General John Briggs (1785–1875) was a British officer in the army of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
, and an author.
Life
Briggs entered the
Madras Infantry in 1801. He took part in the
Mahratta wars, serving in the final campaign as a political officer under Sir
John Malcolm
Major-General Sir John Malcolm GCB, KLS (2 May 1769 – 30 May 1833) was a Scottish soldier, diplomat, East India Company administrator, statesman, and historian.
Early life
Sir John Malcolm was born in 1769, one of seventeen children of Geo ...
, whom he had previously accompanied on his mission to
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
in 1810. He was one of
Mountstuart Elphinstone
Mountstuart Elphinstone (6 October 1779 – 20 November 1859) was a Scottish statesman and historian, associated with the government of British India. He later became the Governor of Bombay (now Mumbai) where he is credited with the open ...
's assistants in the
Dekhan, subsequently served in
Khandesh
Khandesh is a geographic region in Central India, which includes parts of the northwestern portion of Maharashtra as well as Burhanpur District of Madhya Pradesh.
The use of Khandeshi Language (a.k.a. the Ahirani Language) is prevalent in ...
, and succeeded Captain
Grant Duff as resident at
Sattára.
In 1831 Briggs was appointed
Chief Commissioner of Mysore when the administration of that state was assumed by the British. His appointment to this office, which was made by the governor-general
Lord William Bentinck
Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (14 September 177417 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British soldier and statesman who served as the Governor of Fort William (Bengal) from 1828 to 1834 and the First G ...
, was not agreeable to the government of Madras, and after a stormy tenure which lasted around a year, Briggs resigned his post in September 1832. He was transferred to the residency of
Nágpur, where he remained until 1835. In that year he left India, and never returned. In 1838 he attained the military rank of major-general. He became then lieutenant-general (1851) and full general on 6 February 1861.
After his return to England he took a prominent part as a member of the court of directors of the East India Company in the discussion of Indian affairs, and was an opponent of
Lord Dalhousie
James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie (22 April 1812 – 19 December 1860), also known as Lord Dalhousie, styled Lord Ramsay until 1838 and known as The Earl of Dalhousie between 1838 and 1849, was a Scottish statesman and co ...
's annexation policy. He was also an active member of the
Anti-Corn-law League
The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time ...
.
Briggs was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in recognition of his proficiency in oriental literature. He died at
Burgess Hill
Burgess Hill is a town and civil parish in West Sussex, England, close to the border with East Sussex, on the edge of the South Downs National Park, south of London, north of Brighton and Hove, and northeast of the county town, Chichester. It ...
,
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
, on 27 April 1875, at the age of eighty-nine.
Works
He was a good Persian scholar, and translated
Ferishta
Firishta or Ferešte ( fa, ), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi ( fa, مُحَمَّد قاسِم هِندو شاہ), was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He wa ...
's ''Mohammadan Power in India'', and the ''Siyar-ul-Murákhirin'', which recorded the decline of
Moghul power. He was also the author of an essay on the land tax of India, and in a series of ''Letters Addressed to a Young Person in India'' he discussed questions on the conduct of army officers, and civil servants, and especially their treatment of Indians. In 1836, he wrote an essay length tract advocating the professional training of the Indian Officer class of the East India Company's armies. Indian officers provided the crucial command, control and communication functions between British officers and the rank-and-file Indian sepoys and sowars.
[Chandar S. Sundaram, ''Indianization, the Officer Corps, and the Indian Army: the Forgotten Debate, 1817–1917''(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), pp. 34–5, 60]
References
*
;Attribution
External links
* John Briggs, 'Account of the Origin, History, and Manners of the Race of Men called Bunjaras' in ''Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay'', vol.
(London, 1819)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Briggs, John
1785 births
1875 deaths
British East India Company Army generals
18th-century British people
19th-century British people
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Ethnological Society of London