James Mill began his History of British India in 1806, expecting it to take him

about three years, but its completion proved to take instead twelve years, with
three substantial volumes at last being published early in 1817.[1] The work was
immediately successful among British imperialists and secured for Mill for the
first time a degree of prosperity. It led, with the support of David Ricardo and
Joseph Hume, to Mill's appointment in 1819 in United_Kingdom as assistant (late
r chief) examiner of correspondence at the imperial East India Company at an ann
ual salary of 800. By 1836, when he died, this income had become 2,000.[1]