20 Facts About John Malcolm

Major-General Sir John Malcolm GCB, KLS was a Scottish soldier, diplomat, East India Company administrator, statesman, and historian.

Sir John Malcolm was born in 1769, one of seventeen children of George Malcolm, an impoverished tenant farmer in Eskdale in the Scottish Border country, and his wife Margaret, nee Pasley, the sister of Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley.

John Malcolm's brothers included Sir James Malcolm, Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm and Sir Charles Malcolm.

John Malcolm left school, family and country at the age of thirteen, and achieved distinction in the East India Company, where he was nicknamed 'Boy Malcolm.

John Malcolm returned to India in 1795 as Military Secretary to General Sir Alured Clarke, participating en route in Clarke's capture of the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1812, John Malcolm returned to Britain for five years' furlough, and spent much of his time as a writer, completing his History of Iran in 1815.

John Malcolm acted as a general, leading Company troops to victory against Maharajah Malhar Rao Holkar II at the decisive Battle of Mahidpur on 21 December 1817.

In January 1818, John Malcolm was placed by the Marquess of Hastings in the military and political charge of Central India ; during the four years he filled that station, his attention was directed to the object of collecting materials for the illustration of its past and present condition.

John Malcolm's governorship was generally successful, despite controversy over an unfortunate quarrel with the judges of the Bombay Supreme Court, who sought to extend their jurisdiction beyond Bombay to the Deccan hinterland, newly acquired by the company from the Maratha Peshwa of Poona.

In seeking to end both sati and female infanticide by moral persuasion, John Malcolm visited Gujarat in February 1830 and met Sahajanand Swami, the founder of the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism, who was advocating similar reforms.

John Malcolm has ever since been remembered in Swaminarayan literature.

John Malcolm served as president of the Literary Society of Bombay.

In 1831 John Malcolm finally returned to Britain, and immediately became a Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of Launceston, supporting his friend the Duke of Wellington in opposition to the Reform Bill.

John Malcolm bought Warfield Hall in Berkshire from the Parry family and busied himself renovating it.

John Malcolm's last public act was a speech in April 1833 to the Proprietors of the East India Company, persuading them to accept the Government's terms for renewal of its Charter.

Together with his contemporaries Mountstuart Elphinstone and Sir Thomas Munro, John Malcolm was an architect of three early principles of British rule, whose wisdom "was too soon forgotten and remembered too late".

Thirdly, John Malcolm helped to develop the role of the District Officer, a small group of powerful administrators with minimal overt force to support them.

Fourthly, John Malcolm promoted a 'forward' foreign policy; meaning diplomatic engagement with neighbouring states such as Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

John Malcolm wrote nine books, plus a volume of poetry, as follows:.

Sketches of Persia; this book is not written by John Malcolm, but by one of his companions in his mission to Iran; the writer remains anonymous and has introduced himself as the traveller;he has referred to John Malcolm in his text as ilchi, which is a Persian word means envoy of a foreign country.