Empress

by Miles Taylor

  61. Aitchison, The Native States of India: An Attempt to Elucidate a Few of the Principles Which Underlie their Relations with the British Government (Simla: Government Central Branch Press, 1875), 10, 12–13.

  62. Maine, ‘The Kathiawar States and Sovereignty’ (22 March 1864) idem., ‘The Right to Cede by Sanad Portions of British India’ (11 August 1868), reprinted in Stokes (ed.) Sir Henry Maine, 320–25, 395–400; cf. C. U. Aitchison, Lord Lawrence and the Reconstruction of India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), 140–1.

  63. Canning’s durbar tours can be plotted from the accounts in: ‘Persian Durbar Proceedings’, NAI, Foreign Dept, vols 7–8. Charlotte Canning to Queen Victoria, 23 January 1861 (copy), Canning papers, West Yorkshire Archives Services, WYL 250/10/4/3. Some of Simpson’s work from the tours was later reproduced in: India, Ancient and Modern: A Series of Illustrations of the Country and People of India and Adjacent Territories Executed in Chromo-lithography from Drawings by William Simpson; with Descriptive Literature by John William Kaye (London: Day & Son, 1867).

  64. Allen’s Indian Magazine, 13 April 1859, 276, 18 December 1859, 994; Canning to Queen Victoria, 30 May 1860, Canning papers, WYL 250/9/1/8.

  65. The template sannad of 11 March 1862 is reprinted in Aitchison, Collection of Treaties, ii, 57.

  66. For further details of each (date of joining the Council in parentheses), see: Maharaja of Benares (1862): DIB, 35; Burdwan (1864), ibid., 60–1; Maharaja of Jaipur (1868) and Maharaja of Vizianagram (1864): Bhawur Partap Singh, The Lives of the Highnesses the Maharaja of Jeypore, the Maharaja of Vizianagram, etc. (Vizianagram: S. V. V. Press, 1897); Nawab of Rampur (1863): DIB, 349. The other two princes appointed in the 1860s were Narendra Singh, Maharaja of Patiala (1862): DIB, 329–30; and Digvijay Singh, Raja of Balrampur (1868): DIB, 24–5.

  67. For the well at Stoke Row, see: Laureen Williamson, An Illustrated History of the Maharaja’s Well, Stoke Row, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, the Gift of the Maharaja of Benares (Stoke Row: Maharaja’s Well Trust, 1983). For the Hyde Park fountain, see: Morning Post, 2 March 1868, 2.

  68. Charles Grey to Charles Wood, 20 March 1862, Halifax papers, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, A4/64/108.

  69. For the background, see: [A native of Mysore], The British Administration of Mysore. Part I: Fifty Years of Administration (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1874); Aya Ikegame, Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore (London: Routledge 2009), 22–34.

  70. For the maharaja’s appeal, see: ‘Copies of Correspondence between the Maharaja of Mysore and the Government of India relative to His Highness’s claim, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1866) Cd. 112. For his correspondence with Queen Victoria: IOR L/PS/6/461 (1858–9), for details of the presents, including the jewellery which only got as far as Calcutta, where it was sold off, see: Wadiyar to Charles Wood, 13 March 1861, IOR L/PS/6/511, ‘List of Jewellery, etc.’, IOR/L/PS/6/514, and QVJl., 29 March 1862 (‘pretty Indian cattle’); and addresses: Lord Elgin to Charles Wood, 30 May 1863, IOR L/PS/6/527, Pol. Dept to Charles Wood, 14 April 1864, IOR L/PS/6/532.

  71. Charles Wood to Charles Canning, 31 August 1860 (copy), Mss Eur. F78/LB4, fols 98–102.

  72. L. Bowring to the secretary to the Government of India, 22 April 1862, IOR L/PS/6/521; Vishwanath Narayan Mandlik, Adoption Versus Annexation: With Remarks on the Mysore Question (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1866), 43–4; Opinions of the Press on the Annexation of Mysore (London: John Camden Hotten, 1866).

