The History of British India

The History of British India

The title page of the first edition
Author James Mill
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre history, political philosophy
Publisher London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy
Publication date
 1817
Media type Print

The History of British India is a history of British India by the 19th century British historian and imperial political theorist James Mill.

This History went into many editions and during the 19th century became the standard reference work on its subject among British imperialists.[1]

Genesis

James Mill began his History of British India in 1806, expecting it to take him about three years, but its completion proved to take instead twelve years, with three substantial volumes at last being published early in 1817.[1] The work was immediately successful among British imperialists and secured for Mill for the first time a degree of prosperity. It led, with the support of David Ricardo and Joseph Hume, to Mill's appointment in 1819 in United Kingdom as assistant (later chief) examiner of correspondence at the imperial East India Company at an annual salary of £800. By 1836, when he died, this income had become £2,000.[1]

Mill's biographer Bruce Mazlish takes a practical view of Mill's purpose in beginning the History, stating

By 1802, unable to find a parish and disillusioned with a religious career, he "emigrated" to England. There he quickly obtained a position as editor and writer, married, and began to raise a family. To secure his position, he began to write a great work, The History of British India, in 1806, the same year as his first-born, John Stuart, arrived on the scene... James finally finished The History of British India, and on the basis of it secured the post of an examiner at the imperial East India Company, rising to the top in a few years.[2]

Summary

The History of British India purports to be a study of India in which James set out to attack the history, character, religion, literature, arts, and laws of India, also making claims about the influence of the Indian climate.[3] He also aimed to locate the attacks on India within a wider theoretical framework.[4]

The book begins with a preface in which Mill tries to make a virtue of having never visited India and of knowing none of its native languages.[5] To him, these are guarantees of his objectivity, and he boldly claims –

A duly qualified man can obtain more knowledge of India in one year in his closet in England than he could obtain during the course of the longest life, by the use of his eyes and ears in India.[4]

However, Mill goes on in this preface to say that his work is a "critical, or judging history", encompassing singularly harsh attacks on Hindu customs and a "backward" culture which he claims to be notable only for superstition, ignorance, and the mistreatment of women.[1]

From the historical perspective, Mill tells the story of the English and, later, British acquisition of wide territories in India, severely criticising those involved in these conquests and in the later administration of the conquered territories, as well as illuminating the harmful effects of commercial monopolies such as that of the imperial East India Company.[3] As a philosopher, Mill applies political theory to the description of the civilisations of India. His interest is in institutions, ideas, and historical processes, while his work is relatively lacking in human interest, in that he does not seek to paint memorable portraits of Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and the other leading players in the history of British India, nor of its famous battles.[1] Indeed, the History has been called "...a work of Benthamite 'philosophical history' from which the reader is supposed to draw lessons about human nature, reason and religion".[6]

Despite the fact that Mill had never been to India, his work had a profound effect on the British imperial system of governing the country, as did his later official connection with India.[3]

The Orientalist Horace Hayman Wilson edited later editions and extended the history to 1835 with a continuation entitled The History of British India from 1805 to 1835. He also added notes to Mill's work, based on his own knowledge of India and its languages. The History of British India is still in print.[3][7]

In his introduction to Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's The History of British India and Orientalism, Javed Majeed argues against "colonialist discourse" approaches to Mill's History,[8] while in his forthcoming James Mill and the Despotism of Philosophy (2009), David McInerney considers how Mill's History of British India relates to Enlightenment historiography, and especially William Robertson's Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge the Ancients had of India. He argues that Mill first published his theory of government in The History of British India, and that in the work Mill's use of history is not rationalist but entails an empirical conception of how historical records relate to the improvement of government.[9]

Published editions

Online editions

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Ball, Terence , 'Mill, James (1773–1836)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, dated October 2007, at oxforddnb.com
  2. ↑ Mazlish, Bruce, James and John Stuart Mill (Transaction Publishers, 1988 ISBN 978-0-88738-727-2), p. 4 at books.google.com
  3. 1 2 3 4 The History of British India at alibris.com
  4. 1 2 Marriott, John, The Other Empire: Metropolis, India and Progress in the Colonial Imagination (Manchester University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7190-6018-2), p. 133 at books.google.com
  5. ↑ Ball, Terence (November 30, 2005). "James Mill". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 edition). Retrieved 2008-12-15.
  6. ↑ Summary at The History of British India page of Online Library of Liberty web site.
  7. ↑ The History of British India (4th edn) title details at books.google.com
  8. ↑ Inderpal Grewal, review of Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's The History of British India and Orientalism by Javed Majeed in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Nov., 1993), pp. 1060-1061
  9. ↑ 978-0-415-95612-3 Online summary of James Mill and the Despotism of Philosophy (2009) at routledge-philosophy.com

Secondary literature

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