James Outram

British imperialist

• Born: January 29, 1803
• Birthplace: Butterley Hall, Derbyshire, England
• Died: March 11, 1863
• Place of death: Pau, France

Using a mixture of military force and sound administrative techniques, Outram helped to complete the construction of the British imperial system in India during the evolution from rule by the East India Company to direct imperial domination.

Early Life

James Outram was the son of Benjamin Outram, a civil engineer who introduced iron rails to mining traffic. His mother, Margaret Anderson, was a Scottish agricultural writer’s daughter. His father died in June, 1805, leaving heavy debts from his building of an iron foundry. Margaret Outram returned with her children to her native Aberdeen, Scotland, where James was educated at the Marischal College. Outram was an indifferent-looking man with swarthy complexion and curly hair; Lady Canning, wife of one of India’s governor-generals, said that he “was a very common looking little dark Jewish man, with a desponding slow hesitating manner.”

Although of puny build, Outram was athletic and adventurous; he enlisted as a cadet in the Indian army at the age of sixteen and arrived in Bombay in August, 1819, where he was posted for several years to various regiments, learning the military trade. Outram’s generous nature was demonstrated early, when he stipulated that part of his pay be reserved for his mother. Outram also became a first-class outdoorsman: He was credited with more than half of the “first spears” thrown at tigers on hunting trips that he accompanied from 1822 to 1824, and he kept a lifelong interest in the hunt.

Life’s Work

Outram’s career as soldier and administrator assumed its shape in the middle and late 1820’s. In April, 1825, he was made agent for the East India Company for much of Khandesh, a province north of Bombay that had recently devolved to the British. In that capacity, he pacified the Bhils—a race of nomads resisting British authority—and, gaining their admiration through his hunting prowess, succeeded in turning most of them into loyal subjects. This process, completed by 1835, rested on Outram’s technique of converting the village patels (leaders) into officers of the government. After a Bombay interlude during which Outram married his cousin, Margaret Anderson, he carried out the same process of annexation by force and then pacification of Gujarat, a native state to the west of Khandesh (1835-1838).

In 1838, Outram became involved in the expanding British effort to bring order to the Sind, a region lying west of the Indus River. He was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir John Keane, the general in charge of trans-Indus operations. In August, 1839, Outram commanded an expedition across Afghanistan in pursuit of Dost Mohammed, whom the British had rejected as ruler of that country. Posing as an Afghan, Outram made an eight-day ride in November, 1839, through enemy territory to advise the Bombay government of Kalat’s siege, an exploit that made him famous all over India. Despite Outram’s audaciously successful raids against various Afghan and Baluchi tribesmen, the British were not victorious in the First Afghan War and eventually withdrew from the country, considerably humiliated.

Perhaps to compensate for recent disasters, the Indian government then determined to annex the Sind. Outram—who had been appointed political agent of Lower Sind in 1839 and of Upper Sind in 1841—was a noninterventionist, preferring to work with the local emirs to maintain the security of India’s frontiers, but he could not stem the desire of the governor-general, Lord Ellenborough, for a cheap victory. General Sir Charles Napier was sent in June, 1842, to pacify the Sind, virtually superseding Outram in authority.

Seeing that Outram could not protect them against Napier, the Sind leaders rebelled; Outram defended the British residency at Hyderabad, the Sind’s capital, against eight thousand Baluchi tribesmen (February, 1843). Napier used this as an excuse to annex the Sind, cynically referring to his action as “a very advantageous, useful, humane piece of rascality.” Although he liked Napier, Outram bitterly condemned the Sind annexation during a visit to England in May, 1843, as a breach of faith with the emirs and as “tyrannical—positive robbery.” Such outspokenness angered many in the Indian government, even though Outram was made a brevet lieutenant colonel in July, 1843, in recognition of his past service in Afghanistan and the Sind.

Upon his return to India at the close of 1843, Outram was charged with conducting military operations against the Maratha rebels, south of Bombay toward Portuguese Goa. These having been successfully concluded, he was made resident of Satara in May, 1845, and then of Baroda in May, 1847—the highest civilian position possible within the Bombay administration. Baroda’s government was corrupt, and with characteristic forthrightness, Outram criticized both Baroda’s native ruler and local company officials in a report of October, 1851. The incensed Bombay administration removed Outram from his position in March, 1852; the company director in London upheld the removal while praising Outram’s energy and honesty.

After another sojourn in England, Outram returned to India, where Lord Dalhousie (governor-general, 1848-1856) reappointed him resident at Baroda. Shortly afterward, Outram was transferred in April, 1854, to Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea, as political agent and commandant of the garrison. The intense heat there weakened his health, and Outram was sent back to India and named resident at Oudh in December, 1854.

Oudh—last of the Muslim-ruled native kingdoms besides Hyderabad—lay strategically situated on the Ganges, between Delhi and Calcutta. Thus, it was a prime target of the East India Company’s “doctrine of lapse,” which called for annexation if native rule was considered incompetent. Oudh’s rulers were undeniably bad; they had been previously warned that their maladministration would end in a British takeover. In March, 1855, Outram reported from Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, that conditions there were deplorable. The British could either run Oudh’s affairs while leaving the king his title, or annex the state. Outram recommended the latter course, Dalhousie the former; the London authorities decided in Outram’s favor. As the Oudhian ruler would not sign a treaty ending his sovereignty, Dalhousie proclaimed annexation on February 13, 1856, simultaneously naming Outram the chief commissioner.

