Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India

This book examines the effect of Classical political economy — the economic and monetary writings of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, the Mills and others — on the policy-making of the British government in India in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Professor Ambirajan shows how the economic doctrines of laissez-faire individualism and the freedom of market forces were instilled into the British administrative class. The East India Company's college at Haileybury was the most obvio...