Answer:
Bernier travelled extensively and gave accounts of social and economic life of India and her villages during seventeenth century. He said that there was crown ownership of land and there was no concept of private property. He said whole of the land belonged to king and the cultivators were merely renters on the land. Bernier was of the view that India is inferior to west.
Bernier?s descriptions influenced Western theorists from the eighteenth century onwards. The French philosopher Montesquieu used this account to develop the idea of oriental despotism. He said that rulers in enjoyed absolute authority over their subjects, who were kept in conditions of subjugation and poverty, because all land belonged to the king and that private property was non-existent. He said except the emperor and his nobles everybody else barely managed to survive.
Bernier?s accounts also influenced Marx also and he gave the concept of ?The Asiatic Mode of Production?. He said that in India, before colonialism, surplus was appropriated by the state. This led to the emergence of a society that was composed of a large number of autonomous and egalitarian village communities.
Thus he romanticized the Indian villages. The imperial court presided over these village communities, respecting their autonomy as long as the flow of surplus was unimpeded. Though this was regarded as a stagnant system.
Though, there are doubts about what Bernier said because none of the Mughal official documents such as Akbarnama, suggest that the scare was the sole owner of Land.
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