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Bad Language: The Role of English, Persian and other Esoteric Tongues in the Dismissal of Sir Edward Colebrooke as Resident of Delhi in 1829

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2001

KATHERINE PRIOR ,
LANCE BRENNAN  and
ROBIN HAINES
LANCE BRENNAN
Affiliation:
Flinders University of South Australia
ROBIN HAINES
Affiliation:
Flinders University of South Australia
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Abstract

In 1829, at the height of Lord William Bentinck's regime of reform, a keenyoung civil servant in north India took onone of the last of the Company's nabobs and won. It was a clash of a newstyle of Haileybury civilian with an oldCompany servant which remarkably prefigured the personal and philosophicaldynamics of the Anglicist-Orientalisteducation debate a few years later. Sir Edward Colebrooke, Bt, was Residentof Delhi, 67 years old and nearly 50years in the East India Company's service. His youthful adversary was hisown first assistant, Charles Edward Trevelyan, aged 22 and, in Sir Edward'swords, ‘a Boy just escaped from school’. In June 1829 Trevelyan chargedColebrooke with corruption, and despite being cut by many of Delhi'sEuropean residents, saw the prosecution throughto its conclusion some six months later when the Governor-General in Councilwas pleased to order Colebrooke'ssuspension from the service, a sentence ultimately confirmed by the Court ofDirectors.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 75 - 112
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We are grateful to the Australian Research Council for funding the research for this paper, which is an interim production in a larger project to write a biography of Charles Trevelyan. We are alsograteful to Dr Lesley Gordon, Special Collections Librarian at the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle, UK and the Trevelyan Family Trustees for their assistance and permissionin allowing us to use and cite from papers of Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan held at the Robinson Library. Comments from C. A. Bayly,Nigel Chancellor and Robert Travers have been especially welcome and helpful.