Liberalism, ‘Barbarism,’ and Free Speech,” by Randy Robertson

The article is here; from the Introduction:

John Stuart Mill continues to stir trouble in the twenty-first century. Nowhere is Mill’s liberal legacy more fiercely contested than in academia, where scholarly opinion ranges from something approaching idolatry to icy disapproval. Heterodox Academy invokes Mill as a leading light, with Jonathan Haidt and Richard Reeves publishing an abridged version of On Liberty (entitled All Minus One) as a manifesto for the movement. Other scholars have tried to “update” Mill for a new era by adapting his notion of “harm” to include psychological and civic harm. Still others dismiss Mill as an engineer of and apologist for empire, another hypocritical nineteenth-century liberal who supported freedom for the metropole while advocating despotism for the colonial other.

How to reconcile the various versions of Mill—liberal apostle, Romantic utilitarian, faithful servant of the East Indian Company? The volume of Mill scholarship may hinder any effort to answer the question more than it helps: It is now so vast that it seems impossible to master without the help of artificial intelligence: Even if we restrict the topic to Mill and freedom of expression, JSTOR alone houses some 6,000 books and articles that mention Mill and free speech, enough to intimidate even the most energetic reader. The prospect of saying something new about Mill is perhaps yet more daunting.

To their credit, Drs. Christopher Barker and Fara Dabhoiwala have recently paved a fresh pathway through Mill’s oeuvre, attempting to explain why Mill did not extend his full-throated support for free speech to what he termed “barbarous” countries. Why, they ask, did Mill insist that colonial Indians, for instance, did not deserve the right (or privilege) of free speech? While copious research has been devoted to Mill’s arguments on free speech and to his opinions on empire, surprisingly little has been written on the intersection of the two.

The problem, however, is that the query on India, as posed, est une question mal posée, a complex question that assumes the conclusion and then seeks to explain it. Barker’s claim, for instance, that “Mill consistently supports East India Company (EIC) policy restricting publicity and debate in British India” is belied by a more sensitive examination of the evidence. Dabhoiwala’s forays down the documentary trail in his new book, What Is Free Speech?, are even more misleading. The real question is how two respected scholars could have limned such skewed portraits of Mill.