Barbarian thoughts: imperialism in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill

Mill’s political and his international theory rest on a philosophy of history drawn in turn from the experience of nineteenth century imperialism. And yet, this philosophy of history remains unexamined in Political Theory and International Relations (IR) alike, largely because of the peculiar division of labour between the two disciplines. In this article I will argue that this omission results not just in a misconception of those aspects of Mill’s thought with which Political Theory and IR directly engage; in addition, and more seriously, it has led in both disciplines to an unreflected perpetuation of Mill’s justification of imperialism. John Stuart Mill occupies an eminent position in Political Theory traditionally associated with the support of liberty and free speech. Recently, however, this reading of Mill has come under critical scrutiny. Mill’s liberalism, it is argued, is inextricably linked to imperialism which, in turn, is reproduced through liberal practices in the contemporary world.1 Imperialism, however, as a concept and a practice, falls squarely into the disciplinary domain of IR, especially so in a time in which the concept of empire ‘has made what can only be described as a dramatic intellectual comeback’.2 And yet, despite the fact that Mill worked in India House for 35 years and, thus, was directly involved in international politics in the form of governing the Indian subcontinent (as well as writing extensively about international affairs in his newspaper articles and in his philosophical texts), he is rarely invoked in the IR literature. And when he is mentioned, it is usually with reference to an extract from his short essay A Few Words on Non-Intervention.3 This effectively confines Mill’s * I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their encouraging comments and suggestions of further enquiry as well as David Boucher and his colleagues and students at Cardiff for the opportunity to present my interpretation of Mill to ‘proper’ Political Theorists. Their reflections helped to strengthen the article. Thanks are also due to Barry Hindess for his comments and suggestions and to Justin Rosenberg, as always, for helping with structure, grammar, and style. 1 Paul A. Passavant, No Escape: Freedom of Speech and the Paradox of Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1999); Eddy M. Souffrant, Formal Transgressions: John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of International Affairs (Lanham: Roman and Littlefield, 2000); Bikhu Parekh, ‘Decolonizing Liberalism’, in Aleksandras Shtromas (ed.), The End of ‘Isms’! (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) pp. 85–103; Barry Hindess, ‘Liberalism – What’s in a Name?’, in Wendy Warner and William Walters (eds.), Global Governmentality (London: Routledge, 2004); Jennifer Pitts, ‘Legislator of the World?’ in Political Theory, 31 (2003). 2 Michael Cox, ‘The Empire’s Back in Town: or America’s Imperial Temptation – Again’, in Millennium, 32 (2003), p. 5. 3 John Stuart Mill, ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ in John M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), vol. XXI, pp. 109–24. See, for example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 251f; Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), especially Part II, chs. 2 and 3; John Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 54–6; Michael Walzer,