James Philip Mills

Mills was born in 1890 and was educated at Windlesham House School, Winchester College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[1]

In 1913 he joined the Indian Civil Service and was posted to Assam Province.[2] During the First World War he was assigned to the Naga Hills District, where he was appointed subdivisional officer to the Mokokchung subdivision.

Alongside his official tasks, Mills took an interest in ornithology, gathering information for the Bombay Natural History Society, and in ethnography. He published a number of monographs on Naga peoples in the 1920s, and in 1930 was named Honorary Director of Ethnography for Assam.[2] The same year he married Pamela Moira Vesey-FitzGerald. In 1943 he was appointed Adviser to the Governor of Assam for Tribal Areas and States.[2]

Mills retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1947, and the following year was appointed Reader in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. From 1951 to 1953 he served as President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He retired from SOAS in 1955 and died on 12 May 1960.[2]

• The Lhota Nagas, 1922
• The Ao Nagas, 1926
• "Folk Stories in Lhota Naga", J. Asiat. Soc. Beng., 22/5 (1926)
• with J.H. Hutton, "Ancient Monoliths of North Cachar", J. Asiat. Soc. Beng., 25/1 (1929)
• The Rengma Nagas, 1937
• Archives Anthropological research notes and other papers of J P Mills are held by SOAS Archives.

• 1942: Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute