Empress

by Miles Taylor

  43. Ripon to Queen Victoria, 26 January 1844 [copy], BL, Add. Ms., 40, 867, fols 102–3; Prince Albert to Ripon, ibid., 30 January 1844, fols 112–13.

  44. Hardinge to Hobhouse, 14 August 1847, BL, Add. Ms, 36, 473, fols 364–73; Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 15 June 1849, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 477, fols 4–13; diary entry, 15 July 1855, Dalhousie papers, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, GD45/6/544. The practice of sending the shawls directly to the queen resumed in 1857: Bengal despatches, IOR/E/4/845. For some of the background, see: Chitralekha Zutshi, ‘“Designed for Eternity”: Kashmiri Shawls, Empire, and Cultures of Production and Consumption in Mid-Victorian Britain’, Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 420–40; Robert A. Huttenback, Kashmir and the British Raj 1847–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ch. 1.

  45. Hobhouse to H. St. J. Tucker, 1 January 1848, Tucker to Hobhouse, 8 January 1848, IOR, F213/18. The battle axe is now in the National Museum, New Delhi: Acc. No. 58.47/3.

  46. Hobhouse to Queen Victoria, 14 June 1848, IOR Mss Eur. F.213/13; Queen Victoria to Hobhouse, 15 June, ibid., F.213/12. Some of these 1846 guns are depicted in a later painting by William Tayler: The Triumphal Reception of the Sikh Guns [at Calcutta] . . . Dedicated to the Army of the Sutledge under the Command of Gen. Sir Hugh Gough, Commander-in-Chief and the Rt. Honble. Sir Henry Hardinge, Governor General, Second in Command (c. 1858), RCIN 813908. For the arms sent the following year, see: Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 15 June 1849, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 477, fols 4–13; Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 25 June 1849, ibid., fols 14–15; Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 14 July 1849 [inc. enclosure], ibid., fols 16–18; Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 23 April 1850, ibid., fols 191–6; Duleep Singh to Dalhousie, 14 November 1850, RA VIC/N14, fol. 66. Much of the captured Sikh arsenal is now in the collection of the Royal Artillery Museum.

  47. Ranjit Singh’s throne is now at V&A no. 2518(IS). Diary entry, 3 November 1851, Dalhousie papers, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, GD45/6/544, 467–501; Ray Desmond, The India Museum, 1801–1879 (London: India Office Library, 1982), 41.

  48. For Dalhousie’s original decision to present the Koh-i-Noor to the queen, see: Dalhousie to Queen Victoria, 7 April 1849, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 476, fols 505–7; QVJl., 25 May 1849. For the journey of the diamond from Lahore to London via Bombay, see: diary entry, 17 May 1850, Dalhousie papers, GD 45/6/540, 329–40; Dalhousie to Hobhouse, 23 April 1850, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 477, fols 191–6; Queen Victoria to Hobhouse, 3 July 1850, IOR Mss Eur. F.213/12. A recent history of the jewel can be found in William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).

  49. Galloway to Hobhouse, 26 May 1849, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 480, fols 41–2; Hobhouse to Galloway, 28 May 1849, IOR Mss Eur. F213/16. cf. Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities: On the Rights and Duties of Nations in Time of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1863), 123, which, without discussing the case of the Punjab, upheld Hobhouse’s position on war booty. For a later ‘official’ account of the ownership of the Koh-i-Noor, see: ‘Enquiry Regarding the Presentation of the Koh-i-Nur [sic] Diamond to Queen Victoria in 1850’, IOR, L/PS/11/296.

  50. Joseph Paxton’s ‘Crystal Palace’ cost £80,000 to build. For the guarantee, see: Hobhouse to John Shepherd, 15 August 1850, IOR Mss Eur. F213/15.

  51. John Shepherd to Hobhouse, 2 October 1851, BL, Add. Ms. 36, 480, fols 2 October 1851, fols 457–60, 15 October 1851, ibid., fols 467–9; QVJl., 23 October 1851.

  52. RCIN 406698.

  53. R. J. Moore, Sir Charles Wood’s Indian Policy, 1853–66 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966); P. K. Chatterji, ‘The East India Company’s Reactions to the Charter Act of 1853’, Journal of Indian History 51 (1973), 55–64; Nadine André, ‘L’India Act de 1853: ruptures et continuités’ in idem. (ed.), Ruptures et continuités: mélanges offerts à François Piquet (Lyon: Université Jean Moulin-Lyon, 2004), 363–87.

  54. ‘First Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, Appointed to Inquire into the Operation of the Act 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 85, for the Better Government of Her Majesty’s Indian Territories, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1852–3), Cd. 627, 141, 272–4.

  55. ‘Report from the Select Committee on Indian Territories, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1852–3), Cd. 533, p. 44.

