George Miller (historian)

George Miller (1764 – 6 October 1848) was an Irish Anglican priest and historian of Trinity College, Dublin. He developed a course in modern European history at the college after being passed-over for a professorship and appointed assistant to Francis Hodgkinson, professor of modern history at the college, who gave no lectures during his 41-year tenure. Miller's college lectures were published in eight parts between 1816 and 1828 and reissued in four volumes in 1832 as History, philosophically illustrated, from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the French Revolution, which went through three editions.

George Miller was born in 1764. He held three earned degrees from Trinity College including doctor of divinity (DD).

Miller was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1789. In 1790, he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and was later a member of the Council of that organisation and a secretary. In 1799, he was passed-over for the chair in Natural and Experimental Philosophy in favour of Thomas Elrington but possibly as a form of consolation prize was appointed assistant to Francis Hodgkinson, the newly appointed professor of modern history who did not deliver any lecturers on the subject between then and his death in 1840. John Kearney, provost of the college, whose brother Michael Kearney had enjoyed great success by writing and publishing four lectures on the government of Rome, suggested to Miller that he do something similar in the field of modern history. As a result, Miller developed a lecture series on modern European history that found an audience "more remarkable for its intelligence than its numbers" at first but which gradually grew in popularity until it had to be delivered in the Examination Hall.

Miller claimed that the lectures "slowly and gradually formed ... requiring little more than to be combined together in an orderly arrangement" and that they were not the result of any "enthusiasm of religious feeling", however, later commentators have described the lecturers as "pietistic" and Miller devoted considerable space in the preface to the four volume edition (1832) to a description of the method by which he reconciled the more unpleasant parts of historical fact with his religious faith, arguing that he was:

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