James Mill writes in his History of British India that “whatever is worth seeing or hearing in India, can be expressed in writing. As soon as every thing of importance is expressed in writing, a man who is duly qualified may obtain more knowledge of India in one year, in his closet in England, than he could obtain during the course of the longest life, by the use of his eyes and his ears, in India.” Mill argues that the entire reality of what was for him an “object” called “India” can be defined by being captured in writing, just as its territory had been defined by being captured by the armies of the East India Company. He is “correct” to the extent that imperial rule from London relied upon the minute documentation of the endless activities of the Company in India, so that what was being judged and decided upon by the directors in London were not the material activities themselves, but rather the documents produced alongside them – not, in other words, the “realities,” but the “representations.”