Los dos pilares del imperio: la India de James Mill

Abstract

Abstract

 The professionalization of history in England took place in the second half of the 19th century, later than other European countries. That is why it is not surprising that the great historians of the 18th century, such as David Hume and Edward Gibbon, or of the 19th century, such as John Mill or Georges Grote, developed their historiographical activity outside the university. This work analyzes the History of British India, a fundamental book for the Victorians, which also had extraordinary publishing success. Its interest lies not only in its content, but in the fact that the author proposed his own methodology for historical research, based on inductive logic, on the principles of the political economy of David Ricardo and on the social and political ideas of the English liberalism and the utilitarian movement, to which James Mill, his son John Stuart Mill and the historian, politician and banker Georges Grote belonged. In J.Mill's book you can see how the principles of Ricardian political economy and English liberalism were supportive of the implementation of English imperial power over India.

Keywords

 History of India, liberalism, utilitarianism, English imperialism