Malcolm, SIR JOHN, G.C.B.

Malcolm, SIR JOHN, G.C.B., a British soldier, statesman, and historian, was born at Burnfoot, near Langholm, Dumfriesshire, May 2, 1769, and at fourteen went to India as a cadet in the Madras army. In 1798 he was appointed assistant to the resident at Hyderabad by Lord Wellesley. He distinguished himself at the siege of Seringapatam in 1799, and in 1800 he was sent as ambassador to Persia, to form an alliance with that country against Bonaparte, in which he succeeded. In 1801 he acted as private secretary to Wellesley; in 1803 was appointed governor of the Mysore Residency; and during the next two years did much to reduce to order and tranquillity the newly-conquered Mahrattra states. In 1807 and 1810 he was again sent as minister-plenipotentiary to the Persian court. In 1812 he returned to England, received the honour of knighthood, and, after five years, went out again to India as the governor-general's political agent in the Deccan, and with the rank of brigadier-general in the Indian army; in the latter capacity he greatly distinguished himself in the wars against the Pindaris and Holkar. He was again in England in 1822, and settled with his family at Hyde Hall, near Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. To this period belong his anonymous Sketches in Persia (1827). Governor of Bombay (1827-30), he entered parliament in 1831 as member for Launceston, and opposed the Reform Bill. He died of paralysis in London, 30th May 1833. The Duke of Wellington in 1824 wrote to Malcolm that from the year 1796 'no great transaction has taken place in the East in which you have not played a principal, most useful, conspicuous, and honourable part.' Malcolm's writings are A History of Persia (2 vols. 1815; 2d ed. 1828), Memoir of Central India (2 vols. 1823), Political History of India from 1784 to 1823 (2 vols. 1826), and Life of Lord Clive (1836). See his Life and Correspondence, by Kaye (1856).