Source: Philip Ziegler, “Decline and Fall of the Mughal Empire,” The Telegraph, May 25, 2003

The Mughals failed because they made little, if any, effort to drag India out of the Middle Ages. The Mughal empire, writes Abraham Eraly, “lagged way behind Europe, behind even China, Japan and Persia. There was hardly any vigour in the economy, scant spirit of enterprise among the people. In agriculture, industry and trade, Indian practices were archaic [outdated]. There was no ferment of ideas. . . .” The Mughals were formidable conquerors but inept [ineffectual] governors. They did nothing to cure the endemic [native] weaknesses of Indian society and added fresh economic burdens through the profligacy [extravagance] of their courts and the cost of their military campaigns. . . .

Source: Robert C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992

. . . English agriculture differed from the European continent's in other, suggestive ways. The technical revolution in farming had been accompanied by an institutional revolution. The open fields were enclosed, and the small peasant holdings were amalgamated [combined] into large farms let to tenants who cultivated them with wage labor. By the nineteenth century, a unique rural society had emerged in England. This new society was characterized by exceptional inequality. English property ownership was usually concentrated. Rents had risen, while wages stagnated. By the nineteenth century, the landlord's mansion was lavish, the farmer's house modest, the labourer's cottage a hovel.The revolution in rural life was occurring in an increasingly commercial society. From the sixteenth century, London was one of the most rapidly growing cities in Europe. In the eighteenth century this dynamism extended to the provincial towns. From a rustic backwater at the end of the middle ages, England became Europe's greatest commercial power in the eighteenth century, and the leading industrial nation in the nineteenth. . . .

Source: Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, 1791

MOTHERS, daughters, sisters, representatives of the nation all, are demanding to be incorporated into the national assembly. Being of the opinion that ignorance, oblivion or mistrust of the rights of women are the sole causes of public misery and of the corruption of governments, they have resolved to expound [set forth] the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of women in a solemn declaration so that this declaration, constantly before the body of society, will always remind them of their rights and duties. The actions of women and men will be comparable at all times with the aims of political institutions, thereby becoming more respected, and women’s demands, founded henceforth on simple and incontestable principles, shall revolve around upholding the constitution, morality and happiness of all. . . .

Source: Woodbridge Bingham, et al., A History of Asia, Vol. II, Allyn and Bacon, 1974

. . .It was the new Western idea, nationalism, which seemed to spell the doom of the disintegrating [Ottoman] empire. After maturing for a long period among the subject peoples of the Turks, it broke out in a series of revolutions which shook the Turkish state to its core. It seemed as if this disintegrating state would fall easy prey to one of the great new powers of Europe, Russia. The tsar, it appeared, would be heir to the defenseless Turkish state and would gain access to Constantinople [Istanbul] and the Straits. But precisely this possibility was to ensure the continued though feeble existence of the Ottoman empire. England, the rival of Russia, would not tolerate Russian control in this area. As early as 1792 the younger [British Prime Minister William] Pitt had declared that “the true doctrine of the balance of power requires that the Russian empire should not, if possible, be allowed to increase, nor that of Turkey to diminish.”. . .

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