Ferdinand Mount comes from one of those large sprawling families
who used to be known as Anglo-Indians, not because they were of
mixed blood, but because they lived and worked and sometimes died in
India. They were not, generally speaking, from the aristocracy, but
from families who had either got lucky during the heady days of
unregulated fortunes made by East India Company staff or who sought
an adventurous life abroad as a soldier. The Company's Army offered
a route into lucrative offices as a Political Agent or even Resident,
which is why many of these powerful men had military titles while
carrying out civilian roles. A disproportionate number seemed to come
from Scotland, like General Sir John Low and his son General Sir
Robert Low, round whom this story is loosely based. Between them
they covered the hundred years that started with the Vellore Mutiny and
ended with the partition of Bengal in 1905.
The author is descended from Sir John and is thus connected to many
of the 'Anglo-Indians' including the Metcalfes (Sir Thomas et al), the
Shakespears (the dashing Richmond) and the Thackerays (Company
writer and grandfather of the novelist William Makepeace). David
Cameron, the Prime Minister, somehow comes into it too, because his
mother is Mount's first cousin. It was a great aunt, Ursula Low 'a
classic maiden aunt' who first sparked the author's interest in India
when he rediscovered her book Fifty Years with John Company: from
the letters of General Sir John Low of Clatto, Fife, 1822-1858,
published in 1936 and thereafter sternly ignored by her very extended
family. There is a wealth of material to draw on, not only family letters
and papers in archival collections like the India Office Library, but
from numerous published books, including the reviewer's.
The period between 1805 and 1905 is one of the most exciting in Indian
history, and one of the best documented too - meticulous recording by
the East India Company and later the Government of India, and of
course a rich mine for historians (though I fancy we may nearing the
end of some seams shortly). Mount cannot resist an engaging gallop
through events where John Low was not present, like the siege of Delhi
in 1857, but luckily other people were like Theophilus Metcalfe,
Magistrate, whose beloved family home, Metcalfe House, was
destroyed during fighting. Theo erected a gallows in the garden, made
from fire-blackened timbers and 'strung up any Indian he suspected of
having taken part in the Mutiny'.
He shot 21 villagers who had betrayed one of his servants to the rebels
and complained that the King of Delhi, Bahadxir Shah Zafar was still
alive. It took Sir John Lawrence, later Governor General, to stop
individual civil officers from 'hanging at their own pleasure'. Moimt
makes no apologies for men like Metcalfe and he does his best to draw
fair pictures of the numerous princely rulers who were displaced in the
Company's expansion - the hapless Peshwa Baji Rao, Lakshmi Bai the
Rani of Jhansi and Wajid Ali Shah, the King of Awadh. There are a few
errors - Begum Hazrat Mahal was not the King's first wife and this
reviewer's name is consistently mis-spelt. The term 'White Mutiny'
usually refers to the officer-led revolt of 1766, not the events at Vellore
nearly forty years later. But readers will enjoy this blockbuster of a
book with 76 pages of footnotes and illustrations. The melancholy
photograph of General Sir Robert Low, the hero of Chitral, at the end
of his long career, shows the price that many of the 'Anglo-Indian'
families paid.
|