  73. HC Debs, 187 (24 May 1867), 1069; Northcote to Lawrence, 16 April 1867, reprinted in ‘Further Papers Relating to Mysore’, Parl. Papers (1867), Cd. 239, 8–9.

  74. John Dickinson to Holkar, 15 September 1866 (copy), John Dickinson to Holkar, 25 June 1868 (copy), Madhya Pradesh State Archives, Bhopal, Indore Foreign Dept, 41/36, file 229.

  75. I. T. Prichard, Facts Connected with the Dethronement of the Nawab of Tonk (privately printed, 1867); The Story of the Nawab of Tonk Written by Himself (Simla: Simla Advertiser Press, 1868), 13; Frederick Chesson, The Princes of India: Their Rights and Our Duties (London: W. Tweedie, 1872), 64–5.

  76. For the encouragement given by the queen’s proclamation, see: I. N. Palmer to Salar Jung, 28 November 1873 (copy), Salar Jung papers, Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad. For Palmer’s role and Salar Jung’s visit, see: Harriet Ronken Lynton, My Dear Nawab Saheb (Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 1991), chs 9–10; and for the background, see: Bharati Ray, Hyderabad and British Paramountcy, 1857–1883 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 75–7.

  77. Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, 23 June 1876, RA VIC/MAIN/N/31/ 63; QVJl. 29 June 1876; Lytton to Queen Victoria, 20 August 1876, IOR Mss Eur. E218/18, 404–6. Without the wheelchair, Salar Jung’s portrait was painted by Leslie Ward (‘Spy’) and published later in the year in Vanity Fair: NPG 2580.

  78. Ponsonby to Salisbury, 22 July 1876, Salisbury papers, Hatfield House; Lytton to Queen Victoria, 20 August 1876, IOR Mss Eur. E218/18, 404–6; Queen Victoria to Lord Beaconsfield, 28 August 1876, RA VIC/MAIN/N/31/102 (Disraeli was ennobled earlier that month).

  79. Ian Copland, ‘The Baroda Crisis of 1873–77: A Study in Governmental Rivalry’, Modern Asian Studies 2 (1968), 97–123; Edward Moulton, ‘British India and the Baroda Crisis, 1874–5: A Problem in a Princely State’, Canadian Journal of History 3 (968), 58–94; Judith Rowbotham, ‘Miscarriage of Justice?: Post-Colonial Reflections on the “Trial” of the Maharaja of Baroda, 1875’, Liverpool Law Review 28 (2007), 377–403.

  80. ‘Correspondence Connected with the Deposition of Mulhar Rao’, Parl. Papers (1875), Cd. 1252, 30–1.

  81. Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, 16 January 1875, RA VIC/MAIN/N/30/18; Ponsonby to Queen Victoria, 15 April 1875, RA VIC/MAIN/N/30/59; Ponsonby to Salisbury, 15 April 1875, Salisbury papers.

  82. ‘Correspondence Connected with the Deposition of Mulhar Rao’, 31–2; Northbrook to Queen Victoria, 22 April 1875, RA VIC/MAIN/N/30/65.

  83. Wood to Elgin, n.d. [c. November 1862], (copy), IOR L/PS/6/514.

  84. Lawrence to Wood, 19 March 1864, Mss Eur. F78/11/1, fols 121–2, Wood to Lawrence (copy), Mss Eur. F78/LB20, fols 151–5; Northcote to Lawrence, 17 July 1868, Mss Eur. F90/2, no. 36; ‘Rules as to Addresses from Native Princes and Others’ (29 March 1873, 6 March 1873, 23 June 1873), IOR/L/PS/18/D72; Lawrence to Stafford Northcote, 15 August 1868, BL, Add. Ms. 50, 026, fols 37–8.

  85. ‘Rules as to Memorials, Petitions, Complimentary Addresses’ (7 February 1878), IOR/L/PS/18/D90A; ‘Rules Relating to Memorials Addressed to the Queen’ (7 February 1881), IOR/L/PS/18/D73; ‘Rules for the Submission and Receipt of Memorials and Other Papers to the King’ (June 1906), IOR L/PS/18/D168.

