Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of British Rule in India

Review of Politics

Volumn 68, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 586-611

  Tunick, Mark ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43249153460     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670506000246     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. References to Mill's works will be cited as “CW volume: page.” Abbreviations: AU (Autobiography, 1873: in CW 1); Civ (“Civilization,”1836: in CW 18); CW (John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson et al. [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963-1991]); NI (“A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” 1859: in CW 21); NW (John Stuart Mill, Newspaper Writings, eds. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986); OL (On Liberty, 1859: in CW 18); PPE (Principles of Political Economy, 1848: in CW 2, 3); Rel (Three Essays on Religion, 1874: in CW 10); RG (Considerations on Representative Government, 1861: in CW 19); SpA (“The Spirit of the Age,” 1831: in CW 22); U (Utilitarianism, 1861: in CW 10).
2. OL 18: 260–261, 275
3. Elizabeth S. Anderson, “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living,” Ethics 102 (1991): 4–26.
4. Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 3–4.
5. Bhikhu Parekh, “Decolonizing Liberalism,” in The End of'isms’? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism's Collapse, ed. Alexander Shtromas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 85–103
6. “Liberalism and Colonialism: a Critique of Locke and Mill,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, ed. Jan Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (London: Zed Books, 1995), 81–98
7. Eddy Souffrant, Formal Transgression: J.S. Mill's Philosophy of International Affairs (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
8. Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 96; cf., “Decolonizing Liberalism.”
9. Shiraz Dossa, “Liberal Imperialism? Natives, Muslims, and Others,” Political Theory 30 (2002): 738–745
10. Vinay Lal, “Organic Conservatism, Administrative Realism, and the Imperialist Ethos in the ‘Indian Career’ of John Stuart Mill,” New Quest 54 (1998): 54–64
11. Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)
12. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 195–196.
13. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 82.
14. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 58–59
15. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 10, 238.
16. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 20.
17. Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 98–99, 121
18. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 20, 44–45
19. Bruce Baum, Rereading Power and Freedom in J. S. Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000)
20. Jennifer Pitts, “Legislator of the World? A Rereading of Bentham on Colonies,” Political Theory 31 (2003): 224.
21. Francois Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance and other Writings, ed. Simon Harvey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49.
22. Robert Johnson, British Imperialism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), viii.
23. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993), 7.
24. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Empire and Moral Identity,” Ethics and International Affairs 17 (2003): 51.
25. Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 135.
26. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 7.
27. John Darwin, “Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion,” The English Historical Review 112 (1997): 614–642.
28. Philip Marshall Brown, “Imperialism,” The American Journal of International Law 39 (1945): 84
29. Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1974), 32–33
30. Sidney Morgenbesser, “Imperialism: Some Preliminary Distinctions,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 3 (1973): 11–12
31. Mehta, “Empire and Moral Identity,” 57
32. Herbert Feldman, “Aid as Imperialism?” International Affairs 43 (1967): 231–232.
33. Darwin, “Imperialism and the Victorians.”
34. Eileen Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill's Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 608–613.
35. Brown, “Imperialism,” 84
36. Johnson, British Imperialism.
37. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 306.
38. James Fitzjames Stephen, “Foundations of the Government of India,” The Nineteenth Century 80 (1883): 545.
39. Darwin, “Imperialism and the Victorians,” 627–634
40. Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, 83–87.
41. Rajat Kanta Ray, “Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765-1818,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. William Roger Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 2: 514–515
42. D. A. Washbrook, “India, 1818-1860: Two Faces of Colonialism,” in Lewis, 3: 408–414
43. but see Keith Windschuttle, “Rewriting the History of the British Empire,” New Criterion 18 (2000): 5–14
44. Johnson, British Imperialism, 30–31, 123-24.
45. George D. Bearce, British Attitudes Toward India 1784-1858 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982), 294–295.
46. James Mill, “Affairs of India,” Edinburgh Review 16 (1810): 138–144, 154.
47. John Robson, “Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1998), 350 and n. 16.
48. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 99–100; cf. CW 20:274.
49. Stephen, “Foundations of Government of India,” 554
50. Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Village-Communities in the East and West (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 67–76.
