Abstract
To find the earliest connections between the civilizing mission of empire as described in classical discourse and that claimed by the British in connection with their empire, we would again need to look far beyond the chronological parameters of this study. Nicholas Canny has shown how individuals such as T. Smith, E. Spenser, and J. Davies deployed the image of Rome’s civilizing mission to Britain, as a justification for their actions in colonizing Ireland in the Elizabethan period.323 But as we have seen, the notion of empire as a vehicle of civilization was much older than this: it sprang full grown and girded from the hoary brow of antiquity via the works of Virgil, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Claudian for example. Thus Thomas Smith attributed his belief in the ability of colonization and imperial expansion to spread law and order, the essential prerequisites of civilization, to the success of Rome in Britain.324 In short, classical discourse had suggested a way of conceiving of conquest, colonization, and empire that included the spread of civilization.
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Notes to Text
N. Canny (1973) ‘The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America’ William and Mary Quarterly, third series, vol. 30, pp. 588, 590.
Ibid. pp. 588–9.
Anon. (1795) ‘An Essay on Colonization by C.B. Wadstrom: Part. I’, Monthly Review, n.s., vol. 16, p. 375.
W. Barron (1777) History of the Colonization of the Free States of Antiquity: Applied to the Present Contest between Great Britain and her American Colonies: With Reflections Concerning the Future Settlement of these Colonies (London) pp. 1, 31. W. Meredith (1778) Historical Remarks on the Taxation of Free States, in a Series of Letters to a Friend (London) pp. 22–4. Similarly, W. Rose (1778) “Dr. Symonds’ Remarks upon an Essay, intituled, ‘The History of the Colonization of the Free States of Antiquity, applied to the present Contest between Great Britain and her American Colonies”, Monthly Review, vol. 59, p. 208.
See also J.R. McCulloch (1838) ‘Introduction and Notes’ to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (London) p. 157. Also Anon., ‘Wadstrom’s Essay on Colonization Part. I’, p. 375.
Sir G. Cornewall Lewis (1841) Essay on the Government of Dependencies (London) p. 138. Lewis was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He had experience in Ireland, Malta, and India where he was Secretary to the Board of Control. He maintained an active interest in the classics throughout his career, publishing a review of Grote’s History of Greece in The Edinburgh Review vol. 91 (1850) pp. 118–52, and a monograph: Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History in 1855.
Wakefield’s key pamphlets were published in 1829–30. E.G. Wakefield (1829) A Letter from Sydney (London). (1829) Sketch of a Proposal for Colonizing Australasia (London). (1837) The British Colonization of New Zealand: Being an Account of the Principles, Objects, and Plans of the New Zealand Association: Together with Particulars Concerning the Position, Extent, Soil and Climate, Natural Productions, and Native Inhabitants of New Zealand: With Charts and Illustrations: Published for the New Zealand Association (London). (1849) A View of the Art of Colonization: With Present Reference to the British Empire: In Letters between a Statesman and a Colonist (London).
Charles Dilke (1868) Greater Britain (London) and (1890) Problems of Greater Britain (London).
Eric Stokes saw this realization and its significant impact as an early 19th-century phenomenon. E. Stokes (1969) The English Utilitarians in India (Oxford), pp. xiii, xiv. Yet, he like Bowen, Greene and Marshall, feels that there is evidence for its origins well back in the 18th century. E.g. Gilbert Stuart (1772) ‘Bolts’ Considerations on India Affairs’, Monthly Review, vol. 46, p. 241.
H.V. Bowen (1998) ‘British India, 1765–1813: The Metropolitan Context’, in OHBE, vol. II, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford) pp. 540–2.
R. Griffiths (1773) ‘General Remarks on the System of Government in India: [review of] A view of the Rise, Progress, and present state of the English Government in Bengal… by H. Verelst’, Monthly Review, vol. 48, p. 91.
W. Rose (1783) ‘The Conclusion to Dr. Ferguson’s History of the Progress….’ Monthly Review, vol. 69, p. 119.
W. Rose (1775) ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by E. Gibbon’, Monthly Review, vol. 54, p. 190.
Jones, Letter to Cornwallis, 19 March 1788. Quoted in S.N., Mukherjee (1968) Sir William Jones: a Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes to India (Cambridge) pp. 130–1. See also D. Ludden (1993) ‘Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge’, in C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds) Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament (Philadelphia) p. 256.
Anon. (1810) ‘Affairs of India’, Edinburgh Review, vol. 16, April 1810, pp. 156–7.