  6 Queen of Public Works

  1. R. Montgomery Martin, Progress and Present State of India. A Manual for General Use, Based on Official Documents, etc. (London: S. Low, 1862), 295.

  2. Dietmar Rothermund, An Economic History of India: From Pre-Colonial Times to 1991 (London: Routledge, 1999), chs 4–5; Sabyascahi Bhattacharya, Financial Foundations of the British Raj: Ideas and Interests in the Reconstruction of Indian Public Finance, 1852–72 rev. edn (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2005), ch. 5; Tirthankar Roy, The Economic History of India, 1857–1947, 3rd edn (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 3; B. R. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 1.

  3. William Wedderburn, The Skeleton at the ‘Jubilee’ Feast: Being a Series of Suggestions Towards the Prevention of Famine in India (1897) in Speeches and Writings of William Wedderburn (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1916), 284–322; Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and un-British Rule in India (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1901); Romesh Chunder Dutt, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age: From the Accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the Commencement of the Twentieth Century (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co., 1904).

  4. On railways, within a huge literature, see: Daniel Thorner, ‘Great Britain and the Development of India’s Railways’, Jo
urnal of Economic History 11 (1951), 389–402; Ian Derbyshire, ‘Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860–1914’, Modern Asian Studies 21 (1987), 521–45; Ian J. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). On canals, see: Ian Stone, Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

  5. Theodore Walrond (ed.), Letters and Journals of James, the 8th Earl of Elgin (London: John Murray, 1872), 439; W. W. Hunter, A Life of the Earl of Mayo: Fourth Viceroy of India, 2 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1876), ii, 207–9. For the narratives of ‘progress’ that accompanied technological change in India, see: A. Martin Wainwright, ‘Representing the Technology of the Raj in Britain’s Victorian Periodical Press’ in David Finkelstein and Douglas M. Peers (eds), Negotiating India in the Nineteenth-century Media (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 185–209; Di Drummond, ‘British Imperial Narratives of Progress through Rail Transportation and Indigenous People’s Responses in India and Africa’, Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 12 (2011), 107–40.

  6. For ‘true religion’, see: Anon., ‘Our Indian Railways’, Calcutta Review 9 (1845), 21–2. For ‘the truth of God’s word’, see: E. Davidson, The Railways of India: With an Account of their Rise, Progress and Construction (London: Spon, 1868), 8, 373. For the 1855 ceremony: Report of the Opening of the East Indian Railway (Calcutta: n.p. 1855), 2–3.

  7. Report of the Formal Commencement at Lahore of the Punjaub Railway (Lahore: Lahore Chronicle, 1859), 17.

  8. For passenger volume, see: John Hurd and Ian J. Kerr, India’s Railway History: A Research Handbook (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 148. For the railways and the Indian famines, see: Michelle Burge McAlpin, Subject to Famine: Food Crisis and Economic Change in Western India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), ch. 6; Stuart Sweeney, ‘Indian Railways and Famine, 1875–1914: Magic Wheels and Empty Stomachs’, Essays in Economic and Business History 26 (2008), 147–58.

  9. Allen’s Indian Mail, 23 March 1863, 239; ibid. 26 December 1864, 1003–4; Lawrence to Queen Victoria, 21 October 1864, RA VIC/MAIN/N/27/13.

  10. ToI, 14 June 1878, 4.

  11. For the 1854 ceremony, see: Charles Cawood, A Poetical Account of the Opening of the Ganges Canal, etc. (Agra: J. A. Gibbons, 1854), 5. For later additions to the canal, see: A. Robertson, Epic Engineering: Great Canals and Barrages of Victorian India (Melrose: Beechwood, 2013), 135–8; T. Login, Roads, Railways and Canals for India (Roorkee: Thomason Civil Engineering College Press, 1866), ii. In March 1874, Sir William Muir, lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces, opened the Agra canal ‘in the name of the Queen’: ToI, 11 March 1874, 3.