51. OL 18:224; cited in Pitts, “Legislator of the World?” 201
52. Drayton, Nature's Government, 94, 227.
53. Eddy Souffrant argues that Mill waives the harm principle for children and those not yet civilized (Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 8
54. Parekh, “Decolonizing Liberalism,” 94
55. “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 95.
56. Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 122: Mill would not exempt “the child and the immature from the transactions of slavery.”
57. RG 19:549-51; Parekh, “Decolonizing Liberalism,” 91.
58. Parekh, “Decolonizing Liberalism,” 94 n. 30.
59. Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 59-60. As both Parekh and Souffrant single out colonial educators as violent or psychologically coercive, it is unlikely they are invoking a Foulcauldian criticism of education per se, as that might apply to methods of education used by India's internal or precolonial despots as well. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
60. Michael Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 482–483.
61. Robson, “Civilization and Culture,” 362. In OL 18:277, Mill rejects “pedagogical compulsion” in favor of pedagogical “persuasion” “when the period of education is past”; but children and the not yet civilized are still in the “period of education.” Still, Mill does not think pedagogical coercion entails enslavement or violence.
62. CW 28:95, 106-8; Bernard Semmel, Jamaican Blood and Victorian Conscience: The Governor Eyre Controversy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1962).
63. CW 30:51; RG 19:573- 74; Abram L. Harris, “John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company,” Canadian Journal ofEconomics and Political Science 30 (1964): 193; CW 30:65. For a dispute about what Mill means in saying Indians should not hold high positions, compare Stokes, English Utilitarians and India, 255, with Harris, 193-94.
64. Bearce, British Attitudes toward India, 292.
65. Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 96, 97
66. “Decolonizing Liberalism,” 85.
67. Baum, Rereading Power and Freedom in J. S. Mill, 23
68. Baum, “Feminism, Liberalism and Cultural Pluralism: J. S. Mill on Mormon Polygyny,” Journal of Political Philosophy 5 (1997): 239.
69. CW 10:105; Harris, “Mill: Servant of East India Company,” 201.
70. James Mill, “Art. VII. Voyage aux Indes Orientales” (Review), Edinburgh Review 15 (1810): 363–384, 372.
71. Stephen, “Foundations of Government of India,” 545–546
72. Charles Wentworth Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries during 1866 and 1867 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1868), 226, 277, 355, 373 -83
73. J. K. Majumdar, ed., Indian Speeches and Documents on British Rule 1821-1918 (Delhi: Kanti Publications, 1987), 46, 85, 87-88, 136.
74. The argument is not without its critics. Lal wonders why Mill should maintain “the invidious distinction between ‘real’ native states and others, and wonders how we identify a ‘really native’ state” (Lal, “Organic Conservatism”).
75. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought.
76. The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, trans. Oscar A. Haac (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 43.
77. CW 30:122-25. Thuggee was a practice of stealing from and strangling people. Mill explains tragga as follows: A has a grievance against B, threatens B that A will kill or wound himself or someone else but not B, thereby entailing B's guilt (CW 30:123-24); see Mark Tunick, “John Stuart Mill and Unassimilated Subjects,” Political Studies 53 (2005): 833–848, 835-36.
78. Samuel T. Coleridge, “The Friend, vol. 1,” in Collected Works ofColeridge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 91–99.
79. Parekh, “Superior People”
80. Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 44–47
81. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire.
82. Lynn Zastoupil, “J. S. Mill and India,” Victorian Studies 32 (1988): 31–54, 38-40, 44
83. Zastoupil, “India, J. S. Mill, and ‘Western’ Culture,” in J.S. Mill's Encounter with India, ed. Martin Moir, Douglas M. Peers, and Lynn Zastoupil (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)
84. Javej Majeed, “James Mill's The History of British India: A Reevaluation,” in Moir et al., 63–65, 55-56
85. R. J. Moore, “John Stuart Mill at East India House,” Historical Studies 20 (1983): 497–519, who argues it is unfair to imply Mill had no objection to forcing India to accept western civilization (516; cf. 506). Nancy Gardner Cassels notes some instances where Mill is tolerant (“John Stuart Mill, Religion, and Law in the Examiner's Office,” in Moir et al., 176), but also notes illiberal practices Mill criticizes, such as the use of pressed labour, and infanticide (177). She notes Mill did not support using funds to discourage infanticide, and instead recommended reliance on moral influence (178).