J. Gillies (1780) ‘A Grammar of the Bengal Language by N. Brassey Halhead’, Monthly Review, vol. 62, p. 342.
Ibid., p. 344.
For peace, Anon. (1812) ‘Malcolm on India’ Review of his ‘Sketch of the Political History of India, from the introduction of Mr. Pitt’s Bill in 1784’, Edinburgh Review, vol. 20, pp. 51–2. Anon. (1821) ‘Mill’s History of British India’, Monthly Review, n.s. vol. 95, p. 157. Sir J. Malcolm (1811) Sketch of the Political History of India, from the Introduction of Mr. Pitt’s Bill, A.D. 1784 to the Present Date (London) and A. Alison (1833) ‘The East India Question’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 33, p. 780, quoting a recent pamphlet on Indian Affairs by one Mr Sinclair. Also W.H. Sleeman (1844) Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (London), pp. 476–7. For Africa see: Anon., ‘An Essay on Colonization by C.B. Wadstrom’, p. 375.
W. Jones (1807) ‘An Essay on the best Means of civilising the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion throughout the Eastern World; to which the University of Glasgow adjudged Dr. Buchanan’s Prize, By. Jn. Mitchell…’, Monthly Review, n.s., vol. 53, p. 46.
W. Tennant (1807) Thoughts on the Effects of the British Government on the State of India: Accompanied with Hints Concerning the Means of Conveying Civil and Religious Instruction to the Natives of that Country (Edinburgh) p. 69.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 137.
Sir John Malcolm, Sketch of the Political History of India. Quoted in Anon. (1812) ‘Malcolm on India’ Review of his ‘Sketch of the Political History of India, from the introduction of Mr. Pitt’s Bill in 1784’, Edinburgh Review, vol. 20, pp. 51–2. By this point in his career Malcolm had been in the Company’s service for nearly three decades.
Ibid.
Charles Trevelyan (1838) On the Education of the People of India (London) p. 37.
Ibid.
This interpretation is supported by C. Edwards (1999) ‘Translating empire? Macaulay’s Rome’, in C. Edwards (ed.) Roman Presences (Cambridge) p. 82.
T.B. Macaulay (1835) Minute Recorded in the General Department by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Law Member of the Governor-General’s Council, 2 February 1835, IOR Boards’ Collections F/4/1846 No. 77633, pp. 127–46. See also M. Moir and L. Zastoupil (eds) (1999) The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843 (Richmond) pp. 166–7.
Ibid., p. 167.
My Italics. A sense of Macaulay’s influence within imperial discourse relating to the civilizing mission in India appears when we encounter this passage quoted a half century later in a fierce debate among Samuel Smith and Sir M.E. Grant Duff and others over Britain’s record in India. See D. Naorojit (1887) ‘Sir. M.E. Grant Duff’s Views about India’, Contemporary Review, vol. 52, p. 225.
J. Crawfurd (1853) ‘The Nations of India and their Manners’, Edinburgh Review, vol. 98, p. 42.
H. Reeve (1858) ‘Prospects of the Indian Empire’, Edinburgh Review, vol. 107, pp. 38–9, 50.
T. James (1857) ‘Indian Mutiny’, Quarterly Review, vol. 102, p. 568.
C. Hamley (1857) ‘Our Indian Empire’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 82, p. 643. Emphasis added. Hamley frequently contributed to Blackwood’s in the 1850s and early 1860s, writing on topics as varied as the French Navy, Christmas, and Burma.
Anon. (1858) ‘Indian Heroes’, Westminster Review, vol. 70, o.s., p. 360.
J.C. Marshman (1869) The History of India from the earliest period to the close of Lord Dalhousie’s administration (London) vol. 3, p. 98. He stressed the ‘prohibition of human sacrifices at Saugor, the abolition of Suttees, and the extinction of Thuggee.’. Similarly, W. Macpherson (1842) ‘Human Sacrifices in India’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 52, p. 183.
Marshman, The History of India, vol. 3, p. 358. See also pp. 437 and 439 for more on the role of material improvements in the civilizing mission in India.
See S. Nilsson (1968) European Architecture in India, 1750–1850, translated by E. George & E. Zetersten (London), pp. 28–30.
Reginald Heber (1971) Bishop Heber in Northern India: selections from Heber’s Journal, ed. M.A. Laird (London) pp. 225–6. For the original, see R. Heber (1826) Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825 (with Notes upon Ceylon): An account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826; And Letters Written in India (London).
