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". Justifications for empire 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". Notable quotations "History is the school of statesmanship". "History without politics descends to mere literature". He is often erroneously believed to have said, "History is past politics, and politics present history". Works Natural Religion. Macmillan and Co. 1882. A Short History of Napoleon the First. Roberts Brothers. 1886 Notes Further reading Bell, Duncan SA. "Unity and Difference: John Robert Seeley and the Political Theology of International Relations". Review of International Studies 31#3 (2005): 559–579. Burroughs, Peter. "John Robert Seeley and British Imperial History", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 1.2 (1973): 191–211. Greenlee, James G. "‘A succession of Seeleys’: The ‘old school’ re‐examined." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 4.3 (1976): 266–282. Hesketh, Ian. Victorian Jesus: J.R. Seeley, Religion, and the Cultural Significance of Anonymity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). Hesketh, Ian. "Writing History in Macaulay's Shadow: JR Seeley, EA Freeman, and the Audience for Scientific History in Late Victorian Britain". Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 22#2 (2011): 30–56. Hyam, Ronald. "The study of imperial and commonwealth history at Cambridge, 1881–1981: Founding fathers and pioneer research students", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29.3 (2001): 75–103. Kenyon, John Philipps. The History Men: The Historical Profession in England Since the Renaissance (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984). G. W. Prothero, Memoir prefixed to Growth