John Robert Seeley

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other people with the same name, see John Seeley (disambiguation).

Sir
John Robert Seeley
Knight of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George

Sir John Robert Seeley,

KCMG (10 September 1834 – 13 January 1895) was an English Liberal[1][2] historian and political essayist. A founder of British imperial history,[3] he was a prominent advocate for the British Empire, promoting a concept of Greater Britain. This he expounded in his most widely known book The Expansion of England (1883). While he was an early advocate of the establishment of political science as a distinct academic discipline, he retained a theological approach in which this was embedded.[4]

Early life

Seeley was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge

Seeley was born in London. His father was Robert Benton Seeley, a publisher who issued books under the name of Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, was a strong advocate of Evangelical Anglicanism, and was the author of several religious books and of The Life and Times of Edward I. His mother was Mary Ann Jackson (1809–1868), who shared her husband's religious views. Her brother, John Henry Jackson, was a partner in Robert Seeley's publishing company. John was related to the chemist Arthur Herbert Church, a cousin through his mother.[2]

John was educated at

classical studies tutor at the college.[7] He published an anonymous book of poetry and then went through a personal crisis during which abandoned many of the conventional beliefs of his youth and sought to replace them with more well-founded and secure beliefs. He left Cambridge in 1860.[5]

Life in London, 1860–69

Seeley returned to his old school, where he became a teacher. In 1863, he was appointed professor of

University College, London.[8]
That drew him into quite different intellectual circles.

In August 1869, Seeley married Mary Agnes Phillot (1839–1921), who was a granddaughter of William Frend and a sister of Constance Phillott.[2] He is buried in the Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge, with his wife.

Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ (1865)

Seeley's first published book was Ecce Homo: A Survey in the Life and Work of Jesus Christ, which was published anonymously in 1865. It was controversial because it focused almost entirely on Jesus's moral character and his historical actions, as a founder and king of a theocracy, and it excluded discussion of the theological interpretations of his life. The work attempted to demonstrate the consequences that Christ's theocracy and its Church and society had upon the standard and active practice of morality of men.

Seeley intended the book as an incomplete analysis of the subject. His text did not deny the truth of the doctrines, which it did not address, but many critics objected to its representation of Christ.

Many considered the book to be extraordinary in its prose style in addition to in its content. It is characterised by relatively terse and fluid prose. Its anonymous status also added a significant dimension to the controversy surrounding its publication, as readers sought to discover the author's identity. George Eliot, John Henry Newman, William Ewart Gladstone and Napoleon III were some of the more well-known figures believed to have written the book. Seeley was eventually discovered as the author, and from November 1866, his authorship became an open secret. However, Seeley declined to acknowledge publicly his authorship of Ecce Homo, which was first officially stated only in a posthumous edition that was produced in 1895.[9]

Regius Professor in Cambridge

Seeley was made Regius Professor of Modern History, Cambridge, in 1869.[10] He described himself as a Liberal in politics, but a Radical in education; he made important contributions to education reform, including the admission of women into the ancient universities.[1][2]

Works

Subsequent work

His later essay on Natural Religion, signed "by the Author of Ecce Homo," which denied that

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 that it devotes to subsidiary matters render it unattractive.

The Expansion of England (1883)

Far otherwise was Seeley's

Lord Rosebery
.

In the spring of 1883, Seeley started a debate over the

George Walter Prothero, Henry Melvill Gwatkin and Mandell Creighton argued for a broader more scientific approach, reaching a compromise emphasising 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.[11]

Seeley Historical Library, Cambridge

The Growth of British Policy

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.

Later matters

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.[12]

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

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

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: 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 without politics descends to mere literature".

He is often erroneously believed to have said, "History is past politics, and politics present history".[13]

Works

  • Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Roberts Brothers. 1866.
  • Life and Times of Stein; Or, Germany and Prussia in the Romantic Age (Vol. I). Roberts Brothers. 1878.
  • Life and Times of Stein; Or, Germany and Prussia in the Romantic Age (Vol. II). Roberts Brothers. 1878.
  • Life and Times of Stein; Or, Germany and Prussia in the Romantic Age (Vol. III). Roberts Brothers. 1878.
  • Natural Religion. Macmillan and Co. 1882.
  • The Expansion of England. Little, Brown. 1922 [1883].
  • A Short History of Napoleon the First. Roberts Brothers. 1886
  • Goethe: Reviewed after Sixty Years. 1894.
  • The Growth of British Policy. Cambridge University Press. 1922 [1895].
  • Introduction to Political Science: Two Series of Lectures. Macmillan. 1896.
  • Elleke Boehmer, ed. (1998). "Expansion of England". Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870–1918. Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-19-283265-8
    .

Notes

  1. ^
    S2CID 144096694
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e Wormell, Deborah (1980). Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History. CUP Archive. p. 74.
  3. ISBN 978-0-593-32008-2
    .
  4. JSTOR j.ctt7sz6b
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-89341-550-1
    .
  6. ^ "Coin Details 92647". hcr.ashmus.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  7. ^ "Seeley, John Robert (SLY852JR)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  8. ISBN 978-0-85244-453-5
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 9781442645776
    .
  10. ^ Gosse, Edmund (1906). English literature: an illustrated record. W Heinemann.
  11. ^ www.jstor.org
  12. ^ Senate House Library online catalogue, UK: Lon.
  13. doi:10.1093/notesj/gjt244
    .

Further reading

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
John Robert Seeley
Wikiquote has quotations related to John Robert Seeley.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Robert_Seeley&oldid=1210450307"