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This book contains a wealth of interesting documentation ~ thank you for digging it up, RBSI. For example, on page 166 one will find "A Defence of the Company's Government" , written by the rather anynomous sounding "Mr J. Mill" .... many lovers of 'individual liberty' might be surprised to discover that this gentleman was none other than the great John Stuart Mill ~ who despite his ideas concerning the nature of personal and political freedom, was still a man of his times, and a confirmed Imperialist. Mill worked on Leadenhall Street, London, at the headquarters of the East India Company for more than thirty years (although in his autobiography he noted that his duties there were normally completed by 2 in the afternoon, leaving him free to turn his mind to moral philosophy and the writing of his books !) ~ eventually reaching a very senior management position ~ as his father had done before him. It was James Mill, who had famously written the very controversial, multi-volumed 'History of India' in 1818 ~ that remained a standard text throughout the 19th century (although it appears hopelessly dated today). Both of the Mill's, father and son, were , of course, staunch advocates of the ' Utilitarian ' creed ~ ie. efficiency in government, 'the greatest good for the greatest number' etc.etc and they tried to bring these ideas into their administrative work connected to the sub-continent. The application of ' utilitarian ' thought in India did have a ‘progressive’, even a tenuously democratic, aspect at its root (just as it did in Britain)~ but, and herein we find the bitter irony ~ such ideas could not have been applied in the diligent fashion that they were in anything less than within a rigidly controlled, strictly authoritarian atmosphere~ such as a colony. India itself was seen by Mill and other utilitarian thinkers almost in the abstract, not so much as a physical or geographic entity but as a blank slate, as a drawing board, as a ‘crucible’ for experimentation with political ideas, and where the effects and outcomes of these ideas might be observed, carefully monitored and eventually quantified as either a ‘success’ or as a ‘failure’. The utilitarians believed, some would say naively, that political and social reforms and the introduction of efficient government to India would ultimately not only be of lasting benefit to the overwhelming majority of the sub-continental population, but would solidify the colonies position firmly within the British orbit. Of course, people like the Mill's didn't have it all their own way ~ there were many objections to the utilitarian policy agenda ~ broadly speaking those who favoured the maintenance of a sort of undetermined status quo in colonial affairs, or were adherents of ‘laissez-faire’ ('leave alone') political and social attitudes. Others felt that the utilitarians were obsessed with the detail and minutiae of day-to-day administration and hopelessly utopian in their outlook, while still others favoured a more rigid and militaristic approach to the consolidation of British power in India. (It was this last group, who after the Indian mutiny of 1857, would see, for better or for worse, their expectations met.) Mill and his contemporaries genuinely believed that what they were hoping to achieve in India (and by implication, within Britain) was in the best interests of the ‘greatest number’, but they certainly did not believe that Indians were, or would potentially ever be, capable of delivering these benefits for themselves ~ and that they would always need a ‘paternalistic’ British hand for guidance. So yet again we are faced with what seems to be a contradiction ~ the utilitarians of the early nineteenth century, many of whom professed at their core a love of civil liberty and personal freedoms, found themselves complicit in the establishment and consolidation of a form of absolute despotism ~ if, however, the rather benevolent and largely benign form of despotism that came to be known as the 'British Raj'. I wonder how many people who read the works of John Stuart Mill today are aware of any of this background ??

Julian Craig : Definitely interesting insights...surely not many of us would have viewed it this way !

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