  56. Ibid., 211, 249, 257, 259.

  57. Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 104; Oliver B. Pollak, Empires in Collision: Anglo-Burmese Relations in the Mid-nineteenth Century (London: ABC Clio, 1979); idem., ‘A Mid-Victorian Cover-up: The Case of the “Combustible Commodore” and the Second Anglo-Burmese War, 1851–1852’, Albion, 10 (1978), 171–83.

  58. ‘First Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords’, 274.

  59. George Campbell, A Scheme for the Government of India (London: John Murray, 1853), 64, 121. For Marshman’s view: ‘Second Report from the Select Committee on Indian Territories’, qq. 4648–57. For Maddock’s: HC Debs, 127 (9 June 1853), 1326.

  60. ‘Third Report from the Select Committee on Indian Territories’, q. 5010; idem., Remarks on the Affairs of India: With Observations upon some of the Evidence Given before the Parliamentary Committee (London: Effingham Wilson, 1852), 89.

  61. James Silk Buckingham, Plan for the Future Government of India (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853). For Buckingham, see: G. F. R. Barker, ‘Buckingham, James Silk (1786–1855)’, rev. Felix Driver, ODNB.

  62. Queen Victoria to Lord Aberdeen, 27 May 1853, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1st ser., ii, 543–4.

  63. Speech of Lieut.-Colonel Sykes, at the General Court of Proprietors of East-India Stock, on the 21st June, 1853, on the Proposed India Bill (London: Cox and Wyman, 1853), 20.

  64. Betel leaf.

  65. For two slightly different versions of the same encounter, see: The Dalhousie–Phayre Correspondence, 1852–6, ed. D. G. E Hall (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 377–87, and A Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855, comp. Henry Yule (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1968), 88; cf. J. A. Mills, ‘The First Decade of British Administration in Lower Burma, 1852–1862’, Kabar Seberang 5–6 (1979), 112–25.

  3 Exhibiting India

  1. RCIN 403843; QVJl., 10, 11, 13 July and 21 August 1854. For the dressing up: Lady Lena Login, Sir John Login and Duleep Singh (London: W. H. Allen, 1890), 347–8. For the iconography of Duleep Singh more generally: Simeran Man Singh Gell, ‘The Inner and the Outer: Dalip Singh as an Eastern Stereotype in Victorian England’ in Shearer West (ed.), The Victorians and Race (Aldershot: Scolar, 1996), 68–83; Brian Keith Axel, The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation and the Foundation of a Sikh Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 51–78.

  2. Susanne Stark, ‘Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias von, Baron von Bunsen in the Prussian Nobility (1791–1860)’, ODNB. The classic study of Albert’s patronage of the arts remains: Hermione Hobhouse, Prince Albert, His Life and Work (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983).

  3. Thomas Becker, ‘Prinz Albert als Student in Bonn’ in F. Bosbach and W. Filmer-Sankey (eds), Prinz Albert und der Entwicklung der Bildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2000), 145–56; Franz Bosbach, ‘Prinz Albert und das universitäire Studium in Bonn and Cambridge’ in Christa Jansohn (ed.), In the Footsteps of Queen Victoria (Munster: Lit, 2003), 201–24; Franz Bosbach (ed.), Die Studien des Prinzen Albert an der Universität Bonn (1837–1838) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), esp. chs by Amalie Fößel and Christian Recht; John R. Davis, ‘Friedrich Max Müller and the Migration of German Academics to Britain in the Nineteenth Century’ in Stefan Manz, Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and John R. Davis (eds), Migration and Transfer from Germany to Britain, 1660–1914 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2007), 93–106; Oliver Everett, ‘The Royal Library at Windsor Castle as Developed by Prince Albert and B. B. Woodward’, The Library, 7th ser., 3 (2002), 58–88.

  4. Charles von Hügel, Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab (Karachi: Oxford University Pr
ess, 2003); QVJl., 8 August 1845, 30 January 1846, 23 March 1846, 2 March 1847.

  5. Leopold von Orlich, Travels in India: Including Sinde and the Punjab (London: Longmans, 1845); Henry Steinbach, The Punjaub: Being a Brief History of the Country of the Sikhs: Its Extent, History, Commerce, Productions, Government, Manufactures, Laws, Religion, etc. (London: Smith, Elder, 1845). For Orlich, see: The Times, 7 June 1860, 9; and for Steinbach, see: W. H. Macleod, ‘Colonel Steinbach and the Sikhs’, Panjab Past and Present 9 (1975), 291–8.

  6. Zur Erinnerung an die Reise der Prinzen Waldemar von Preussen nach Indien in den Jahren 1844–1846, 2 vols (Berlin: privately printed, 1853); QVJl., 2, 5, 19 July 1847.

