by Miles Taylor
EMPRESS
Copyright © 2018 Miles Taylor
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Shalini
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
Abbreviations
Map of British India circa 1901
Introduction
1 Crown and Company
2 Warrior Queen
3 Exhibiting India
4 ‘This Bloody Civil War’
5 Victoria Beatrix
6 Queen of Public Works
7 Royal Tourists
8 Queen-Empress
9 Mother of India
10 Patriot Queen
11 Jujubilee
12 The Last Years of the Qaisara
Epilogue
Appendix: Queen Victoria in Indian Vernacular, 1858–1914
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Dwarkanath Tagore, sketch by Queen Victoria (1842). Royal Archives / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017.
2. Sutlej Campaign Medal by William Wyon (1846). © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (CM.1445-2009).
3. Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Queen Victoria (1856). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 406698).
4. Joseph Nash, The Indian Court (1854). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
5. The Maharaja Duleep Singh on the Lower Terrace, Osborne (1854). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 2906553).
6. Prince Arthur and Prince Alfred in the costume of Sikh princes, Osborne (1854). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 2906169).
7. Maharaja Duleep Singh, sketch by Queen Victoria (1854). Royal Archives / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017.
8. Lady Canning, Delhi from the Lahore Gate of the Palace (1858). Photograph by Jonathan Turner. Reproduced by courtesy of the Harewood House Trust.
9. Thomas J. Barker, The Relief of Lucknow (1858). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 813930).
10. Bust of Queen Victoria on a postage stamp, Nabha state (c. 1876). Author’s collection.
11. Crown of the Emperor Bahadur Shah II. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 67236).
12. Statue of Queen Victoria, Bombay (1872). © British Library Board (Photo 937 (28)).
13. Vasily Vereshchagin, The Prince of Wales at Jaipur, 4th February 1876 (1876). By kind permission of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata.
14. Lala Deen Dayal, ‘The Duke of Connaught having breakfast at Bala Hissar, Golconda Fort, Hyderabad’, from the H. J. Barrett Album (1889). The Alkazi Collection of Photography (ACP: 99.23.0003(00039)).
15. Prince Albert Victor, the Maharana Fateh Singh of Udaipur and the Maharaja Kumar Bhupal Singh of Udaipur, Udaipur (1890). © Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation, Udaipur (2008.06.0395i_R).
16. Imperial Assemblage Medal (1877). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 443439).
17. Imperial Assemblage, Coronation Pavilion and Amphitheatre by Bourne and Shepherd, from the Dhar Album (1877). The Alkazi Collection of Photography (ACP: 95.0079(00021)).
18. Empress Mills, Nagpur. Courtesy of Tata Central Archives, Pune.
19. Queen Victoria as Empress of India, by W & D Downey & Co. (1877). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 2105735).
20. Queen Victoria at her accession, from Ambika Chandra Ghosh, Rajarajeswari Victoria (Calcutta: Arundoday Roy, 1895). By permission of the National Library, Kolkata.
21. Queen Victoria at the deathbed of Prince Albert, from Ghosh, Rajarajeswari Victoria (1895). By permission of the National Library, Kolkata.
22. H. H. The Begum of Bhopal, G.C.S.I, by Bourne and Shepherd, from the album Chiefs and Representatives of India (c. 1877). The Alkazi Collection of Photography (ACP: 96.20.0852(00033)).
23. Suniti Devi, the Maharani of Koch Bihar (c. 1887). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 2107612).
24. Chimnabai II, Maharani of Baroda and Sir Sayaji Rao III, Maharaja of Baroda, by Sir Benjamin Stone (1905). © National Portrait Gallery, London.
25. Jubilee year collecting card for the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India (1887). By permission of the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava.
26. Queen Victoria group portrait, from an album of the royalty of India and eminent British and Indians of Bombay Presidency (Poona Photographic Company) (c. 1887). © Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation, Udaipur (2009.10.0101-00031_R).
27. Jubilee portrait of Queen Victoria, from Haradevi, Landan-jubili (Lahore: Imperial Press, 1888). The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Hindi Hara 1).
28. The Indian escort of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee procession (1897). Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum, London (NAM 1980-06-118-60).
29. Munshi Abdul Karim, by Rudolf Swoboda (1888). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 403831).
30. Raffiudin Ahmad, by Rudolf Swoboda (1893). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 403825).
31. Jagatjit Singh Bahadur, Maharaja of Kapurthala (1903). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 (RCIN 2916633).
