ABSTRACT
Readers of James Mill’s History of British India find the work steeped both in Benthamite utilitarianism and the tradition of Scottish conjectural histories. This chapter traces the historiographical, rhetorical, and philosophical practices underlying Mill’s various claims in History. It focuses on three eighteenth-century traditions: first, the rhetorical practice of self-justification in Scottish historiography—how the preface served as a vehicle for the historian to explain his method in and reasons for writing. Second, the chapter examines the comparative method of Scottish and French historians—how they suggested dealing with one potential problem for the historian, that is, the problem of bias. Third, it also focuses on the method of the critical history of philosophy—how historians tried to free “history from uncertainty, from fables, and from the errors with which it had been handed down”. The chapter also explores alternative sources of some of Mill’s utilitarian themes.
