A BRITISH HISTORIAN FROM KERALA

Robert Orme was an authority on India

 Robert Orme was a historian admired in his time,inspiring Thomas Macaulay,Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray and the like,but later displaced by historians from James Mill onwards.His work,History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745,laid the foundation for all the future history works on India.For a person like me, born and brought up in the Southern state of India,Kerala,it was exciting to learn that he was born in Kerala,at Anchuthengu or Anjengo.He was born on  Christmas day,in 1728,as the second son of the Chief of the English East India Company Factory there,Dr Alexander Orme,and Lady Gill.Alexander had replaced the notorious Chief,William Gyfford,who was killed by the Attingal Pillai Brigade along with 132 Britishers,in 1721,on the premises of the Attingal palace,and the corrupt Midford,who followed,Gyfford.

Dr Alexander was a surgeon in the service of the Company,at Anchuthengu Factory,in 1707,later Chief,and the brother in law of the Chief of the Company's Thalassery Factory,Robert Adams.Robert Orme was there at Anchuthengu,only for two years,after which he was sent to London,only to come back to India in later years.

Robert was sent to his aunt,Mrs Robert Adams,when he was two, and he studied at Harrow School during 1734-1741,under Dr James Cox.He spent a year at the Accountant General's office of the Royal African Company,before joining the mercantile house of Jackson and Wedderburn at Calcutta in 1742 and entering the East India Company's service as a Writer,in 1743.His elder brother,William was  already a Writer at the Company's Calcutta office.Robert Orme gained a deep knowledge in Indian customs.
 When he reached India,he was a minor of 14,and found deeply involved in a family dispute.Captain Simon Lloyd,Orme's sister's husband,and representative of the Company, died in India in 1746.Mrs Lloyd had gone back to England by then.The will of Captain Lloyd bequeathed equal shares of his estate to his wife and daughter,leaving nothing to his young son,who was left behind in India.Orme,though minor,was the boy's local guardian,and fought the claims of his nephew,even bribing the Mayor of Calcutta,Captain Massey,and involving Jackson of Jackson and Wedderburn.Finally,Mrs Lloyd charged Orme,for misappropriating her money,and he admitted taking 5% as commission.

He considered Indians generally and Bengali's specially,effeminate, and attributed the climatic conditions for the character.In the 1761 article,The Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Indostan,he wrote:Breathing in the softness of the climates,having few real wants;and receiving even the luxuries of other nations with little labor,from the fertility of their own soil,the Indian must become the most effeminate inhabitant of the globe,and this is the very point at which we now see him.

Robert Orme

Robert Orme left for London in 1753,but even before he set foot in his native soil,he was appointed member of the Council of Fort St George at Madras,during 1754-1758.During that period,he took part in the Council deliberations on the Carnatic operations,and was instrumental in sending the Young Robert Clive,as Head of punitive expedition,against Siraj-ud-Dowlah,in 1757,to Calcutta,on the aftermath of the infamous Black Hole incident of Calcutta in 1756.The Black Hole was a small dungeon in the Old Fort William at Calcutta,where the troops of the Nawab of Bengal,Siraj-ud-Dowlah,is said to have held British prisoners of war,after the capture of the Fort on 20 June,1756.One of the prisoners,John Zephaniah Holwell claimed that,after the fall of the Fort,British and Anglo-Indian soldiers and civilians were held over night under cramped conditions,that 123 out of 146 died from suffocation.Though,Holwell's claim was believed to be true then,now it is termed,Holwell's Hoax.
In Madras,he was appointed as Export Ware House Keeper and Commissioner for the Nawab's account.An anecdote told of Orme of this period,is recorded in A Vindication of General Richard Smith,published in 1783:
When Mr Orme held the office of Export ware House Keeper to the East India Company at Madras,he was remarkable for keeping the young men in the service at a distance.It happened that one Mr Davison acted under him in his office,in whose blunt John Bull manners there appeared something odd and diverting.The former had condescended to invite the latter to breakfast with him,in the course of which he asked Mr Davison,of what profession his father was."A Sadler Sir",replied the other."A Sadler!",repeated the Historian with some degree of surprise;"Why he did not breed you up a Sadler?","Why Sir,"says Davison,"I was always a whimsical boy,and rather chose to try my fortune as you have done in the East India Company's service."But pray Sir", continued he,"What profession was your father of?"."My father Sir",Mr Orme answered sharply,"was a gentleman"."A gentleman!-humph-Pray Sir,be as good to inform me why he did not breed you up a gentleman?".

