François Bernier on Mughal India

A Warning for Europe

• Bernier warned that if European kings followed the Mughal model, their kingdoms would be far from well-cultivated and populated.
• He saw the Mughal Empire as a land of beggars and barbarians.
• Its cities and towns were ruined and filled with ill-air and pestilential marshes.
• Surprisingly, none of the Mughal official documents suggest that a state was the sole owner of land.
• The official chronicler of Akbar's reign suggested that the state was the sole owner of the land.
• Bernier's observations contained critical insights and reflection.
• His account contains discussions trying to place the history of the Mughals within a universal framework.
• He constantly compared Mughal India with contemporary Europe.
• He also ordered the perceived differences hierarchically, so that India appeared to be inferior to the Western world.

The Poor Peasant

• An excerpt from Bernier's description of the peasantry in the countryside:
• Of the vast tracts of country constituting the empire of Hindustan, many of them are little more than sand, or barren mountains, badly cultivated and thinly populated.
• Even a considerable portion of the good land remains untilled for want of labourers, many of whom perish in consequence of the bad treatment they experience from Governors.
• The poor people, when they become incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are not only often deprived of the means of subsistence, but are also made to lose their children, who are carried away as slaves.
• In this instance, Bernier was participating in contemporary debates in Europe concerning the nature of state and society, and intended that his description of Mughal India would serve as a warning to those who did not recognise the "merits" of private property.
• Bernier described Indian society as consisting of undifferentiated masses of impoverished people, subjugated by a small minority of a very rich and powerful ruling class.
• There was no social group or class worth the name.
• Bernier confidently asserted: "There is no middle state in India".

Widespread Poverty

• Pelsaert, a Dutch traveller, visited the subcontinent during the early decades of the seventeenth century.
• He was shocked to see widespread poverty.
• "poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe".
• Holding the state responsible, he says: "So much is wrong from the peasants that even dry bread is scarcely left to fill their stomachs".

Explore the insights of François Bernier regarding the Mughal state, including his observations on artisans, agricultural output in Bengal, and the role of merchants. This quiz delves into Bernier's accounts of social stratification, labor issues, and landownership in Mughal India compared to earlier perspectives like that of Ibn Battuta.