James Mill'sHistory of British India(1817) made a rather strange claim: first-hand experience of India was not vital in writing a history – potentially, it led to false ideas about its subject-matter: eyewitnesses are susceptible to bias. The historian was thus to perform his task as a judge: sifting through various testimonies to obtain a ‘more perfect’ conception of the whole than those who witnessed its various parts. Although strange, Mill's claim does not bewilder his readers: after all, Mill was a ‘militant’ exponent of theorizing utilitarianism. I argue that such a reading of Mill's method is injudiciously restrictive. Not only did Mill draw on well-known methodological concerns in contemporary historiographical practice, not necessarily linked with Jeremy Bentham or the Scottish theoretical historiography, but he also seemed to adopt the vocabulary of forensic rhetoric, making his claim that his was a ‘judging’ history more literal than it has been supposed.

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效用、理性与修辞：詹姆斯·密尔对作为法官的历史学家的隐喻

詹姆斯·米尔英属印度史(1817) 提出了一个相当奇怪的主张：印度的第一手经验对于书写历史并不重要——它可能会导致对其主题的错误观念：目击者容易受到偏见的影响。因此，历史学家要履行他作为法官的任务：筛选各种证词，以获得比目睹其各个部分的人“更完美”的整体概念。虽然很奇怪，但密尔的说法并没有让他的读者感到困惑：毕竟，密尔是理论化功利主义的“好战”代表。我认为，对密尔方法的这种解读是不明智的限制性的。穆勒不仅借鉴了当代史学实践中众所周知的方法论关注，不一定与杰里米·边沁或苏格兰理论史学有联系，