D.A. Washbrook (1999) ‘India, 1818–1860: The Two Faces of Colonialism’, OHBE vol. III, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford) p. 417. See Dalhousie (1910) Private Letters of the Marquess Dalhousie, ed. J.G.A. Baird (London) p. 327. And also R.H. Patterson (1856) ‘Our Indian Empire’, Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 80, p. 652.
G.O. Trevelyan (1864) The Competition Wallah (London) p. 26.
R. W. Frazer (1896) British India (London) p. 355. Emphasis added. In the interval see e.g. L.J. Trotter (1870) ‘British India Under the Crown’, Contemporary Review, vol. 15, p. 118. and H. Taylor (1881) ‘The Future of India’, Contemporary Review, vol. 39, p. 467.
C. Merivale (1850) A History of the Romans under the Empire (London) vol. 7, p. xiii.
W.T. Thornton (1871) ‘National Education in India’, Cornhill Magazine, vol. 23, p. 282.
J.A. Cramb (1900) The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain (Toronto), p. 185. Emphasis added.
Ibid., p. 219.
See Mark Donoghue (2004) ‘William Thomas Thornton’s Career at East India House: 1836–1880’, History of Political Economy, vol. 36, no. 2, p. 295–322.
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation to the people of India, 1 January 1877: V.R. (1998) ‘Proclamation to the people of India, 1 Jan. 1877’, in P.N. Chopra Secret Papers from British Royal Archives (Delhi) p. 49.
E.A. Freeman (1885) ‘Imperial Federation’, Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 51, p. 431, recalling his youth and implying that the word had become rather less arcane and archaic in the interval and had therefore become less evocative of Rome. Yet he and many of his contemporaries continued to make the association. Moreover as the succeeding pages of his article makes clear he could not arrive at a suitable definition of empire without extensive comparisons to antiquity.
R. Wallace (1879) ‘The Seamy side of ‘Imperialism’’, The Contemporary Review, vol. 75, p. 793. See also E. Dicey (1877) ‘Mr. Gladstone and Our Empire’, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 2, p. 300 and H.H.M. Herbert (1878) ‘Imperial Administration’, Fortnightly Review, vol. 30, o.s., p. 764.
M. Bradley (2010) ‘Tacitus’ Agricola and the Conquest of Britain: Representations of Empire in Victorian and Edwardian England’, in M. Bradley (ed.) Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford) pp. 137, 140.
R.S. Mantena (2010) ‘Imperial Ideology and the Uses of Rome in Discourses on Britain’s Indian Empire’, in M. Bradley (ed.) Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford) pp. 67–72. See also B. Porter (1968) Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes to Colonialism in Africa, 1895–1914 (London) pp. 1–2. Bradley, ‘Tacitus’ Agricola’, pp. 131, 137, 146–8, 157. S. Patterson (2009) The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India (New York) pp. 153–5 is also strong on this ambiguity.
H. Beveridge (1884) ‘The Patna Massacre’, Calcutta Review, quoted in William H. Beveridge (1947) India Called Them (London) p. 370.
A.C. Lyall (1893) The Rise and Expansion, of British Dominion in India (London) p. 355. St. Augustine CivDei, iv, 15. See also H. Hyndman (1880) ‘Bleeding to Death’, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 8, p. 157.
J.R. Seeley (1883) The Expansion of England (London) pp. 276–7.
Ibid.
J.M. Robertson (1900) Patriotism and Empire (London) p. 195.
Ibid., p. 203.
E.g. B. Holland (1901) Imperium et Libertas: A Study in the History of Politics (London) p. 12.
Lord Cromer (1910) Ancient and Modern Imperialism (London) p. 127. Here he paraphrased De Re. Nat. 2.79. Translated by his contemporary C.S. Calverley as: ‘Burgeons one generation, and one fades. Let but a few years/Pass, and a race has arisen which was not: as in a racecourse,/One hands on to another the burning torch of Existence.’ The Complete Works (London, 1902) p. 278. Cromer’s use of Rome in this connection runs contrary to Rogers and Hingley’s claim that the link between India and Rome was severed late in the 19th century. See, (2011) ‘Edward Gibbon and Francis Haverfield: The Traditions of Imperial Decline’, in M. Bradley (ed.) Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford) p. 200.
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Hagerman, C.A. (2013). Classical Discourse and British Imperial Identity: The Civilizing Mission. In: Britain’s Imperial Muse. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316424_5
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