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J. S. Mill on Oriental Despotism, including its British Variant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Robert Kurfirst
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Extract

European portraits of the great Asian states, China, India, and Persia, remained remarkably constant from the establishment of the Chinese silk trade in the first century B.C. until the religious and mercantile expeditions to the Orient prominent in the late Middle Ages. For more than a millenium, the Eastern empires had been classified by Europeans as stable despotisms – stationary societies governed by custom and tradition and devoid of economic, political, or cultural dynamism. Only during the Enlightenment did the proper interpretation of the merits of ‘Oriental despotism’ become a matter of controversy. To some Enlightenment figures, the paternalistic despotisms of Asia appeared to be superior to the nations of Europe ethically and in the quality of their political, legal, and educational institutions. Many social philosophers of the period agreed that the example afforded by Asia could contribute much to the rejuvenation of European society they hoped to effect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 73 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Leibniz, G., Novissima Sinica, ed. Lach, D., Honolulu, 1957, p. 60Google Scholar.

2 Wolff, C., ‘De Sinarum Philosopha Practica’, address of 12 07 1721Google Scholar, cited in Reichwein, A., China and Europe: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1925, p. 85Google Scholar.

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7 Hudson, G. F., Europe and China, Boston, 1931, pp. 326–7Google Scholar. Hudson offers an alternative explanation for the fundamental changes in Western attitudes towards Asia. He reminds us that the earliest European perceptions of the Asian states were shaped by the reports of missionaries, while in the eighteenth century merchants became a greater source of information on the Orient. Whereas the missionaries came into contact with the scholars of Eastern courts, the merchants dealt regularly with the baser elements of Asian society from which the missionaries were generally sheltered (p. 327). This point is also made by Lowe, D., The Function of ‘China’ in Marx, Lenin, and Mao, Berkeley, 1966, p. 2Google Scholar.

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9 ‘No one can take an accurate survey of the different nations of Asia, and of their different ages, without remarking the near approaches they make to the same stage of civilization’, Mill, J., The History of British India, [1817]. ed. Wilson, H. H., 6 vols., New York, 1968, ii. 150Google Scholar.

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11 Mill, , History of British India, ii. 150Google Scholar.

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13 In the introduction to his abridged edition of James Mill's History, William Thomas suggests that John Mill may have been more careful about distinguishing between the two nations because in his era profits from the East India Company ‘were no longer made, as in Clive's time, from exhorbitant demands on India, but from the China trade’ (Chicago, 1975, p. xxxvi)Google Scholar.

14 See especially Book I ch. viii, ‘Of the Wages of Labour’, and Book I ch. ix, ‘Of the Profits of Stock’.

15 Mill, J. S., Principles of Political Economy, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965, CW, ii. 169Google Scholar. See also On Liberty, Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977, CW, xviii. 224, 272Google Scholar, and Considerations on Representative Government, Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977, CW, xix. 377–8, 393–4, 396–7, 401, 406, and 413–14Google Scholar.

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17 Ibid., 111.

18 Ibid., ii. 907–8.

19 Smith remarked that China was a stationary state which had ‘acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions’ long before it was visited by Marco Polo. But Bengal, like ‘some other of the English settlements of the East Indies’, had deteriorated into a ‘decaying’ and ‘declining’ nation wherein towns were increasingly deserted by their inhabitants, lands once cultivated were neglected, and wages were driven below the level of physical subsistence, thereby engendering ‘[w]ant, famine, and mortality’. Smith, , i. 89–91Google Scholar.

20 Mill, notes in his Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years, written in 1858Google Scholar, that one of the most significant improvements in India during this period has been ‘An enormous increase in the external commerce of India’. He notes that ‘exports have risen from £7,993,420 in 1834–5, to £23,039,268 in 1855–6’, or a total of 188 per cent. Writings on India, ed. Robson, John M., Moir, M., and Moir, Z., Toronto, 1990, CW, XXX. 111Google Scholar.

