AN ANALYSIS OF THE TRAVELOGUE OF FRANÇOIS BERNIER AND HIS DEPICTION OF THE SUBCONTINENT

This paper examines the seventeenth-century travelogue of French physician and philosopher François Bernier, analyzing his complex and highly influential depiction of Mughal India. Situated at the intersection of European empiricism and subcontinental sociopolitical realities, Bernier’s writings are evaluated not merely as observational records, it served the dual-purpose ethnographic and political critiques. The study investigates Berniers conceptualization of Oriental Despotism which was rooted in his assertion regarding the absence of private land ownership and his documentation of the paradoxes of the empires economy. Crucially, this analysis highlights how Bernier utilized his critique of the Mughal state, especially its agrarian decadence, heavy taxation, and religious extremes as an allegorical warning against the absolutist, wealth-draining policies of Louis XIV’s France. The essay also addresses the epistemological limitations and elite biases of Berniers work, contrasting his Eurocentric judgments of artisans and indigenous practices with his nuanced acknowledgement of female political agency within the zenana and his expressions of aesthetic cultural relativism relating to the subcontinent. Ultimately, this research posits that Berniers travelogue operated as a sophisticated analytical bridge that deeply intertwined the Indian subcontinent with early modern European political imagination.