Question

Why do you think scholars like Bernier chose to compare India with Europe?

Answer 1

Scholars like François Bernier chose to compare India with Europe primarily to influence European rulers and intellectuals by using the Mughal Empire as a cautionary model. The key reasons for the comparison are as follows:

• Influencing European Monarchs: Bernier dedicated his major work to King Louis XIV of France to warn European rulers against adopting policies like crown ownership of land.
• Creating a Binary Contrast: He structured his accounts around a stark binary model, where Europe represented the ideal “positive” standard, and India represented the “negative” counterpart.
• Intellectual Validation: European intellectuals used comparisons to classify and make sense of unfamiliar eastern systems within their own familiar, Eurocentric political frameworks.
• Justifying Private Property: He wanted to emphasise that Europe’s prosperity relied entirely on private property rights, which he claimed were completely missing in the East.
• The Eurocentric Gaze: Like many contemporary travellers, Bernier viewed the East through a prism of cultural superiority, consistently framing Indian society as stagnant or declining compared to a dynamic Europe.