Sir James Broadwood Lyall (4 March 1838 – 4 December 1916) was a British administrator in the
Imperial Civil Service who served as
Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab between 1887 and 1892.
Background
James Lyall was born on 4 March 1838.
He was a son of
Alfred Lyall and Mary Drummond. His elder brother was
Alfred Comyn Lyall, and his paternal uncles included a
Dean of Canterbury,
William Rowe Lyall, and a chairman of the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
,
George Lyall. He was educated first at
Eton College
Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...
and then at
Haileybury College.
Imperial Civil Service
Career
He joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1857, arriving in
India
India, officially the Republic of India, 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 by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
the following year. He served with the
Punjab commission until the end of 1859 and went on to serve as the financial commissioner of the Punjab.
He was the first
vice-chancellor
A vice-chancellor (commonly called a VC) serves as the chief executive of a university in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Kenya, other Commonwealth of Nati ...
of the
University of the Punjab, a post to which he was appointed in October 1882.
Between 1883 and 1887, Lyall served in southern India as the Resident in
Mysore
Mysore ( ), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It is the headquarters of Mysore district and Mysore division. As the traditional seat of the Wadiyar dynasty, the city functioned as the capital of the ...
and
Chief Commissioner of
Coorg.
From 1887 to1892, Lyall was
Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab.
He was appointed as a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India in 1888.
On 5 March 1892 he laid the foundation stone of the
Khalsa College.
Canal Colonies
From 1882 Lyall was instrumental in formulating what would become known as the Triple Project, a bold plan to transform of desert into agricultural land through the development of
canal colonies. As Lieutenant Governor he helped establish
Lyallpur, one of the first planned cities in British India, as the headquarters of the Chenab Colony and which was named in his honour. Later a new district was created in the Colony, also named in his honour -
Lyallpur district.
[Douie, J. (1914). THE PUNJAB CANAL COLONIES. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 62(3210), 611-623. Retrieved March 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41341616]
Later life
Lyall was appointed as
Knight Grand Commander of the Indian Empire in May 1892, after ending his tenure in the Punjab. In 1893, he was appointed to the
Royal Commission on Opium, which he thought was an official attempt to procrastinate in order to silence opposition to opium use and its trade. Lyall believed there was nothing untoward about moderate use of opium.
In 1898, he served as President of the Indian Famine Commission.
He died on 4 December 1916 in
Eastry,
Kent
Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
and is buried in the local churchyard.
Publications
Lyall contributed a chapter on the Punjab to ''The British Empire'' series, published in 1899.
References
External links
* (Preserved Lyall papers in the records of the
India Office.)
1838 births
1916 deaths
19th-century English writers
City founders
Governors of Punjab (British India)
Indian Civil Service (British India) officers
Knights Commander of the Order of the Star of India
Knights Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
James
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Vice-chancellors of the University of the Punjab
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