Governing Dependencies

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 closes out the comparative assessment of Mill’s political interventions by turning to his writings on empire. As with his feminist and class politics, Mill’s imperial writings are often read through his liberal status. For scholars interested in the imperial roots of liberal political thought, Mill’s talismanic status within that tradition makes him the model “liberal imperialist.” This approach has also set Mill’s writings on empire apart from his domestic considerations, such that his “radicalism” at home is contrasted with his “imperialism” abroad. Following Mill’s uncertain mode of politics, however, enables a clearer comparative view of Mill’s radical, gradualist, and paternalist strategies across these issues. Even as Mill defends the imperial project and refutes the right of self-determination for colonized subjects, he is never wholly comfortable with the realities of colonial rule—a discomfort that has been almost entirely obscured in the now standard reading of Mill as a “liberal imperialist.” That discomfort leads him to make some striking critiques of the British Empire and its colonial administrators, on issues of violence, education, and the demands of justice. That he could both defend and doubt empire is an effect not of ideological certainty but of political uncertainty.