François Bernier

The essentials

François Bernier, a Frenchman, was a doctor, political philosopher and historian. He came to the Mughal empire in search of opportunities and was in India from 1656 to 1668. He was closely associated with the Mughal court as a physician to Prince Dara Shukoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, and later as an intellectual and scientist with Danishmand Khan, an Armenian noble.

His work, Travels in the Mogul Empire, is marked by detailed observations and critical insights. Bernier constantly compared Mughal India with Europe, generally emphasising the superiority of Europe. He dedicated his major writing to the king of France, Louis XIV.

Key points

• According to Bernier, a fundamental difference was the lack of private property in land in Mughal India; the emperor owned all the land and distributed it among nobles.
• He argued that, as a result, landholders could not pass land on to their children and were averse to long-term investment; this led to the ruin of agriculture, oppression of peasants and decline in living standards, except for the ruling aristocracy.
• He described Indian society as consisting of undifferentiated masses of impoverished people, ruled by a small, very rich minority, with no middle class.
• He described Mughal cities as "camp towns", dependent on imperial patronage.
• His ideas influenced Montesquieu (theory of oriental despotism) and Karl Marx (Asiatic mode of production).
• Yet Mughal documents do not show the emperor as the sole owner of land; Bernier also recorded that India's craft production was flourishing and that huge amounts of gold and silver flowed in, which contradicts his own picture.

Common mistakes

• Treating his account as neutral; it was coloured by his wish to contrast Europe with the East.