*Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect*


A very good book, here is one excerpt that bears directly on a conversation I was just having:

He [Bryce] regretted the low quality of the Indian Civil Service: they were hard-working and motivated by a desire to promote the welfare of the Indian people, but ‘rather wanting in imagination and sympathy, less inspired by the extraordinary and unprecedented phenomena of the country than might have been expected.’  He went on: “Since the unhappy so-called Ilbert Bill there has been a marked change in the attitude of Europeans to natives, especially in Bengal; and the natives complain bitterly that the civilians as well as the military & the planters, treat them with arrogance & make them feel their social inferiority as well as political subordination.”  He continued by saying that all he had seen made him certain that he had made the right decision in not pursuing a career in the Indian Civil Service.

The author is H.S. Jones, and I also learned a good deal about Bryce’s work on behalf of Armenia, a topic I had known nothing about.  I am a big fan of Bryce’s The American Commonwealth book as an analysis of democracy, though of course I do not agree with all of the particulars.  Bryce also was an early NIMBY proponent (even then), and played a large role in debates over the humanities, basically defending liberal education.  He served as ambassador to the U.S. as well.  His long (overlong?) Modern Democracies is in my Kindle queue to read.




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