Oudh’s absorption helped bring on the Indian Mutiny of 1857, because many of the sepoys (soldiers employed by the East India Company) lived there. Already disaffected by the prohibition of wife-burning, by the use of bullets greased with taboo animals’ fat, and by rumors of British intent to Christianize India, the sepoys decided to rebel, after the much-respected Outram left India in mid-1856 as a result of ill health. Lord Charles Canning, Dalhousie’s successor as governor-general, wanted Outram back in Oudh, but Prime Minister Henry Palmerston sent the popular general to Persia instead, in early 1857, to lead a brief and successful war with that power. By the time Outram returned to Bombay, the Sepoy Mutiny had begun.

The stage was set for the central event of Outram’s career—the relief of Lucknow, where the British garrison, some loyal sepoys, and several hundred dependents lay besieged in the British residency. Lord Canning intended him to raise the siege, but Outram waived his powers to Major General Sir Henry Havelock, an older officer whom he admired; unwisely, Outram continued to give “advice” freely, thus undercutting Havelock’s authority. Nevertheless, with about 3,100 troops, both Havelock and Outram fought their way into Lucknow from Cawnpore fifty miles away on the Ganges, in only a week—September 19-25, 1857. However, their force was too small to evacuate the residency, and they were besieged there in turn. Sir Colin Campbell, the British commander in India, finally relieved Outram on March 19, 1858, with an additional force of five thousand men. The garrison and dependents were then evacuated, although Havelock soon died of dysentery. Outram was left temporarily in charge of the Alambagh—a palace near Lucknow—to guard the city, while Campbell dealt with the rebellion in nearby Cawnpore.

As India passed under direct British rule following the mutiny’s collapse, Outram became the toast of the country. He was appointed military member of the Governor-General’s Council, received Parliament’s thanks and a baronetcy, was made a lieutenant general in the Indian army, and received a large annual pension. Suffering from chronic asthma and bronchitis, Outram left India forever in July, 1860, returning to London to write his memoirs. He died while wintering at Pau, in southern France, on March 11, 1863, and was honored with burial in Westminster Abbey.

Significance

Sir James Outram was one of the most honorable and sensitive British officials in India during the years of evolution from rule by the East India Company to direct imperial domination. As a military man, he was always well liked by his officers and soldiers. Despite some of his questionable military decisions—notably his waiving of command to Havelock at Lucknow—no one ever questioned his integrity and bravery; Napier’s characterization of Outram in November, 1842, as “the Bayard of India, without fear and reproach,” was richly deserved.

As a civil administrator, Outram was well respected, even loved, by the Indians and was known to be sympathetic toward them (for example, as the mutiny collapsed, he argued successfully with Canning to show clemency to sepoys who surrendered quickly). Rare among British officials of his time, Outram sensed the growth of Indian nationalism, saying of the Sepoy Mutiny, “It is absurd to call this a military rebellion.” Although Outram’s fame faded after his death, he should be remembered as a statesman who tried to soften the frequently oppressive process of British imperialism in India.

Bibliography

Edwardes, Michael. Battles of the Indian Mutiny. London: B. T. Batsford, 1963. A detailed military history of the Sepoy Mutiny. Outram’s activities during the Lucknow campaign are exhaustively outlined, and criticized, in chapters 8-15. One of Batsford’s British Battle series.

Gardiner, Brian. The East India Company. New York: McCall, 1972. Outram’s career is covered in the context of the institution that, at the end of its rule in 1858, controlled one-fifth of the world’s population. The author stresses the strangeness of an entity that was neither company nor government.

Goldsmid, F. J. James Outram: A Biography. 2 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1880. One of two full-length biographies of Outram. Heavily dependent on Outram’s letters and other documents. There is no attempt to be evenhanded; the work is well written but overly adulatory.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Great Mutiny: India, 1857. New York: Viking Press, 1978. A narrative history of the Sepoy Mutiny by a prolific historian and biographer. Hibbert draws on the memoirs of Outram and of practically every other major figure in the uprising. Good personal characterization of Outram.

Holmes, Thomas Rice Edward. A History of the Indian Mutiny, and of the Disturbances Which Accompanied It Among the Civil Population. London: W. H. Allen, 1883. Rev. ed. London: Macmillan, 1913. A good, but dated, treatment of the mutiny. Outram is prominently mentioned, and his personality and actions praised as knightly and chivalric. See especially chapter 9.

Kinsley, D. A. They Fight Like Devils: Stories from Lucknow During the Great Indian Mutiny, 1857-1858. New York: Sarpedon, 2001. A military history of the Lucknow campaign that includes excerpts of personal accounts by European participants. Contains information about Outram’s role in the campaign.

Trotter, Lionel J. The Bayard of India: A Life of General Sir James Outram. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1909. A shorter biography than Goldsmid’s, and highly partial to Outram.

Woodruff, Philip. The Men Who Ruled India: The Founders. New York: Schocken Books, 1964. A study of the impact of the British on India. Although admitting the faults of their rule, the author hoped that they would be remembered for their positive contributions. Outram is mentioned in passing, although positively.