death owes much to the [[jagir]]-based economic and taxation system which he inherited from the Mughals and retained. After his death, a fight to control the tax spoils emerged, leading to a power struggle among the nobles and his family from different wives. This struggle ended with a rapid series of palace coups and assassinations of his descendants, and eventually the annexation of the Sikh Empire by the British.<ref name="Low1991p263" />