John Robert Seeley

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]

His later essay on Natural Religion, signed "by the Author of Ecce Homo," which denied that supernaturalism is essential to religion and maintained that the negations of science tend to purify rather than destroy Christianity, satisfied few and excited far less interest than his earlier work.[9] In 1869, Seeley was appointed professor of modern history at the University of Cambridge. He was a popular instructor and prepared his lectures carefully, which were well attended. In historical work, he is distinguished as a thinker rather than as a scholar. He valued history solely in its relation to politics as the science of the state. He maintained that history should be studied scientifically and for a practical purpose, the solution of existing political questions. Thus, he naturally devoted himself mainly to recent history, especially the relations between England and other states. His Life and Times of Stein, a valuable narrative of the anti-Napoleonic revolt, led by Prussia mainly at 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.

Far otherwise was Seeley's The Expansion of England (1883). Written in his best manner, that essay answered to his theory that history should be used for a practical purpose and pointed out how and why Britain gained its colonies and India, the character of the British Empire and the light in which it should be regarded. As a historical essay, the book was a fine composition, and its defence of the empire was then very persuasive. His defence consisted largely of the claim that British rule was in India's best interest. Seeley also questioned the usefulness of India to the power and security of Britain and even claimed that there was 'no doubt' that India vastly increased the responsibilities and dangers to Britain. The book contains this much-quoted statement: "we seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind." It appeared at an opportune time and did much to make Englishmen regard the colonies not as mere appendages but as an expansion of the British state as well as of British nationality and to remind them of the value of the empire in the East. The essay was reprinted ten times in the year in which it was published and many more times in later years. Seeley was rewarded for public service by being made a Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George, on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery.

In the spring of 1883, Seeley started a debate over the Tripos bachelor's honours exam at Cambridge, wishing it to concentrate on political history, but historians Frederick William Maitland, 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

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.

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.

Seeley was far more astute than many later imperial historians, as he complained that very transformation had made possible a national amnesia about the significance of empire in the history of England itself. His lectures were filled with a critique of the blinkers of English historiography: "They [our historians] make too much of the parliamentary wrangle and the 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".

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".