Henry Miers Elliot
| Henry Miers Elliot | |
|---|---|
Memorial in Winchester Cathedral
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|
| Born |
1 March 1808 Westminster, UK |
| Died | 30 December 1853 (aged 45) Cape of Good Hope |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | East India Company civil servant |
Sir Henry Miers Elliot KCB (1 March 1808 – 30 December 1853) was an English civil servant and historian who worked with the East India Company in India for 26 years. He is most known for The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians based on his works, published posthumously in eight volumes, between 1867-1877 in London.
Elliot was the third son, one of the fifteen children, of John Elliot, of Pimlico Lodge, Westminster, who was colonel commandant of the Westminster volunteers, by a daughter of John Coakley Lettsom, M.D. Born in 1808 he was educated from the age of ten at Winchester College, and destined for New College, Oxford; but the demand of the East India Company for civilians beyond the numbers regularly trained at Haileybury tempted him to try for an appointment in their service, and he was the first of the 'competition ' to pass an open examination for an immediate post in India. His oriental languages as well as his classics and mathematics proved so good that he was even placed by himself in an honorary class (1826).
Elliot was assistant successively to the collector of Bareilly, the political agent at Delhi, and the collector of the southern division of Muradabad; secretary to the Sudder board of Revenue for the North-Western Provinces; and (1847) secretary to the governor-general in council for the foreign department. In this capacity he accompanied Lord Hardinge to the Panjab and drew up an admirable memoir on its resources. As foreign secretary he also visited the western frontier with Lord Dalhousie, on the occasion of the Sikh War, and negotiated the treaty with the Sikh chiefs relative to the settlement of the Panjab and Gujarat, and received the KCB for his services (1849). Throughout his official career he had devoted his leisure to study.
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