Colonel George Bruce Malleson (8 May 1825 – 1 March 1898) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
officer in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
and author.
Biography
Malleson was born in
Wimbledon. Educated at
Winchester
Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...
, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry in 1842, and served through the
second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young
maharaja
Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king".
A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, a ...
of
Mysore
Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude o ...
. He retired with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C.S.I. in the
1872 Birthday Honours.
He was a voluminous writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous "
Red Pamphlet", published at
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, commer ...
in 1857, when the
Sepoy Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the ''History of the Indian Mutiny 1857-8'' (6 vols., 1878–1880), which was begun but left
unfinished by
Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are ''History of the French in India'' (2nd ed., 1893) and ''The Decisive Battles of India'' (3rd ed., 1888).
He authored the biographies of the Mughal Emperor
Akbar
Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Hum ...
, the French governor-general
Dupleix and the British officer
Robert Clive
Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British ...
for the
Rulers of India series.
He died at 27 West Cromwell Road,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, on 1 March 1898.
Works
*
* Full text online at ibiblio.org (All six volumes, including the first two originally by Sir John Kaye, in HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations, footnotes and a combined index)
Volume I 1878.
Volume III 1880.
Volume V 1889.
* Pub. 1883. Full text online at ibiblio.org (In HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations and footnotes)
* Full text online at archive.org. Malleson's own condensed version of the six-volume history.
* Pub. 1896. Full text online at ibiblio.org (In HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations and footnotes)
''History of the French in India''1893 (2nd revised ed.)
''Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations''1899
*
History of Afghanistan, from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878'' Pub. 1879. 2nd ed. London: W.H. Allen & Co.
translation of this workwas used for training British military interpreters in the
Pashto language
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
.
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References
Attribution:
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Malleson, George Bruce
19th-century English historians
1825 births
1898 deaths
British East India Company Army officers
People from Wimbledon, London
British Army personnel of the Second Anglo-Burmese War
People educated at Winchester College
Companions of the Order of the Star of India
English biographers