Black Hole site

Robert Orme's long term friendship with Clive broke off about 1769,for unknown reasons.

He was the Accountant General during 1757-58,made a small fortune and returned to England in 1759.The ship,Grantham,in which he sailed,was captured by the French on January 1,1759 and taken to Mauritius.He reached Nantes,France a year later.He bought a house in Harley Street,London,spent  his time writing.History of the Military Transactions was published in three volumes in 1763-78 and,Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire,the Morattoes and English Concerns in Industan from 1659,was published in 1782.From 1769,till his death,he was the paid Historiographer of the East India Company.It was on the strength of his Military History,he was appointed the Historiographer,and the military encounters of the British came through the writings of Robert Orme.It formed the foundation for many other works on India.Walter Scott had read the book in his youth and he relied heavily upon Robert for his novels,including,The Surgeon's Daughter,based in India.The Newcomes of Thackeray,invokes Orme frequently.

Fort William

While in India,Orme fulfilled the role of the Antiquarian,collecting documents and private correspondence,that upon his death,his collection consisted of 51 volumes of printed matter and 231 volumes of manuscripts.

Orme was familiar with the machinations,intrigues and corruption that infected policy making in India.He deliberately chose to write military history than political.Orme's History opens with a description of Indian society in what he thinks that Hindus,have from time immemorial been as addicted to commerce,as they are averse to war.They have,therefore,always been immensely rich and have always remained incapable of defending their wealth.

I have deliberately quoted this line,for the benefit of the politicians and others,who shout India is a poor country.If you doubt again,you should read Jeffrey Mo0rehouse'  India Britannica,to understand,India was 15 times richer than Britain,at the end of world war II.Who on earth wants to colonize a poor,devastated country?

Orme criticizes the lack of military order and discipline in India.I quote:The rudeness of the military art in Industan can scarcely be imagined but by those who have seen it.The infantry consists in a multitude of people assembled together without regard to rank and file.Some with swords and targets,who can never stand the shock of a body of a horse:some bearing matchlocks,which in he best of order can produce but a very uncertain fire:some armed with lances too long or too weak to be of any service even if ranged with the utmost regularity of discipline.

Macaulay said:Orme,inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting,is minute even to tediouness.In one volume he allots,on an average a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty eight hours.The consequence in that his narrative,though one of the most authentic and one of the finely written in our language,has never been very popular,and is now scarcely ever read. 

Few passages in Macaulay's own,Essay on Clive,are borrowed from Orme.

Even his close friends didn't know Orme was married-it came to light only when the Company decided to give an annuity to his widow.He died in Great Ealing, Middlesex,where he had shifted after disposing off the house in Harley Street,on 13 January,1801.

Note:

Some of the Chiefs at Anchuthengu:

Thomas Mitchell 1685

John Brabourne 1685,1707

Simon Cowse 1707-1712

John Kyffin 1712-1717

William Gyfford 1717-1721

Midford 1721-1723

Dr Alexander Orme 1723

J Whitehall 1759-1769

P E Wrench 1769-1772

James Forbes 1772

Reference:

Romantic Representation of British India/Ed.Michael J Franklin
2.Vestiges of Old Madras,Vol 1/H O Love

See my Post,MASSACRE OF THE BRITISH AT ATTINGAL,1721