Sir John Child, 1st Baronet (died 1690) was a governor of

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

, and de facto (although not officially) the first governor-general of the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

settlements 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 ...

Life

Born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Child was sent as a child to his uncle, the chief of the factory at Rajapur. on 27 October 1681, he was appointed chief of the

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 ...

's affairs at

Surat Surat (Gujarati Language, Gujarati: ) is a city in the western Indian States and territories of India, state of Gujarat. The word Surat directly translates to ''face'' in Urdu, Gujarati language, Gujarati and Hindi. Located on the banks of t ...

and Bombay, while at the same time his namesake, stated to be unrelated by the ''

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from History of the British Isles, British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') ...

'', Sir Josiah Child, was governor of the company at home. The two men guided the affairs of the company through the period of struggle between the

Mughals The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of pre ...

and

Maratha The Marathi people (; Marathi: , ''Marāṭhī lōk'') or Marathis (Marathi: मराठी, ''Marāṭhī'') are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are native to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-A ...

s. They have been credited by history with the change from unarmed to armed trade on the part of the company; however, both were actually loath to quarrel with the Mughal Empire. War broke out with

Aurangzeb Alamgir I (Muhi al-Din Muhammad; 3 November 1618 – 3 March 1707), commonly known by the title Aurangzeb, also called Aurangzeb the Conqueror, was the sixth Mughal emperors, Mughal emperor, reigning from 1658 until his death in 1707, becomi ...

in 1689, but in the following year Child had to sue for peace, one of the conditions being that he should be expelled from India. He escaped this expulsion by his death on 4 February 1690, and was as English president of Surat and Bombay succeeded by Bartholomew Harris.

Armorials

Burke's Armorials 1884 gives his arms as follows: (Child of Surat, East Indies and Dervill, Essex, bart. created 1684, extinct 1753): ''Vert, two bars engrailed between three leopard's faces or''. Crest: ''A leopard's face or between 2 laurel branches proper''. Motto: ''Spes Alit'' (Hope Nourishes). These arms are in no way similar to those of Sir

Josiah Child Sir Josiah Child, 1st Baronet, (c. 1630/31 – 22 June 1699) was an English economist, merchant and politician. He was an economist proponent of mercantilism and governor of the British East India Company, East India Company. He led the compa ...

or Sir Francis Child, of

Child & Co Child & Co. is a historic private bank in the United Kingdom, later integrated into the Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS division of the NatWest Group. The bank operated from its long-standing premises at 1 Fleet Street, on the western edge of the C ...

bankers, which seems to confirm the lack of any family relationship to the other Child baronetcies.

References

* Year of birth missing 1690 deaths Governors of Bombay British East India Company civil servants Baronets in the Baronetage of England {{India-gov-stub