Macaulay, Thomas B.
(1800–1859), English politician, writer, member of the Supreme Council of India. Thomas Babington Macaulay was a precocious scholar, with an extremely retentive memory. After studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, he began training in the law, but soon abandoned his studies to concentrate on writing for periodicals, chiefly the Edinburgh Review. In 1830, he entered Parliament as a Whig. In 1843, he accepted a lucrative post on the Supreme Council of India to help bolster the family finances when his father's business failed. He arrived in Madras, India, in June of that year with his sister.
His period in India was notable for two things. First, he took the lead in the creation of a criminal code, which established English common law as the basis of the Indian legal system. Second, he intervened in the debate about whether public funds should be used to promote the study of English language and learning or of traditional Eastern subjects and languages. Macaulay dismissed the achievements of Indian learning and argued in his famous "Minute on Education" (1835) that universities should teach the English language, science, and Western literature in the English language. His argument prevailed and played an important part in establishing English as the official language of India.
Macaulay returned to England in 1838, never to revisit India. Although he reentered Parliament, his final years were devoted to his History of England, which he left unfinished at his death in 1859. He was one of the greatest essayists of nineteenth-century English literature.
Further Reading
Trevelyan, George Otto. (1876) The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green.
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