  7. Joan Leopold, ‘British Applications of the Aryan Theory of Race to India, 1850–1870’, English Historical Review 89 (1974), 578–603; Martin Maw, Visions of India: Fulfilment Theology, the Aryan Race Theory, and the Work of British Protestant Missionaries in Victorian India (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), 22–5; Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 172–8; Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 41–4.

  8. The Times, 13 January 1857, 7; G. Beckerlegge, ‘Professor Friedrich Max Müller and the Missionary Cause’ in John Wolffe (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, vol. 5: Culture and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 177–219. For Monier-Williams, see his The Study of Sanskrit in Relation to Missionary Work in India: An Inaugural Lecture (London: Williams and Norgate, 1861), esp. 39–41, and A. A. Macdonell, ‘Williams, Sir Monier Monier- (1819–1899)’, rev. J. B. Katz, ODNB.

  9. QVJl., 5 January 1864. C. B. Phipps to Max Müller, 28 January 1863, Max Müller papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Eng. D. 2349, fol. 1.

  10. Richard Sitnick, The Coburg Conspiracy: Plots and Manoeuvres (London: Espheus, 2008); John R. Davis, ‘The Coburg Connection. Dynastic Relations and the House of Coburg in Britain’ in Karina Urbach (ed.), Royal Kinship. Anglo-German Family Networks (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2008), 97–116.

  11. Becker, ‘Prinz Albert als Student in Bonn’. For Savigny, see: Margaret Barber Crosby, The Making of a German Constitution: A Slow Revolution (Oxford: Berg, 2008), ch. 2.

  12. See Albert’s ‘Memorandum on German Affairs’ (11 September 1847) in Theodore Martin, The Life of the Prince Consort. Prince Albert and His Times, 5 vols (1877; London: IB Tauris, 2012), ii, 439–46; Albert to Ernst, 14 March 1848 in Hector Bolitho (ed.), The Prince Consort and His Brother: Two Hundred New Letters (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1933), 101–3; cf. Davis, ‘Coburg connection’, 112–13; E. J. Feutchwanger, Albert and Victoria: The Rise and Fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 77–9.

  13. ‘Toast Given at the Dinner of the Trinity House’ in The Principal Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort (London: John Murray, 1862), 243–4.

  14. Transactions of the Royal Society of Arts 59 (1849), p.50; Henry Labouchere to Mountstuart Elphinstone, 15 December 1849, IOR Mss Eur. F88/140/62, fols 167–70. For Albert and the 1851 exhibition, see: Hobhouse, Prince Albert, ch. 7; John R. Davis, ‘Albert and the Great Exhibition of 1851: Creating the Ceremonial of Industry’ in Caroline J. Litzenberger and Eileen Groth Lyon (eds), The Human Tradition in Modern Britain (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 95–110.

  15. The Times, 24 May 1851, 8; ibid., 10 September 1851, 5.

  16. ‘First Report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1852), Cd. 1485, 72, 163–4; IOR/L/SUR/1/1, fol. 101.

  17. Francis Higginson, Koh-i-Noor, or the Great Exhibition and its Opening (London: Pretyman and Rixon, 1851); Hunt’s Hand-book to the Official Catalogues: An Explanatory Guide to the Natural Productions and Manufactures of the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, 1851, ed. Robert Hunt (London: Spicer, 1851), 29–32. The fullest accounts of the Indian court were in the ILN, 14 June 1851, 563–4; Cassell’s Illustrated Exhibitor, 4 October 1851, 317–28; and Dickinsons’ Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, from the Originals Painted for H.R.H. Prince Albert, by Messrs. Nash, Hague, and Roberts, 2 vols (London: Dickinson, 1851), ii, plates 1–7.

  18. The Times, 23 April 1851, 5; ibid., 15 May 1851, 5; cf. Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, and the Exhibition of the World’s Industry in 1851 (London: John Tallis, 1851), i, 31–8. In a large secondary literature, two accounts of the 1851 exhibition, and the place of the Indian exhibits within it, stand out: Lara Kriegel, ‘Narrating the Subcontinent in 1851: India at the Crystal Palace’ in Louise Purbrick (ed.), The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 146–78; and Anthony Swift, ‘“The Arms of England that Grasp the World”: Empire at the Great Exhibition’, Ex Plus Ultra 3 (2012), 1–25.

  19. Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 (London: Spicer, 1851), 860–907.

  20. W. Cullen to Sir H. C. Montgomery, 7 December 1850, enc. Address from the Raja of Travancore (11 October 1850), Tamil Nadu State Archives, Political Consultations, 7 January 1851, 40.

