Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, English historian and politician, Secretary at War (b. 1800)
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician. He is considered primarily responsible for the introduction of a Western-style education system in India. Macaulay wrote extensively as an essayist, on contemporary and historical sociopolitical subjects, and as a reviewer. His The History of England was a seminal and paradigmatic example of Whig history, and its literary style has remained an object of praise since its publication, including subsequent to the widespread condemnation of its historical contentions which became popular in the 20th century.Macaulay served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1848. He played a major role in the introduction of English and western concepts to education in India, and published his argument on the subject in the "Macaulay's Minute" in 1835. He supported the replacement of Persian by English as the official language, the use of English as the medium of instruction in all schools, and the training of English-speaking Indians to serve as teachers. This led to Macaulayism in India, and the rapid decline out of traditional and ancient Indian education and vocational systems and sciences.During his political and scholarly career, Macaulay consistently stressed the supposed superiority of Western culture. In his Minute on Indian Education of February 1835, Macaulay wrote that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia... when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable." Macaulay was wedded to the idea of progress, especially in terms of the liberal freedoms. He opposed radicalism while idealising historical European culture and traditions.