History Of India Under Humayun

William Erskine's Baber and Humayun stands as the earliest scholarly account of the Mughal rulers in India by a British author. Erskine combined a meticulous and critical knowledge of the voluminous Persian source material with the philosophical outlook of an 'Enlightenment' historian, emulating Montesquieu and Voltaire in his desire to present individual historical facts as expressive of the constitution and spirit of a whole society.
Erskine's high regard for Baber as a man was tempered by his realisation of Baber's true status among the Indian Mughals, recognizing him to have been at best a successful soldier of fortune and leader of a band of individual adventurers, rather than an 'emperor' faced in his lawful inheritance by contumacious Afghan subjects.