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The Long Peace of the Nineteenth Century and the Birth of Sociology

Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl

in War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present

This chapter examines how the progressive optimism nourished by liberal doctrines gradually began to take hold and how sociology as a discipline took a particularly wide variety of institutional ... More

This chapter examines how the progressive optimism nourished by liberal doctrines gradually began to take hold and how sociology as a discipline took a particularly wide variety of institutional forms and featured very different theoretical and research programs. Toward the end of the eighteenth and during the first third of the nineteenth centuries, utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and later James and John Stuart Mill were already singing the praises of free trade and its peace-promoting effects. This laid the foundations for at least one strand of liberal thought in the nineteenth century, on which early “sociologists” such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer could then build. Despite the hegemonic status of liberal doctrines, other views were always present beneath the surface. This includes Marxism, which in many respects embraced the legacy of liberalism.Less

The Colonialist Monologue and India Talking Back

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

in TALKING BACK: The Idea of Civilization in the Indian Nationalist Discourse

This chapter begins by providing a background to the colonial/Orientalist narratives that framed the discourses of ‘talking back’. James Mill’s History of British India and his adverse evaluation of ... More

This chapter begins by providing a background to the colonial/Orientalist narratives that framed the discourses of ‘talking back’. James Mill’s History of British India and his adverse evaluation of Indian civilization are examined in detail. The chapter then moves on to responses of Mills version of Indian history from Bankimchandra Chatterjee, a litterateur, and R.G. Bhandarkar, one of the first professional Indian historians.Less

John Stuart Mill and Company

Bart Schultz

in The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians

This chapter examines John Stuart Mill's legacy as an advocate of utilitarianism. Mill championed an open society, critical thinking, human dignity, and women's equality and produced immortal works ... More

This chapter examines John Stuart Mill's legacy as an advocate of utilitarianism. Mill championed an open society, critical thinking, human dignity, and women's equality and produced immortal works such as Utilitarianism, On Liberty, On the Subjection of Women, and the thirty-three volume Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. The chapter first provides an overview of Mill's early life and education before discussing the ways that he was influenced by his father James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. It then considers how Mill, together with his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, succeeded in framing a vision of a vibrant, individualistic liberalism replete with a healthy public sphere and grounded on the progress of civilization and happiness. It also explores Mill's views on subjects ranging from pleasure and the principle of utility to hedonism, liberty, colonization, poor relief, death penalty, and religion.Less

The Obligations of Power

William Bain

in Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power

The idea of trusteeship in international society originates in late 18th century British India. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the emergence of trusteeship as a justification of political ... More

The idea of trusteeship in international society originates in late 18th century British India. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the emergence of trusteeship as a justification of political power in territories administered by the East India Company. The chapter has five sections: From Merchant to Sovereign in British India; The Claim to Rule; The Relations of Ruler and Subject; The Purpose of the Office of Government; and Providing Protection, Directing Improvement.Less

British Indophobia

Thomas R. Trautmann

in Aryans and British India

This chapter focuses on the emergence of British Indophobia or British lack of enthusiasm for India. It explains that the Indophobia that became the norm in the early nineteenth century was ... More

This chapter focuses on the emergence of British Indophobia or British lack of enthusiasm for India. It explains that the Indophobia that became the norm in the early nineteenth century was deliberately constructed by Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism, and that its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill. The texts that launched Indophobia were Mills's History of British India and Grant's “Observations on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to morals; and the means of improving it.” The chapter also discusses John Shore's biography of Sir William Jones, who nurtured Indomania in the eighteenth century.Less

All His Father’s Sins

Timothy Larsen

in John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life

This chapter explores the life and thought of John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill. It seeks to unravel his journey from pursuing the calling of an ordained Christian minister in the Church of ... More

