Call of Empire: From the Highlands to Hindostan

by Alexander Charles Baillie

Overview

From 1760 to 1869, four generations of one family from the Scottish Highlands sought their fortunes in the service of the East India Company. As they worked their way up through the ranks of the empire, the Baillie family left numerous footprints in India and recorded their fascinating experiences in letters sent home to Scotland. Drawing on thorough research of the military, political, and economic events of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and an extensive collection of family letters that depict the lives and personalities of his ancestors, Alexander Charles Baillie brings the history of British India to life. The compelling documents, lost for over a century with many reproduced here, reveal changing race relations and social attitudes, cultural tensions, military and civilian battles, economic pressures, and the rise and decline of the East India Company. The book focuses especially on two members of the family – William of Dunain, a military officer, and John of Leys, a civil servant – whose numerous adventures and misadventures impart provocative clues about the workings of the empire and the daily lives of its most influential figures. An exciting, invaluable, and personalized glimpse into the past of India, Scotland, and the East India Company, Call of Empire will appeal to genealogy enthusiasts and social and global historians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773552074
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Alexander Charles Baillie is chancellor emeritus of Queen’s University, former chair and chief executive officer of TD Bank. He lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Maps, Illustrations, and Family Trees xiii

1 Culloden's Children 3

2 No Great Mischief 18

3 Eastward Ho! 31

4 Baillie-ki-Paltan 47

5 Brothers in Arms 68

6 Affairs of the Heart 83

7 A Council of Incompetents 106

8 Command at Pondicherry 138

9 Disaster 154

10 Imprisonment and Death at Seringapatam 176

11 Homeward Bound 211

12 Brain Fever in Baghdad 229

13 Estrangement 251

14 John of Leys and the Acquisition of Bundelcund 264

15 Margaret and the Anglo-Indian Elmores 288

16 The Resident at Lucknow 300

17 Dismissal 313

18 Retribution 334

19 Dissolution 350

Epilogue 361

Colonial and Current Place Names 367

Cast of Supporting Characters 369

Glossary of Anglo-Indian and Scottish Terms 409

Notes 413

Bibliography 443

Index 451

Editorial Reviews

The extensive excerpts from relevant letters and other documents, filled with domestic detail, and those sons and brothers working their way up through the ranks of the East India Company, will speak volumes to Scottish enthusiasts and social historians. An excellent and welcome addition to books on post-Culloden Scotland.” Donald Harman Akenson, Queen’s University, and author of Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 1815–1914

From the Publisher