32. Victoria Memorial Hall under construction (1920). By kind permission of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has evolved over some time and I have received much support and incurred many debts of gratitude along the way. To begin, I must thank my colleagues at the University of York and in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, who allowed me the time and space to be a historian alongside my day jobs. In this respect I am particularly grateful to my head of department at York, Mark Ormrod and to John Local, the academic co-ordinator for Arts and Humanities, for their kindness and guidance. In London, the vice chancellor, Sir Graeme Davies, and Roger Kain, the dean of the School of Advanced Study, ensured that I had the means to carry on my research for this book. Without Elaine Walters, the unflappable and tireless administrator of the Institute of Historical Research, I could never have combined my own studies with the demands of running the IHR. I will long retain warm memories of the six years spent in her professional company.
I was trained in the early 1980s as a historian of Victorian Britain, albeit one who was encouraged to peer out at the rest of the world in order to bring the metropole into focus. Plotting the interconnections between Empire and the domestic polity in this manner led me ultimately to the monarchy, and then, inevitably, to India. There I was not a complete novice. Peter Marshall introduced me to the history of British India as an undergraduate. At Cambridge in the 1990s I learned much, in different ways, from Susan Bayly
and from the late Sir Christopher Bayly. However, in unravelling the full story of Queen Victoria and India, I have entered uncharted territory, encountering only a few stray historians along the way, reliant instead on the expertise of archivists, curators and librarians. I benefited hugely from being given access to the Royal Archives at Windsor. There Pamela Clark, Allison Derrett and Sophie Gordon guided me through the royal correspondence and photographs, accompanied by some splendid baking. Bridget Wright introduced me to the Royal Library. At the Royal Collections in St James’s Palace, Jonathan Marsden and later Agata Rutkowska expedited my enquiries. Across India good will, luck, persistence and wonderful food sustained my fieldwork. In Delhi, Mushirul Hasan eased my journey into the National Archives of India and helped open doors in Bhopal, Bikaner and Chennai. Also at the National Archives Jaya Ravindran was so welcoming and generous with her time. Elsewhere in India I gained much from many small acts of kindness. I would like to single out the following librarians and curators: Joyoti Roy at the Alkazi Foundation in Delhi, Chittaranjan Panda and Jayanta Sengupta at the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata, Sanam Ali Khan at the Rampur Raza Library (a visit made memorable by taking tea in her ancestral home), Dr J. V. Gayathri at the Mysore District Archives, Sonika Soni and Bhupendra Singh Auwa at the Mewar Palace Archives in Udaipur, Pankaj Sharma and Giles Tillotson at the City Palace Museum in Jaipur, Nagender Reddy at the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, and Ashim Mukhopadhyay at the National Library in Kolkata. Two researchers – Saptadeepa Bannerjee in Kolkata and Raghav Kishore in London – assisted me in collecting material. Other friends and colleagues shared findings and references or copied correspondence from archives in India, Germany and the USA that I was unable to consult in person: thanks in this regard to Zirwat Chowdury, Dane Kennedy, Prashant Kidambi, Cindy McCreery, Samira Sheikh and A. R. Venkatachalapathy. Horst Gehringer and Oliver Walton guided me in and out of the archives in Coburg and Gotha. Richard Virr at McGill University in Montreal made available vital copies of correspondence, and Russell Lord let me view photographs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whilst Roy Ritchie introduced me to the riches of the Huntington Library at Pasadena, and to kumquats. Sandy and Michaela Reid kindly allowed me into their Jedburgh home to consult the archives of their distinguished ancestor. Many hours have been spent in the Asia and Africa Reading Room of the British Library in London, where the staff have been unfailingly diligent and friendly.
For permission to consult and quote from records in their possession, I acknowledge the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851; the British Library; Lambeth Palace Library; The National Archives, Kew; News International; the Royal Society of Arts; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey; the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava; the University of Birmingham; the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge; Cambridge University Library; the Trustees of the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House; Durham University Library; the National Archives of Scotland; the University of Sussex; the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House; Suffolk Record Office; the Library and Museum of Freemasonry; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the West Yorkshire Archives Service; Liverpool Record Office; the Hartley Library, University of Southampton; Hampshire Record Office; the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York; McGill University; the Huntington Library, San Marino; Nehru Museum and Memorial Library; Mumbai University Library; Bikaner Palace; the National Archives of India, and the State Archives of Andhra Pradesh, Baroda, Bikaner, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and the District Archives of Delhi and Mysore. The publication has been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research.
Early versions of the ideas and arguments that follow were tried out at various seminars, conferences and lectures. For their hospitality, commentary and suggestions on those occasions, the following scholars are due warm thanks: Shigeru Akita, Peter Bang, Asma Ben Hassine, Fabrice Bensimon, Franz Bosbach, Judith Brown, Joya Chatterji, Ariane Chernock, John Cookson, Ian Copland, David Craig, Santanu Das, Rajat Datta, Christiane Eisenberg, Lawrence Goldman, Anindita Ghosh, Peter Gray, Holger Hoock, Duncan Kelly, Harshan Kumarasingham, Colin Kidd, Jörn Leonhard, Claude Markowitz, Philip Murphy, Andrzej Olechnowicz, Jurgen Osterhammel, David Washbrook, Yvonne Ward, Lucy Worsley and Jon Wilson.