This chapter explores the life and thought of John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill. It seeks to unravel his journey from pursuing the calling of an ordained Christian minister in the Church of Scotland to parting ways with the Christian faith altogether. It will also seek to understand James Mill’s mature critique of religion, as well as that of his friend the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the author of several works critical of traditional Christianity. The unhappy marriage of John Stuart Mill’s parents is presented as a vital background for understanding his future choices and convictions. The Christian identity of his mother and siblings are also presented.Less

A Singular Species of Despotism

J. Barton Scott

in Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule

In his History of British India (1817), James Mill described Hindu priests as exercising a “singular species of despotism” over their followers. Here, it is argued that this claim and others like it ... More

In his History of British India (1817), James Mill described Hindu priests as exercising a “singular species of despotism” over their followers. Here, it is argued that this claim and others like it played an important role in demarcating priestly or pastoral power as distinct from and complementary to the power of the state. By tracing a series of concentric circles around Mill’s book, the chapter explicates Mill’s implicit theory of the priest as spiritual despot. It draws particular attention to his interest in the history of the Protestant Reformation by exploring his intellectual debt to French writer Charles Villers, as well as noting the resonance between Mill History and the later florescence of popular writing about the “Indian Luther.” The chapter concludes with a consideration of liberalism as asceticism, arguing that the liberal norm of subjective autonomy operates under false pretences. As a whole, the chapter suggests the complex intersection of Protestant and liberal discourses on selfhood in early nineteenth-century missionary and philosophical writing.Less

Through the mill: Margaret Harkness on conjectural history and utilitarian philosophy

Lisa C. Robertson

in Margaret Harkness: Writing social engagement 1880-1921

This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of ... More

This chapter evaluates the writing Harkness produced during her time living in the countries that are now India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Placing Harkness’s work in a nineteenth-century tradition of British historiographical writing about India that begins with James Mill’s History of British India (1817), the chapter argues that her work during this period consciously eschews conventional historical methodology and offers an important counter-narrative to colonial history. It suggests that in her attention to the ways that social movements and political institutions shape people’s daily lives, which is set within a broad foundation of personal knowledge, Harkness’s writing engages more ardently with the conventions of cultural history than it does with those of travel writing.Less

J.S. Mill and the Nineteenth Century

Frank M. Turner

Richard A. Lofthouse (ed.)

in European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of James Mill, a major political radical of early nineteenth-century British politics and a pioneer of Philosophic Radicalism which was, unlike many other ... More

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of James Mill, a major political radical of early nineteenth-century British politics and a pioneer of Philosophic Radicalism which was, unlike many other forms of British radicalism, formally informed by a more or less coherent set of ideas, including the philosophy of Bentham, the psychology of David Hartley, the economics of David Ricardo, and the population theory of Thomas Malthus. However, it was in the third generation that Philosophic Radicalism may be said to have gained entry into English public life. This generation included James's son John Stuart Mill. The chapter goes on to describe J. S. Mill's education and depression, and the clash between his ideas and those of fellow liberal Tocqueville.Less

No ‘nonsense upon stilts’: James Mill’s History of British India and the Poetics of Benthamite Historiography

John Regan

in Rethinking British Romantic History, 1770–1845

This chapter considers the extent to which James Mill’s History of India (1817) dismisses imaginative licence in historical writing by adapting eighteenth-century philosophic models of history to a ... More

This chapter considers the extent to which James Mill’s History of India (1817) dismisses imaginative licence in historical writing by adapting eighteenth-century philosophic models of history to a newly militant, pragmatic utilitarianism in which history is ‘put to work’. Mill indicts an Indian society that is resistant to European taxonomies of historical progress because its historical, civic, scientific, and legal texts are in verse. Delivering a withering report on the verboseness of Hindu culture, Mill enshrines concision and exactness at the heart of his imagined, corrective verse-vision. Yet little of this concision is borne out in European and British verse in the period. The text’s trenchant excoriations of Indian verse histories therefore operate dialectically, revealing ideals which are not present in Mill’s own text, and also seem at variance with the melodrama of Romantic ‘slashing criticism’ and the hyper-annotative tendencies of verse in his native Britain.Less