  21. Hobhouse to Queen Victoria, 14 August 1851, IOR Mss Eur. 213/13. The Raja of Travancore celebrated the receipt of the queen’s letter of acknowledgment with an elaborate ceremony, depicted at the time by Frederick Christian Lewis: W. Cullen to Montgomery, Trivandrum, 19 November 1851, Tamil Nadu State Archives, Political consultations, 25 November 1851, 31; The Durbar on the Reception by his Highness the Maharaja of Travancore of the Letter of her Majesty Queen Victoria on the 27 November 1851, engraving by F. C. Lewis Snr after F. C. Lewis Jnr (London: Graves & Co., 1854), IOR, P384.

  22. ‘Minutes of the Meeting of Commissioners’, 1 March 1850, 8, Archives, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

  23. QVJl., 16 July 1851.

  24. East India Committee, Minutes, 13 April 1852, Archives, Royal Society of Arts, PR/GE/112/12/92; Alexander Hunter to Lyon Playfair, 9 August 1852, ibid.; Minutes, 3 November 1852, Archives, Royal Society of Arts; Bengal Public Despatch, 17 November 1852, IOR, IOR/E/4/817; Charles Grey to Henry Cole, 6 April 1853, Cole corresp., Part 2, National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum; Freeman’s Journal, 25 March 1853, 3; Official Catalogue of the Great Industrial Exhibition (in Connection with the Royal Dublin Society), 1853 (Dublin: John Falconer, 1853), 12–16, 119–122; Maggie McEnchroe Williams, ‘The “Temple of Industry”: Dublin’s Industrial Exhibition of 1853’ in Colum Hourihane (ed.), Irish Art Historical Studies in Honour of Peter Harbison (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 261–75.

  25. Cassell’s Illustrated Exhibitor . . . of . . . the International Exhibition of 1862 (London: Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1862), 10, 123; Desmond, India Museum, 103–5.

  26. The Illustrated Record and Descriptive Catalogue of the Dublin International Exhibition of 1865, comp. Henry Parkinson and Peter Lund Simmonds (London: E. and F. N. Spon, 1866), 338–48; Nellie Ò Cléirigh, ‘Dublin International Exhibition, 1865’, Dublin Historical Record 47 (1994), 169–82.

  27. ‘Catalogue of the Valuable Contents of the Indian Court . . . to be Sold by Auction . . . 24th January 1887’, National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1886 Exhibition scrapbook; Colonial and Indian Exhibition. Official Catalogue (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1886), 10–88. Frank Cundall, Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1886), 21–30. For recent analyses of the Indian ‘presence’ at the 1886 exhibition, see: Saloni Mathur, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), ch. 2; Aviva Briefel, ‘On the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition’, http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=aviva-briefel-on-the-1886-colonial-and-indian-exhibition (accessed 4 April 2018).

  28. For the queen’s association with the popularity of the shawls, see Anon., Kashmeer and its Shawls (London: Wyman & Sons, 1875), 24, 58.

  29. Felix Driver and
Sonia Asmore, ‘The Mobile Museum: Collecting and Circulating Indian Textiles in Victorian Britain’, Victorian Studies 52 (2010), 353–85.

  30. Joan Anim-Addo, ‘Queen Victoria’s Black “Daughter”’ in Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (ed.), Black Victorians/Black Victoriana (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 11–19; Brian Mackrell, Hariru Wikitoria!: An Illustrated History of the Maori Tour of England, 1863 (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1985).

  31. Hermann Mögling, Coorg Memoirs: An Account of Coorg, and of the Coorg Mission (Bangalore: Wesleyan Mission Press, 1855); Coorg and its Rajas, by an Officer Formerly in the Service of His Highness Veer Rajunder Wadeer, Raja of Coorg (London: Bumpus, 1857), 65–7. The Raja was required to contribute £40 per month for her upkeep: John Herries to J. W. Hogg, 26 June 1852, BL, Add. Ms. 57, 410, fols 92–3; cf. C. P. Belliappa, Victoria Gouramma: The Lost Princess of Coorg (New Delhi: Rupa, 2011).

  32. QVJl., 6 June 1852, 7 June 1852, 26 June 1852, 30 June 1852; Daily News, 7 May 1852, 5; Morning Post, 1 July 1852, 5; Coorg and its Rajas, 93–4.

  33. Hogg to Herries, 6 August 1852, BL, Add. Ms., 57, 410, fols 96–8, Herries to Hogg, 8 August 1852, ibid., fols 100–2; QVJl 12 September 1852; Daily News, 28 July 1852, 4; 1 March 1853, 5.

  34. Lady Login’s Recollections: Court Life and Camp Life, 1820–1904 (London: Smith and Elder, 1916), 185–8; ‘Trust of Miss E. V. G. Campbell’, IOR/L/AG50/7; Robert Montgomery Martin, Correspondence with Viscount Cranborne, H.M. Secretary of State for India, on the Ingratitude, Injustice and Breach of National Faith to the Sovereigns of Coorg (London: W. Clowes, 1867).