James Mill's History of British India is a monumental work which is often cited in relation to the development of European views on the nature of Indian civilization. It is notorious for representing the viewpoint of those in the West who in the period when it was witten, around 1817, were arguing that rather than studying Indian culture the West should be teaching India Western culture.

One of the famous results of this attitude was Thomas Macaulay's "Minute on Indian Education" of 1835. It is also clear if you look at the sections on subjects like Indian music (see Vol. 1, p. 357.) in Mill's work that he was remarkably unsympathetic to Indian culture. However, it is only by studying this document in detail that it may be possible to understand the various facets that made up its viewpoint.

Bibliographic Details
Author: James Mill
Title: HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA, [Volumes I-II-III]
Place: PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY, PATERNOSTER ROW
Publisher: LONDON
Date: 1817

Note the version on this site is from an original edition of 1817 and has the advantage that you can do an online search for words in it.

You can also find another version online at The Online Library Of Liberty which is from an 1826 edition and is available in HTML or PDF format.

Credits

This work was selected by Prof. Howard Brasted of the University of New England where the OCR work on the text was undertaken by Andrew Messner.