History · Ch 5 — Through the Eyes of Travellers — Perceptions of Society
The question of landownership
The question of landownership
The central argument Bernier makes about Mughal India is that the emperor owned all the land. This was, in his view, the single most important difference between India and Europe. Bernier believed deeply in the virtues of private property, and he saw crown ownership as disastrous for both the state and its people.
He claimed that because the emperor owned everything, he distributed land among his nobles, but these landholders could never pass the land to their children. Without the security of inheritance, they had no incentive to make long-term investments in improving production or maintaining the land. This, Bernier argued, prevented the emergence of a class of "improving" landlords — the kind that existed in Western Europe and who cared about sustaining and expanding agriculture.
The consequences, according to Bernier, were severe: uniform ruination of agriculture, excessive oppression of the peasantry, and a continuous decline in living standards for everyone except the ruling aristocracy. Widespread poverty was the result. The Dutch traveller Pelsaert, visiting in the early seventeenth century, was similarly shocked. He described the poverty as so great and miserable that the life of the people could only be depicted as "the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe." He held the state responsible, saying: "So much is wrung from the peasants that even dry bread is scarcely left to fill their stomachs."
Bernier's own description of the peasantry is grim. He wrote that vast tracts of the empire were little more than sand or barren mountains, badly cultivated and thinly populated. Even good land remained untilled for want of labourers, many of whom perished from the bad treatment they received from governors. When poor people could not meet the demands of their rapacious lords, they were deprived of subsistence and their children were carried away as slaves. Driven to despair, the peasantry simply abandoned the countryside.
Bernier was not just describing India. He was participating in a contemporary European debate about the nature of state and society. His description of Mughal India was intended as a warning to those who did not recognise the merits of private property. He warned that if European kings followed the Mughal model, their kingdoms would become deserts and solitudes, their cities ruined, and their fields overgrown with bushes and marshes.
As an extension of this argument, 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. Between the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich, he asserted, there was no social group or class worth the name. He stated confidently: "There is no middle state in India."
But was Bernier correct? Curiously, none of the Mughal official documents suggest that the state was the sole owner of land. Abu'l Fazl, the sixteenth-century official chronicler of Akbar's reign, described land revenue as "remunerations of sovereignty" — a claim made by the ruler on his subjects for the protection he provided, rather than rent on land he owned. It is possible that European travellers regarded such claims as rent because land revenue demands were often very high. However, this was actually not a rent or even a land tax, but a tax on the crop.
Bernier's descriptions had a lasting impact on Western thought. The French philosopher Montesquieu used this account to develop the idea of oriental despotism — the view that rulers in Asia enjoyed absolute authority over their subjects, who were kept in conditions of subjugation and poverty, with all land belonging to the king and no private property. This idea was further developed by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century as the Asiatic mode of production. …
Source 11 — The poor peasant. Bernier's description of the countryside:
Of the vast tracts of country constituting the empire of Hindustan, many 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 … The poor people, when they become incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are … deprived of the means of subsistence … Thus it happens that the peasantry, driven to despair by so excessive a tyranny, abandon the country. …
Source 12 — A warning for Europe. Bernier warned that if European kings followed the Mughal model:
Their kingdoms would be very far from being well-cultivated and peopled, so well built, so rich, so polite and flourishing as we see them … They would soon be kings of deserts and solitudes, of beggars and barbarians … We should find the great Cities and the great Burroughs (boroughs) rendered uninhabitable because of ill air, and to fall to ruine (ruin) without any bodies taking care of repairing them; the hillocks abandon'd, and the fields overspread with bushes … …
Widespread poverty. Pelsaert, a Dutch traveller of the early seventeenth century, was — like Bernier — shocked by the poverty he saw, describing "poverty so great and miserable" as to be "the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe", and holding the state responsible: "So much is wrung from the peasants tha …
Figure 5.11 is a nineteenth-century European drawing of an Indian village. The image shows a cluster of thatched huts, some with mud walls, arranged around an open space. A few villagers — men and women in simple clothing — are shown engaged in everyday tasks: a woman carrying a water pot, a man ploughing a field with a wooden plough and bullocks, another woman grinding grain with a hand-mill. In the background, there are a few trees, a pond or tank, and a small temple-like structure with a shikhara. The drawing is framed to look rustic and simple, with no signs of change or development — no roads, no markets, no brick buildings, no evidence of trade or craft specialisation.
The caption in the textbook tells us that such drawings reinforced the notion of an unchanging rural society. This is the key point. European artists and travellers in the nineteenth century often produced images that made Indian villages look timeless — as if they had looked exactly the same for centuries, untouched by history, politics, or economic change. The drawing deliberately omits any sign of the social and economic differentiation that actually existed in Mughal and post-Mughal villages: no zamindars' mansions, no prosperous peasants with larger holdings, no artisans or merchants, no evidence of the revenue system or state intervention.
This visual stereotype matched the textual stereotype we see in Bernier's account. Bernier described Indian society as having no middle state — only a tiny, opulent ruling class and an undifferentiated mass of impoverished peasants. The drawing gives that idea a visual form: a village where everyone lives in identical huts, does the same kind of work, and seems to have done so forever. In reality, as the textbook later notes, rural society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was marked by considerable stratification — big zamindars, rich peasants who hired labour, small subsistence farmers, and landless labourers. The drawing erases all that complexity. …