It has been seen that this thesis rests on an understanding that the development of ideas is heavily dependent on the historical context in which they develop (even though considerations of space sometime make it hard to set down the context in much detail). This is no less true when examining how and why interest in antiquity shaped contemporary understandings of Britain in the nineteenth century. It has previously been argued that American Independence changed the way that some British writers thought about questions of colonialism. However, in the broader political view of the early nineteenth century, the French Revolution of 1789 and its consequences was at least as important in influencing political ideas. The threat of the overturn of all established order in the name of some uncontrolled mob-rule was famously the central theme in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, commonly considered a foundational text of the conservative principle. It also inspired William Mitford, a Conservative MP and man of independent means, to use the History of Greece260 he was writing to denounce the evils of democracy, using
Athens as a warning against the moral and political decay brought by democracy to an otherwise vibrant and successful state. Mitford also praised the virtues of autocratic rule as practiced in Sparta and Macedon, as best suited to secure the protection of personal security and property. Published between 1784 and 1810, Mitford’s History
was not a great piece of historical scholarship, but it was a powerful piece of partisan writing which was read by many Tory politicians, who regularly quoted it well into the 1820s.261
The processes set in motion by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution did not end with the fall of Napoleon, and conservative attempts to restore l’ancien régime did not prove successful, with radical-liberal forces pushing against conservatism in favour of reform and democracy both in continental Europe and Britain. The historiography of Ancient Greece in Britain was shaped by the waves of reform, and it was considered an important radical project to write an alternative history of Greece to counter the conservative interpretation by Mitford and others. John Stuart Mill mentioned in his Autobiography that his father had presented Mitford’s History to him as the best history of Ancient Greece on offer, though warning him of its dangerous tendencies,262 and as T.H. Irvin points out in ‘Mill and
the Classical World’ (1998),263 “the fact that the careful and well-informed James
Mill could find nothing more suitable than Mitford for his son to read on Greek
history shows why a history free of Tory prejudice would find some eager readers.”264 If Ancient Greece was a model for contemporary Britain, it was a matter of political
261 G.P. Gooch, History and Historians of the Nineteenth Century (Longmans, 1913. 2nd ed. 1952), pp.
289-290.
262 J.S. Mill, Autobiography. Preface H.J. Laski (Orig. 1873. Oxford University Press, Reprint with
unpublished speeches 1924), p. 10.
263 T.H. Irvin, ‘Mill and the Classical World’ in J. Skorupski, The Cambridge Companion to Mill
(Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 423-463.
urgency that it was presented as a positive model for one’s own political standpoint. The question, however, was who would have the capacity to write a good counterpart to Mitford’s History which, in spite of its inadequacies, was so eminently readable that Mill in spite of his father’s warnings found it one of his favourite books.265
The circle around Bentham and James Mill saw the threat presented by Mitford’s argument: that democracy had been tried and failed. Challenging that narrative was not an easy task, given that democratic Athens had ultimately been unable to defend itself from both demagoguery and defeat by the Macedonians. Additionally, Plato and Aristotle had argued against democracy as mob-rule, and democratic Athens had chosen to execute Socrates, one of the founders of western philosophy. The man chosen to challenge that narrative was found among the younger men in Bentham and Mill’s inner circle. George Grote, who John Stuart called the man among his father’s friends “with whom I most associated”,266 had cultivated a strong interest in antiquity
since he left school, in spite of having been put to work in banking at the age of sixteen. Grote’s wife later noted that she had suggested her husband should write his own history of Greece in 1823, but Lionel Tollemache, who interviewed Grote in the 1860s, claimed that the suggestion came from James Mill, while Kyriacos Demetriou argues in George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy (1999) that the project had been thought of several years earlier.267 All considered, it seems fair to assume that,
irrespective of his wife’s involvement, Grote was in fact encouraged by James Mill to take up the writing of a counterpart to Mitford. However, in spite of Grote’s interest in the project, his obligations as both a banker and a leading Radical Member of
265 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 10. 266 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 61.
Parliament (1832-41)left him insufficient time to finish any part of his planned history until after his retirement in 1843.268
At the universities the history of Greece and Rome became an official part of curriculum from 1830, though the actual curriculum was untouched by modern scholarship until the eighteen forties,269 strengthening the need for a Radical
alternative to Mitford. More broadly, the early nineteenth century was marked by the introduction of examinations in Classics at Oxford and Cambridge between 1800 and 1824.270 This was the start of reshaping the classics curriculum into what it would become by the late nineteenth century, at a time when the imperialist-internationalists attended university, and classics at Oxford was the education of choice for the civil services.271 At Oxford Aristotle was favoured over Plato, and Greek studies over Latin, though Latin, of course, was part of the curriculum.