Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: XXX. Writings on India

Mill’s 35 years service in the Examiner’s office of the East India Company has been little studied. He was reluctant, because of his official position, to comment publicly on the Company’s affairs, but occasionally he put forward views in essays and before parliamentary committees that alert us to important elements in his thought and career. Further, when in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny a succession of bills was brought forward in parliament to abolish the company, Mill was its chief spokesman in a succession of carefully argued pamphlets. The despatches that he drafted in the India Office are a mine of information about the administration of the British possessions in the sub-continent. This volume provides the first opportunity for students to see this important part of his career in full context. It includes, in scholarly form, all his Indian essays, parliamentary evidence and pamphlets and an appendix supplying an annotated record and location list of his official despatches. The introduction by Martin Moir gives full details of Mill’s place in the history of the East India Company, whose administration is explained, and examines Mill’s attitudes towards the proper government of India and the position of its indigenous people.