Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In England during the last thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, a body of political theory was gradually developed in support of government action in the field of education. With the realization of the social consequences involved in the changes taking place in industrial life came a recognition of the obligations of the state to provide for the education of its citizens. Many political and religious leaders expressed themselves on the advantages of education, indicating that the improvement of the mind would bring men closer to the goals of perfection in which these leaders believed: continued progress, moral purity, stable government, and economy.
1. Briggs, Asa, The Age of Improvement (London: Longmans, Green, 1959), p. 71.Google Scholar
2. McCully, Bruce, English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1966), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar
3. Dobbs, A. E., Education and Social Movements, 1700–1850 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), p. 139.Google Scholar
4. Briggs, , The Age of Improvement p. 17.Google Scholar
5. Macaulay, Thomas, Speeches on Politics and Literature (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1909), pp. 350–351.Google Scholar
6. Briggs, , The Age of Improvement p. 17.Google Scholar
7. Ibid.Google Scholar
8. The charter outlined the conditions of organization and ennumerated various rights and privileges. It had to be renewed by the granting government every so-many years, in this case, twenty.Google Scholar
9. Thompson, Edward J. and Garratt, G. T., Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India (Allahabad, India: Central Book Depot, 1962), p. 6.Google Scholar
10. Ibid.Google Scholar
11. In the 1720s, the value of this trade was more than ten percent of the public revenue of Great Britain (Percival Spear, A History of India II [Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1965], 77).Google Scholar
12. Spear, , A History of India p. 86.Google Scholar
13. Hereafter I will refer to this government as the “Indian Government” rather than to “the Company's administration in India.”Google Scholar
14. McCully, , English Education p. 11.Google Scholar
15. [Hansard], Parliamentary Papers 1831–32 VIII. (734) (London: H.M.S.O., 1832), 61.Google Scholar
16. Ibid.Google Scholar
17. Ibid.Google Scholar
18. Ibid., p. 62.Google Scholar
19. McCully, , English Education p. 18.Google Scholar
20. Ibid.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., p. 22. (£10,000 was a great deal of money to be spent for this purpose; as late as 1833–-twenty years later–-government expenditures for education in England were only £30,000.)Google Scholar
22. Ibid., p. 18.Google Scholar
23. Ibid.Google Scholar
24. See Thompson, and Garratt, , British Rule bk. III; McCully, , English Education, chap. 1.Google Scholar
25. Quoted in Nurullah, Syed and Naik, J. P., A History of Education in India during the British Period 2d ed., rev. (Bombay: Macmillan & Co., 1951), p. 89.Google Scholar
26. By 1830, eight parliamentary acts had greatly reformed the English legal and penal codes: slavery and slave trade had been abolished; Catholics were allowed to hold political offices; military and factory reforms had been passed. Reform of Parliament itself was to come in 1832. Also, see the first section of this article.Google Scholar
27. Thompson, and Garratt, , British Rule p. 318.Google Scholar
28. Morrell, William P., British Colonial Policy in the Age of Peel and Russell (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 242.Google Scholar
29. Ibid.Google Scholar
30. Quoted in Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India p. 90.Google Scholar
31. Basu, A. N., ed., Indian Education in Parliamentary Papers pt. 1. (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1952), p. 1.Google Scholar
32. Ibid.Google Scholar
33. See McCully, , English Education pp. 63–64; Thompson and Garratt, British Rule, p. 319; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 196–97.Google Scholar
34. Parliamentary Papers, 1831–32, p. 25.Google Scholar
35. Ibid.Google Scholar
36. Bentinck saw in this resolution the solution to a problem immediately confronting him: the supply of competent and trustworthy native servants of the Company.Google Scholar
37. Parliamentary Debates, 1833–34, vol. XIX, p. 562–63.Google Scholar
38. Ibid.Google Scholar
39. See McCully, , English Education p. 72; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 209–10.Google Scholar
40. See page 165, supra.Google Scholar
41. Quoted in McCully, , pp. 68–9; Nurullah and Naik, pp. 136–8.Google Scholar
42. Ibid.Google Scholar
43. Ibid.Google Scholar
44. Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India p. 139.Google Scholar
45. Ibid.Google Scholar
46. Quoted in Anderson, George, British Administration in India 3d ed., rev. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1923), p. 144.Google Scholar
47. Nurullah, and Naik, , p. 156.Google Scholar
48. Many writers, Indians in particular, have sought to prove that the official acknowledgment of elitist education, coming at the same time as the orders for English education, shows definite political “machinations” of England to utterly control and colonize India. Despite emotional arguments on both sides, there is no direct evidence that the pressures of English instruction were planned, or based on a desire to unify power in the country for any particular purposes.Google Scholar
49. McCully, , English Education p. 85; Nurullah, and Naik, , Education in India, pp. 162–63; other sources.Google Scholar
50. McCully, , English Education p. 85.Google Scholar
51. Quoted in McCully, , English Education p. 91.Google Scholar