86. Zastoupil, “J. S. Mill and India,” 45–46
87. Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 115.
88. Tunick, “Mill and Unassimilated Subjects,” 836.
89. Moore, “Mill at East India House,” 501
90. Mill's “Maine on Village Communities,” CW 30: 213–228.
91. Thomas Macaulay, Speeches by Lord Macaulay, ed. G. M. Young (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 349.
92. K. A. Ballhatchet, “The Home Government and Bentinck's Educational Policy,” Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1951): 224.
93. J. F. Hilliker, “Charles Edward Trevelyan as an Educational Reformer in India 1827-1838,” Canadian Journal of History 9 (1974): 281–290
94. Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism, 98–100.
95. Gerald Sirkin and Natalie Robinson Sirkin, “John Stuart Mill and Disutilitarianism in Indian Education,” Journal of General Education 24 (1973): 232–233.
96. K. A. Ballhatchet, “John Stuart Mill and Indian Education,” Cambridge Historical Journal 11 (1954): 228.
97. Harris, “Mill: Servant of East India Company,” 197
98. Macaulay, Speeches, 356–357.
99. Harris, “Mill: Servant of East India Company,” 200.
100. Harris, “Mill: Servant of East India Company,” 200–201.
101. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 3–4.
102. Dossa, “Liberal Imperialism?” 739, 742
103. Lal, “Organic Conservatism”; Drayton, Nature's Government, 94, 227
104. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 195–196.
105. James Hunt, “Race in Legislation and Political Economy,” Anthropological Review 13 (1866): 113–135, 120-21. Hunt's article is identified by Varouxakis, who argues that while Mill may have vaguely pointed to racial origin as a factor in shaping national character, Mill's main point is that these can be changed by institutions, historical accidents, and effort; see Georgios Varouxakis, “John Stuart Mill on Race,” Utilitas 10 (1998): 22. Others who reject the view that Mill is a racist include Moore, “Mill at East India House,” 518 n. 11; Harris, “Mill: Servant of East India Company,” 201 -2; and Robson, “Civilization and Culture,” 340, 357-58.
106. OL 18:267; cf. U 10:211-12; Wendy Donner, The Liberal Self: J. S. Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
107. That Mill is elitist but not authoritarian has been noted numerous times. See Michael McPherson, “Mill's Moral Theory and the Problem of Preference Change,” Ethics 92 (1982): 268
108. Jonathan Riley, “One Simple Principle,” Utilitas 3 (1991): 25
109. Skorupski, John Stuart Mill, 353
110. Donner, Liberal Self, 129
111. Bernard Semmel, J. S. Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 14
112. C. L. Ten, “Mill and Liberty,” Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969): 50–51.
113. Some of Mill's essays, most notably “Spirit of the Age,” have been classified by Himmelfarb as among the “illiberal” works Mill wrote before coming under the influence of Harriet Taylor and after Taylor died, which Himmelfarb contrasts with the “liberal” works Mill is said to write under Taylor's influence. See Gertrude Himmelfarb, “Introduction,” in Essays on Politics and Culture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962)
114. Linda Raeder, John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2002). Rather than endorse Himmerlfarb's “Two Mills” thesis, I
115. see Mill's shifts—sometimes emphasizing the need for authority, sometimes emphasizing the need to resist authority and promote individuality, as his grappling with a commitment to conflicting values, seeking the right mix. In rejecting the “Two Mills” thesis I follow Ten, “Mill and Liberty”; Peter Berkowitz, “Mill: Liberty, Virtue, and the Discipline of Individuality,” in Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism, ed. Eldon J. Eisenach (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1998)
116. Donner, Liberal Self; McPherson, “Mill's Moral Theory”; William Stafford, John Stuart Mill (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 20–21
117. Semmel, Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue, 4–5, 10-13; and even Joseph Hamburger, who argues that Mill is consistently illiberal, in John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 212-13.
118. CW 3: 763, cited in Janice Carlisle, “Mr. J. Stuart Mill, M. P. and the Character of the Working Class,” in Eisenach, 152
119. Carlisle, 164-67.