Question

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. Our kings are otherwise rich and powerful; and we must avow that they are much better and more royally served. They would soon be kings of deserts and solitudes, of beggars and barbarians, such as those are whom I have been representing (the Mughals) … 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 (anybody) taking care of repairing them; the hillocks abandon’d, and the fields overspread with bushes, or fill’d with pestilential marishes (marshes), as hath been already intimated.

How does Bernier depict a scenario of doom? Once you have read about Mughal agrarian society and the court, return to this description and analyse it again.

Answer 1

Bernier depicts a grim scenario of doom by describing the complete physical, economic, and social collapse of kingdoms that reject private property. The elements of Bernier’s scenario of doom are as follows:

• Desolate Rule: Kings would become mere rulers over “deserts and solitudes” rather than prosperous, flourishing states.
• Degraded Population: The society would degenerate into a population consisting entirely of “beggars and barbarians.”
• Ruined Cities: Great cities and boroughs would be rendered completely uninhabitable, falling into total decay without repair.
• Environmental Decay: Abandoned fields would become overgrown with wild bushes or transform into “pestilential marshes.”
• Loss of Cultivation: The countryside would lose its population, becoming uncultivated, barren, and empty of labourers.
• Loss of Greatness: European monarchs would lose their wealth, power, and the high level of refined, polite society they currently enjoy.