Writings on India

John Stuart Mill worked for thirty-five years in the Examiner's Office of the East India Company, first as a junior clerk and finally as head of the Office. His activities there are among the least examined aspects of his career.

Mill was somewhat reluctant, because of his official position, to comment publicly on the Company's affairs, but occasionally he put forwards 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 Companty, Mill was its chief spokesman in a succession of carefully argued pamphlets that reveal even more of his views.

This volume offers the first opportunity for a fill assessment of Mill's contribution, including as it does the first reprinting of the essays, parliamentary evidence, and pamphlets, and adding an appendix of an annotated record and location of his despatches.