Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c59.s1.3

v4.c59.s1.3

Secondly, in the British administered provinces, covering two-thirds of India, but not in the protected States, the aristocracy became extinct as an order. Bernier had noticed in the middle 17th century that the Mughals had no hereditary peerage like that of England or France, but only an official and military aristocracy, personal in theory, but tending to be renewed in each generation with decreasing rank. In British India this class lost its sole reason for existing, as it was manifestly incapable of supplying the administrative leaders required by the modern civilisation now introduced by the English rulers. Thus, the wise Sir Thomas Munro did not fail to notice, as early as 1817, that, "There is perhaps no example of any conquest in which the natives have been so completely excluded from all share of the government of their country as in British India.”