I am blessed with a superb publisher. Robert Baldock and Heather McCallum deserve a special mention for their advice and encouragement, and above all for their patience. I am grateful to Marika Lysandrou for her calm efficiency in the final stages and to Christopher Shaw, who did the proofreading. Thanks too to Andy Lawrence at Keele University Digital Images Services who drew the map of British India, Tony Stewart for his linguistic skills and Brendan Bell for applying his magic touch to some of the illustrations.
Scholarship of this kind relies on friendship. I have been lucky to enjoy the empathy and succour of many friends in the last decade, of whom the following have been most supportive: Justin Biel, the late Asa Briggs and his wife Susan, David Cannadine, Sam Cohn, the late David Eisenberg, David Feldman, Orlando Figes, Jo Godfrey, Joseph Hardwick, Michael Hulme, the late Jane Moody, Tony Morris, John Morrow, David Moss, Mark Roseman, Claire Scobie, Gavin Schaffer, John Shakeshaft and Karina Urbach. I am especially grateful to Michael Bentley, Jonathan Fulcher, Prashant Kidambi, Doug Peers, Minnie Sinha and Susie Steinbach for reading drafts of the book and pointing up where I needed to go back and think some more. Any errors or flaws of course remain my own.
Finally, as ever, my family have sustained me over the years of completing this project. For reminding me of the true meaning of life, I am grateful to my children: Helena, Patrick, Sarah and Vivaan, as well as my grandson, Leo. And to my wife, Shalini, words cannot really express my deep appreciation of her wisdom, faith and devotion. Hopefully, the dedication of the book says it all.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
For ease of reference and consistency, this book uses romanised script for Indian words; that is to say, proper nouns in Hindi, Urdu and other Indian vernaculars are written in their western form. Place names in India are mainly given in their Anglicised, nineteenth-century format, accompanied by the modern-day version where appropriate, for example Calcutta (Kolkata). Names of Indian persons have generally not been modernised, so Duleep Singh and not Dalip Singh, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy not Jamshedji Jijibhai, etc., except when the modern form is in more common usage.
The Indian currency in this period was the rupee, subdivided into smaller denominations of annas and pice. One rupee was worth about 1s 4d, so there were fifteen rupees to the British pound, and the pound in 1877 (the year that Queen Victoria became Empress of India) was equivalent to £40 in today’s value.
ABBREVIATIONS
BL
British Library
CWMG
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Heritage Portal (www.gandhiheritageportal.org)
DIB
C. E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian Biography (1906, repr. New Delhi, 1999)
HC Debs
Hansard, House of Commons debates
HL Debs
Hansard, House of Lords debates
ILN
Illustrated London News
INC
Indian National Congress
IOR
India Office Records, British Library
Letters of Queen Victoria
The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence Between the Years 1837 and 1861, ed. A. C. Benson and Vct. Esher, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1907)
The Letters of Queen Victoria: Second Series. A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence and Journal Between the Years 1862 and 1885, ed. G. E. Buckle, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1926–8)
The Letters of Queen Victoria: Third Series. A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence and Journal Between the
Years 1886 and 1901, ed. G. E. Buckle, 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1930–2)
MSA
Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai, India
NAI
National Archives of India, New Delhi, India
NMML
Nehru Museum and Memorial Library, New Delhi, India
NNR
Native Newspaper Reports, 1868–1901, IOR L/R/5
NPG
National Portrait Gallery, London
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PRONI
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast
QLB
‘Quarterly Lists of Books published in the provinces of India, 1867–1947’, BL SV412 (now digitised at https://data.bl.uk/twocenturies-quarterlylists/tcq.html)
QVJl.
Queen Victoria’s Journals, RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W), Princess Beatrice’s copies (www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/)
RA
Royal Archives, Windsor Castle
RCIN
Royal Collections Trust
TNA
The National Archives, Kew, London
ToI
Times of India
Transfer of Power
Nicholas Mansergh (ed.), The Transfer of Power, 1942–7, 12 vols (London: HMSO, 1970–83)
V&A
V&A Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
1. Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846), Bengali landowner and merchant, grandfather of the artist and poet Rabindranath Tagore. Dwarkanath Tagore was the first Indian whom the queen met. She sketched him on 24 June 1842, commenting in her journal: ‘He was in his Native Dress, all of beautiful shawls with trousers in gold & red tissue, & a tartan as in this little sketch.’ Tagore died in London in 1846 during a later trip and is buried in Kensal Green cemetery.