Ebook: Scotland and the Indian Empire: Politics, Scholarship and the Military in Making British India

This is the Story of two Scotsmen, Baillie and Edmonstone, who went out to India in 1782 and 1791 respectively, to earn their fortune.
Neil Edmonstone rose through the ranks to be appointed the Acting Governor-General of India, Secretary of the Secret, Foreign and Political Department and for more than 20 years, and the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Company.
John Baillie, an indirect ancestor of the Author, was appointed the Political Agent, aged 30, for Bundelkhand, which he brought successfully under British control, before his appointment as British Resident at Lucknow in 1807.
Edmonstone was very much the somewhat diffident power behind the throne of successive Governor-Generals, including Lord Cornwallis Sir John Shore, Sir Richard Wellesley, Lord Minto and Lord Hastings and he, together with the somewhat over-reaching Baillie and others, predominantly Scottish and Irish, oversaw the transition of the Honourable Company from being a defensive business to a military Empire spanning the Sub-Continent by the time they left India in the years 1816 and 1818 respectively.
Both men had Indian as well as European ladies, with whom they had no less than 21 Anglo-Scottish and Scottish-Indian children and who, with one exception, were all sent back to Inverness in Scotland to be educated and brought up by Margaret Baillie, the spinster sister of John Baillie. This Book tells us their stories as well as those of their parents.