  12. Freda Harcourt, Flagships of Imperialism: The P&O Company and the Politics of Empire from its Origins to 1867 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). For the India and Australian Mail Steam Packet Company and its struggle with the East India Company, see: Morning Post, 31 August 1850, 1.

  13. ILN, 17 April 1869, 392–3; W. H. Russell, A Diary in the East during the Tour of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 2 vols (London: Geo. Routledge & Sons, 1869), ii, 431–2. Cf. Sophie Gordon, ‘Travels with a Camera: The Prince of Wales, Photography and the Mobile Court’ in Frank Lorenz Muller and Heidi Mehrkens, Sons and Heirs: Succession and Political Culture in Nineteenth-century Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 92–108.

  14. For the first ship to make the voyage see: ILN, 23 November 1872, 487. For Queen Victoria’s reaction to the Suez Canal shares purchase, see: QVJl., 24 November 1875. For the background, see: D. A. Farnie, East and West of Suez: The Suez Canal in History 1854–1956 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), ch. 10; Geoffrey Hicks, ‘Disraeli, Derby and the Suez Canal: Some Myths Reassessed’, History 97 (2012) 182–203; Emily Haddad, ‘Digging to India: Modernity, Imperialism, and the Suez Canal’, Victorian Studies 47 (2005), 363–96.

  15. For details of the ships, see: the P&O Archive (www.poheritage.com), P&O Ref: PH-02072–00 (‘Kaisar-i-Hind’) and P&O Ref: AC-03173–00 (‘Victoria’).

  16. C. C. Adley, The Story of the Telegraph in India (London: Spon, 1866), 4, 34–5; Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury, Telegraphic Imperialism: Crisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), ch. 1.

  17. ToI, 20 January 1872, 2; ibid., 21 February 1872, 2. For the Afghan telegrams (one to Lytton, one to Ripon), see: ibid., 7 December 1878, 3; 6 August 1880, 3.

  18. Murali Ranganatahn (ed.), Govind Narayan’s Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863 (London: Anthem Press, 2009), esp. ch. 10; Frank Broeze, ‘The External Dynamics of Port City Morphology: Bombay, 1815–1914’ in Indu Banga (ed.), Ports and Hinterlands in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992), 245–72; Amar Farooqui, Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay (Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, 2006). For a subtle critique of Bombay’s imperial modernity, see: Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, ‘Bombay’s Perennial Modernities’ in Chandavarkar, History, Culture and the Indian City: Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. 12–17; and for other discourses about the city, including Marathi, see: Meera Kosambi, ‘British Bombay and Marathi Mumbai’ in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (eds), Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1995), 3–24.

  19. The classic accounts are: Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845–1875 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1991), and Christopher W. London, ‘High Victorian Bombay: Historic, Economic and Social Influences on its Architectural Development’, South Asian Studies 13 (1997), 99–108, and idem, Bombay Gothic (Mumbai: India Book House, 2002).

  20. Christine E. Dobbin, Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Communities in Bombay City, 1840–1885 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); Jesse S. Palsetia, The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Preeti Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Gijsbert Oonk, ‘The Emergence of Indigenous Industrialists in Calcutta, Bombay and Ahmedabad, 1850–1947’, Business History Review 88 (2014), 43–71.

  21. Proceedings in Gujarathi, of Meeting of the Native and European Inhabitants of Bombay, Held in December 1858 to Establish the Victoria Museum and Gardens (Bombay: n.p., 1858); T. G. Mainkar (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Dr Bhau Daji (Bombay: University of Bombay, 1974), 366–70. The Government of India matched the ‘ready liberality’ of public subscriptions for the museum: George Birdwood to the secretary, Govt of Bombay, 1 March 1862, MSA, Pol. Proceedings, 77, vol. 21. For Jeejebhoy, see: Jesse S. Palsetia, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy of Bombay: Partnership and Public Culture in Empire (New Delhi: Oxford University, 2015). For Shunkerseth and the museum, see: ILN, 3 January 1863, 12; and Mariam Dossal, ‘The “Hall of Wonder” within the “Garden of Delight” in Pauline Rohatgi, Pheroza Godrej and Rahul Mehrotra (eds), Bombay to Mumbai: Changing Perspectives (Mumbai: Marg, 1997), 208–19.