21 Smith favours the establishment of a ‘legal rate’ which ‘ought to be somewhat above … the lowest market rate’. (Smith, , i. 355)Google Scholar. Mill, , like Bentham, , rejects such restrictions because they are unenforceable. (Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 923–4Google Scholar; Bentham, J., Defence of Usury [1787], Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, 3 vols., ed. Stark, W., London, 1952, i. 121–207Google Scholar; see especially Letter VII, ‘Efficacy of Anti-Usurious Laws’, i. 147–50.)

22 Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 168, 14.

23 Ibid., 169–70.

24 Ibid., 170. Additional inconveniences are identified by Ambirajan, S. in Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India, Cambridge, 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Among them were the lack of security for loans, ‘charges levied for fictitious services’, ‘a sum called munafa … deducted from the principal at the time when the loan was advanced’, and the fact that both interest and profit rates were generally high in undeveloped countries. Ambirajan also supports Mill's explanation of how high profits could lead to low investment: ‘If the “capitalist” knew that his borrower could make 30, 40 or even 50 per cent profit, he would not naturally have any incentive to be satisfied with a mere 12 per cent’ (106–7).

25 CW, ii. 169–70.

26 In a letter of 9 July, 1869, to Campbell, George, author of The Irish Land (1869)Google Scholar and an essay entitled ‘The Tenure of Land in India’ (1870), Mill, reaffirms the principle that ‘Englishmen who know India are the men who can understand and interpret the social ideas and economic relations of Ireland.’ (Additional Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Filipiuk, M., Laine, M., and Robson, John M., Toronto, 1991, CW, xxxii. 209)Google Scholar. See also additional letters to Campbell, , CW, xxxii. 214, 216Google Scholar.

27 CW, ii. 416.

28 Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. ch. ix, § iv.

29 Ibid., ii. 13.

30 Mill elaborates by citing China as a case in point: ‘The views of the European extend to a distant futurity, and he is surprised at the Chinese, condemned through improvidence, and want of sufficient prospective care, to incessant toil, and as he thinks, insufferable wretchedness. The views of the Chinese are confined to narrower bounds; he is content to live from day to day, and has learnt to conceive even a life of toil as a blessing.’ (Ibid., 169–70).

31 Ibid., ii. 320.

32 Ibid., 327.

33 Ibid., 328.

34 Ibid., 281.

35 Ibid., iii. 706, 709.

36 Ibid., ii. 284, 293.

37 Ibid., ii. 295.

38 Ibid. Curiously, Mill also notes that movement in this direction in consequence of the institutionalization of peasant proprietorship is so remarkable that it has precipitated a ‘moral inconvenience’ all its own, namely ‘the danger of [peasant proprietors] being too careful of their pecuniary concerns; of its making them crafty, and “calculating” in the objectionable sense’ (280–2).

39 ‘Coleridge’, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969, CW, X. 157–8Google Scholar.

40 ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii. 121.

41 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 400.

42 ‘Civilization’, CW, xviii. 123.

43 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 404.

44 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 395.

45 Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 277, 281.

46 Utilitarianism, CW, x. 233.

47 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 407.

48 Ibid., 409.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., 410.

51 Ibid., 377.

52 On Liberty, CW, xviii. 224.

53 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 567.

54 Ibid., 396.

55 Ibid., 569–70.

56 ‘The East India Company's Charter’, CW, xxx. 51, 64. Mill notes, however, that their jurisdiction is ‘subject to appeal to Europeans’ (64).

57 In his introduction to Mill's writings on India, M. Moir notes that the inclusion of the 15-man Council of India in Lord Stanley's India act was in no small measure due to Mill's position that some sort of checks and balances should remain in India, and persistent lobbying ‘by the Company's supporters inside and outside Parliament between April and June 1858’ (CW, xxx. p. xxxvii).

58 ‘The East India Company's Charter’, CW, xxx. 50.

59 Ibid., 49.

60 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 573–4.

61 Ibid., 574–5.

62 ‘The East India Company's Charter’, CW, xxx. 36.

63 Ibid., 50.

64 Considerations on Representative Government, CW, xix. 573.