Answer:
Bernier?s Travels in the Mughal Empire was marked by detailed observations, critical insights and reflection. His account contains discussions trying to place the history of the Mughals within some sort of universal framework. He constantly compared Mughal India with cotemporary Europe, generally emphasising the superiority of the latter. His representation of India works on the model of binary opposition, where India is presented as the inverse of Europe. In fact, during the seventeenth century about 15 percent of the population lived in the towns. This was on average, higher than the proportion of urban population in Western Europe in the same period. Inspite of this Bernier described the Mughal cities as Camp towns, by which he meant towns that owed their existence and depended for their survival, on the imperial camp. He believed that these came into existence when the imperial court moved in and rapidly declined when it moved out. He suggested that they did not have viable social and economic foundations but were dependent on imperial patronage.
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