John Robert Seeley

Life

Seeley was born in London, the son of R. B. Seeley, a publisher and the author of several religious books and of The Life and Times of Edward I. After developing a taste for religious and historical subjects at the City of London School, Seeley went up to Christ's College, Cambridge where he was head of the Classical tripos and senior chancellor's medallist. He was elected a fellow and became Classical tutor of his college.

For a time, he was a master at his old school in London, and in 1863, he was appointed professor of Latin at University College, London. He was made Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge in 1869.

In August 1869, Seeley married Mary Agnes Phillot, who survived him. He is buried in the Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge, with his wife.

Works

Seeley's essay Ecce Homo (published anonymously in 1866 and afterwards acknowledged by him) was widely read and prompted many replies, as it was deemed an attack on Christianity. Dealing only with Christ's humanity, it dwells on his work as the founder and king of a theocratic state and points out the effect that the society, his church, has had upon the standard and active practice of morality among men. Seeley intended the book as "a fragment" and the text did not deny the truth of those doctrines, which it did not address, but many critics still found fault with its treatment of Christ. Many considered the book to be valuable not only in its content but also in its style, as it is characterised by relatively terse and fluid writing.

His later essay on Natural Religion, which denied that supernaturalism is essential to religion and maintained that the negations of science tend to purify rather than destroy Christianity, satisfied no one and excited far less interest than his earlier work. In 1869, he was appointed professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge. He was a popular instructor and prepared his lectures carefully, which were largely attended. In historical work, he is distinguished as a thinker rather than as a scholar. He valued history solely in its relation to politics, as the science of the state. He maintained that history should be studied scientifically and for a practical purpose, the solution of existing political questions. Thus, he naturally devoted himself mainly to recent history, especially to the relations between England and other states. His Life and Times of Stein, a valuable narrative of the anti-Napoleonic revolt, led by Prussia mainly at Heinrich Friedrich Karl von und zum Stein's instigation, was written under German influence and shows little of the style of his short essays. Its length, its colourlessness, and the space it devotes to subsidiary matters render it unattractive.

Far otherwise is it with his The Expansion of England (1883). Written in his best manner, that essay answers to his theory that history should be used for a practical purpose; it points out how and why Britain gained its colonies and India, the character of the British Empire and the light in which it should be regarded. As a historical essay, the book is a fine composition, and its defence of the empire was then very persuasive. His defence consists largely of the claim that British rule was in India's best interest. Seeley also questioned the usefulness of India to the power and security of Britain and even claimed that there was 'no doubt' that India vastly increased the responsibilities and dangers to Britain. The book contains this much-quoted statement: "we seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind". Expansion of England appeared at an opportune time and did much to make Englishmen regard the colonies not as mere appendages but as an expansion of the British state as well as of British nationality and remind them of the value of the empire in the East. The essay was reprinted ten times in the year in which it was published and many more times in later years. Seeley was rewarded for public service by being made a Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George, on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery.

His last book, The Growth of British Policy, written as an essay and intended to be an introduction to a full account of the expansion of Britain, was published posthumously.

In the spring of 1883, Seeley started a debate over the Tripos bachelor's honours exam at Cambridge, wishing it to concentrate on political history, but historians Frederick Maitland, George Walter Prothero, Henry Melvill Gwatkin, and Mandell Creighton argued for a broader more scientific approach, reaching a compromise emphasizing the reading of primary sources, requiring a compulsory paper on "Political Science", with required readings including "Introduction to Political Science" (1896) by Seeley and "The Elements of Politics" (1891) by Sidgwick.

Inagaki Manjiro dedicated his Japan and the Pacific and the Japanese View of the Eastern Question (1890) to Seeley, who had taught him at Caius College.

Correspondence to and from Seeley, including that relating to the publication of and reactions to Ecce Homo, is held by the archives in Senate House Library.

In 1897, the history library of the University of Cambridge was named the Seeley Historical Library in his honour. In 1895 a memorial fund was raised to commemorate his services to the British Empire and to the University; the greater part of this fund was devoted to the endowment of the library. After moving from King's College and Caius College, in 1912, the collection relocated to the top floor of the newly reopened Arts School, Bene't Street, then in 1935 to the Old Schools. In 1968 the Seeley moved to the Sidgwick Site of Cambridge University as part of the new History Faculty building designed by James Stirling.

Significance of empire

Seeley wrote that the first chapter of the history of British India "embraces chronologically the first half of George III's reign, that stormy period of transition in English history when at the same time America was lost and India won... [and] covers the two great careers of Robert Clive and Hastings... [T]he end of the struggle is marked by the reign of Lord Cornwallis, which began in 1785".

The trial of Warren Hastings had been the final act in the efforts spanning the eighteenth century to harness imperial power, along with imperial wealth and prestige, securely to Britain, both as a "nation" and as a "state". Once Edmund Burke had succeeded in that endeavour, the stain of commercial origins could be removed, with the special mix of economic and political interests realigned as the expression of national interest and the blot of scandal washed out, as the moral mandate for a new kind of imperial project was launched.

Blinkers of English historiography

Seeley was far more astute than many later imperial historians, as he complained that very transformation had made possible a national amnesia about the significance of empire in the history of England itself. His lectures were filled with a critique of the blinkers of English historiography: "They [our historians] make too much of the parliamentary wrangle and the agitations about liberty, in all which matters the eighteenth century of England was but a pale reflection of the seventeenth. They do not perceive that in that century the history of England is not in England but in Americas and Asia."

Justifications for empire

Seeley's account of imperial wars and conquest repeats the justifications made first by the conquerors themselves: that the sole objective of trade turned into political conquest by accident, rather than contrivance or calculation.

Most historians have argued that the East India Company was drawn reluctantly into political and military conflict in India and took an interest in territorial power and revenue only as a last-ditch effort to protect its trading activities. Among the narratives of imperial historians, Seeley concurred and wrote that India "lay there waiting to be picked up by somebody". He considered that what happened in India in the late 18th century was thus an "internal revolution" rather than a "foreign conquest".

Notable Quotations

"History is the school of statesmanship."

"History is past politics, and politics present history."

"History without politics descends to mere literature."

Works