This impressive and original work looks at the discussion among leading thinkers in Britain and France about the relationship between imperialists and their conquered subjects between 1770 and 1870. In the process it charts a sad decline in the imaginative grasp that such Europeans had of the moral capacities of the “other,” a decline that had immense consequences for colonial governance.

Besides arguing, somewhat ambiguously in Smith's case and more forthrightly in Bentham’s, that colonialism and conquest were economically unproductive for the nation, both thinkers had a much more generous vision of the capabilities of so-called inferior peoples than had their nineteenth-century successors. Smith, with the famous “four stages” model in his mind, thought that Europe was culturally more advanced than the rest as well as more successful economically, but he did not attribute this to some inherent European superiority. Rather, he assumed that non-European civilizations were constrained by circumstance, history, or environment and that within these constraints their peoples were capable of acting rationally and ordering their own affairs. Bentham, despite his grand schemes of universal lawmaking and his occasional assumption that the British presence was beneficial to Indians, nonetheless always accepted that Indians should play a major part in the government of their own lands. He was acutely aware of how difficult it was for Britons to rule adequately over complex civilizations thousands of miles away of which their knowledge was inevitably slight. But, as Jennifer Pitts shows, it was Burke who developed these ideas furthest. Using the Smithian idea of “sympathy,” he argued with great force that although Britons understood the meaning of justice and humanity in their own domestic sphere, they lacked the imagination to include Indians (and Irishmen) within their circle of moral concern and, as such, were fundamentally incapable of acting on the latter's behalf even when kindly disposed toward them. Indeed, Burke recognized that Britons were too ready to assume that their own practices could not be applied in Asia and Africa and thus gave license to despotism and to a level of violence abroad that they would never have countenanced at home.

Smith, Burke, and Bentham were writing on these matters when Europe had only just begun to outpace Asia economically and when it was by no means clear that they would continue to do so; their awareness of that, and of the splendor and complexity of Indian and Chinese civilizations, made it easier for them to view the latter with generosity. By 1820 or so, as European material dominance became more pronounced, such generosity became much scarcer, and it was too readily assumed that material and military dominance implied moral superiority. The main intellectual carrier of these ideas was the cocky and decidedly unsympathetic James Mill who, as Pitts demonstrates in one of the most innovative parts of the book, bowdlerized Bentham's ideas while fondly imagining that he was advancing them, reduced the complexities of the Scottish Enlightenment's stadial model to a crude dichotomy between “civilised” and “savage” peoples, and committed himself to the crass notion that the worst form of European rule was preferable to Indian self-government. Unfortunately, Mill's position with the East India Company (EIC) gave his views an authority they hardly deserved. What is more distressing, however, is that his ideas were adopted by his son, John Stuart, the greatest and most influential British liberal thinker of the century. John Stuart Mill, who also held a high position in the EIC for many years, embellished his father's thought by stressing the importance of “character” in moral formation, and that gave him an even greater excuse for relegating subject peoples to the status of children. Toward the end of his life, the Indian rebellion and the Morant Bay crisis in Jamaica did make him face up to the violent side of British governance. But in the latter case, although he wanted Eyre indicted as a criminal, he never admitted (as the Liberal politician Forster did) that Eyre's actions were based on an institutionalized racism that made it impossible for the majority of Britons to behave sympathetically toward their black subjects. Given his enlightened attitudes on other issues, including the problems of the Irish peasantry, and his bravery in advocating other unpopular causes, John Stuart's blindness on colonial governance is a puzzle as well as a tragedy. Pitts thinks filial piety probably accounts for it, but this is unlikely since he was quite capable of adapting and reshaping his father's ideas in other spheres such as economics.

Pitts has written a very innovative book and one mercifully free of the postmodern assault on the English language. There are points where the argument could have been enriched. Given John Stuart Mill's reliance on it, the concept of “character” should have received more attention than it does. Again, because she deals largely with thinking associated with the upper class, she occasionally misses interesting ideas at lower levels. To take one example: while recognizing that the Mills were very representative in their attitudes to colonial subjects, it would have been good to see some mention of opposition from people like Cobden, who declared, in the aftermath of the Indian rebellion, that since the British could not keep the peace between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland they were hardly fit to rule Indians. He also had the imagination to see that the latter would rather rule themselves even if they were assured that British government was more efficient than their own.

These are minor quibbles and do not impair the value of the book, one of the best features of which is the extended comparison between British and French thought. The latter shows a similar falling off in the quality of imagination as Constant's perceptive anticolonialism was replaced by Tocqueville's bombastic imperialism. The latter, like John Stuart Mill one of the most sensitive and intelligent liberal thinkers of the century, was acute enough to see the flaws in British thinking and thoroughly understood the violence and contempt that underlay European colonial governance. Yet he supported colonialism in Algeria because he felt that it would unite a French society that, in his view, lacked the moral solidarity evident in Britain. His views have some striking similarities to those of current American neoconservatives, though Pitts, perhaps wisely, does not remark on that.