  22. Cursetjee Jamsetee Jeejebhoy to Lord Elphinstone, 21 October 1858, IOR Mss Eur. F87, fols 69–71, 3 November 1858, ibid., fols 77–8; Juganath Sunkerseth to Elphinstone, 27 February 1858, ibid., fols 127–8.

  23. Khoshru Navrosji Banaji, Memoirs of the Late Framji Cowasji Banaji (Bombay: Bombay Gazette, 1892), 56–7. Framji Cowasji also spoke at the public meeting held to congratulate Queen Victoria on her marriage in 1840: IOR/F/4/1902/81001.

  24. J. J. Cowasjee, Life of Sir Cowasjee Jehanghier (London: London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, 1890); the ‘Royal Albert Orphan Asylum’ was inaugurated by the queen on 29 June 1867: Daily News, 1 July 1867, 5.

  25. S. M. Edwardes, Memoir of Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit, First Baronet (1823–1901) (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 76; DIB, 335.

  26. On David and Albert Sassoon, see: Stanley Jackson, The Sassoons: Portrait of a Dynasty (London: Heinemann, 1968), 39–45; Peter Stansky, Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil (London: Yale University Press, 2003), 7–9; S
erena Kelly, ‘Sassoon Family (per. c. 1830–1961)’, ODNB.

  27. R. H. Jahlboy, The Portrait Gallery of Western India: Embellished with 51 Life-like Portraits of the Princes, Chiefs, and Nobles, from Celebrated Artists in London; Enriched with Historical, Political and Biographical Accounts from the Most Authentic Sources, in Gujarati and English (Bombay: Education Society, 1886). The Sassoons were not included in this volume.

  28. For the clock tower, see: George W. Steevens, In India (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1901), 9. For the High Court: Rahul Mehrotra, Sharada Dwivedi and Y. V. Chandrachud, The Bombay High Court: The Story of the Building (Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2004), 39–40.

  29. ToI, 14 September 1887 (sculpture), 4, ibid., 1 November 1888, 4 (‘best modern buildings in India’), 8 January 1891, 4 (temperance refreshment rooms), 4; Christopher W. London, ‘Architect of Bombay’s Hallmark Style: Stevens and the Gothic Revival’ in Rohatgi et al. (eds), Bombay to Mumbai, 236–49; Rahul Mehotra and Sharada Dwivedi, A City Icon: Victoria Terminus Bombay, 1887 now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Mumbai, 1996 (Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2006).

  30. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Odhams Press, 1963), 277–8.

  31. Joubert’s scheme was subsequently rejected: ToI, 13 March 1884, 5; Fergusson to Lord Ripon, 24 June 1884, IOR Mss Eur. E214/8, fols 207–8; Fergusson to Lord Kimberley, 11 August 1884, IOR Mss Eur. E214/4, fols 97–100, Fergusson to Kimberley, 23 September 1884, ibid., fols 125–7; Ripon to Kimberley, 6 November 1884, BL B. P. 7/3 vol. 5, no. 58. For the abrupt abandonment of the exhibition, see: ‘Proceedings of the Legislative Council of Bombay’, xxiii (12 December 1884), 45–7, IOR/V/9/2802.

  32. Ira Klein, ‘When the Rains Failed: Famine, Relief and Mortality in British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 21 (1984), 185–214; David Arnold, ‘Vagrant India: Famine, Poverty and Welfare under Colonial Rule’ in A. L. Beier and Paul Ocobock (eds), Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), 117–39; Peter Gray, ‘Famine and Land in Ireland and India, 1845–1880: James Caird and the Political Economy of Hunger’, Historical Journal 49 (2006), 193–215.