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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2016
Ever since the resurgence of the sub-discipline in the 1960s, the foremost achievements of the history of political thought have dealt with the early modern period. The classics of the genre—Laslett's edition of Locke, Pocock's Machiavellian Moment, Skinner's Foundations—have all dealt with that period, and it is hard to think of any works on the nineteenth century that have quite the same stature. Of all the canonical political thinkers, John Stuart Mill is perhaps the one who has proved resistant to the contextualist method. There is a vast literature on Mill, and many historians have written penetratingly about him—Stefan Collini, William Thomas, Donald Winch—but there has hitherto been no historically grounded study of his thought to rival, say, John Dunn on Locke or Skinner on Hobbes, or even a host of learned monographs. Before Varouxakis's book, no study of Mill had been published in Cambridge University Press's flagship series in intellectual history, Ideas in Context. But all that has changed. In these two works, published more or less concurrently, we have two triumphs for contextualism. They demonstrate in impressive detail just why it matters in reading Mill to get the history right.
1 The writings on India are brought together in vol. 30, and those on Ireland and the empire in vol. 6. But several of the key articles that Varouxakis relies on appear in vol. 21, Essays on Equality, Law, and Education. These include “A Few Words on Non-intervention,” “The Contest in America” and “Treaty Obligations.” Another key article appears in vol. 20, Essays on French History and Historians (“Vindication of the French Revolution of February, 1848”). Varouxakis also makes intensive use of the Later Letters (vols. 14–17), the Newspaper Writings (vols. 21–5), and the Public and Parliamentary Speeches (vols. 28–9). All references to Mill's work in this article are to the relevant volume of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson, 33 vols. (London, 1963–91), henceforth cited as CW.
2 Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad, 6–8.
3 Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad, 154–8, and Varouxakis, Georgios, “‘Negrophilist’ Crusader: John Stuart Mill on the American Civil War and Reconstruction,” History of European Ideas, 39 (2013), 729–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad, 48–71.
5 Important contributions include Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, 2009), chap. 5Google Scholar; Holmes, Stephen, “Making Sense of Liberal Imperialism,” in Urbinati, Nadia and Zakaras, Alex (eds.), J. S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge, 2007), 319–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.
6 The most vocal advocate of this view is Goldberg, David Theo, “Liberalism's Limits: Carlyle and Mill on ‘The Negro Question’,” in Schultz, Bart and Varouxakis, Georgios (eds.), Utilitarianism and Empire (Oxford, 2005), 125–35Google Scholar.
7 For example, Varouxakis, Georgios, “John Stuart Mill on Race,” Utilitas, 10 (1998), 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Quoted in Varouxakis, “‘Negrophilist’ Crusader,” 736. For Mill's reference to a “crusade” see ibid., 731.
9 Quoted by Varouxakis, “‘Negrophilist’ Crusader,” 738.
10 Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, vol. 2 (London, 1922), 151–2Google Scholar.
11 Winch, Donald, Wealth and Life: Essays on the Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 2009), 64Google Scholar.
12 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 177.
13 See notably Cowling, Maurice, Mill and Liberalism, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar; first published 1963); Letwin, Shirley Robin, The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; Hamburger, Joseph, John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control (Princeton, 1999)Google Scholar; and Raeder, Linda, John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity (Columbia, 2002)Google Scholar.
14 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in Essays on Politics and Society, Part 1, CW: 18, 213–310, at 301–5.
15 For example, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk II, chap. 13, CW: 2, 370–72.
16 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 179.
17 Ibid., 185.
18 Mill to Professor Green, 8 April 1852, CW: 14, 88–9, quoted in Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 185–6.
19 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 92, 196.
20 Ibid., 51–2.
21 Ibid., 49.
22 Ibid., 185.
23 Both cited in Ibid., 186.
24 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 752–7.
25 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 196.
26 Mill, “The Claims of Labour” [1845], CW: 4, 374.
27 Mill to Macvey Napier, 9 Nov. 1844, CW: 13, 643–4.
28 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 197.
29 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 370–71
30 Claeys, Mill and Paternalism, 41.
31 Key works include Semmel, Bernard, John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collini, Stefan, “The Idea of ‘Character’ in Victorian Political Thought,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 35 (1985), 29–50Google Scholar; Collini, , Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; and Kinzer, Bruce L., Robson, Ann P. and Robson, John M., A Moralist in and out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865–1868 (Toronto, 1992)Google Scholar.
32 Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad, 25. The locus classicus is Ryan, Alan, The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 1987), chap. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 J. S. Mill, Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St Andrews [1867], CW: 21, 215–57, at 246.
34 Varouxakis, Liberty Abroad, 23.
35 Ibid., 52.
36 Mill, Autobiography, CW: 1, 1–290, at 128.
37 Mill, “Endowments” [1869], CW: 5, 613–29, at 621.
38 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 370–72.
39 Frederick Rosen, Mill (Oxford, 2013), 79.
