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IV. Sir Charles MacGregor and the Defence of India,1857–1887

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Adrian Preston
Adrian Preston
Affiliation:
Royal Military College of Canada
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Extract

If anyone could be claimed the father of the school for the scientific study of Indian defence policy it would undoubtedly be Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor. With the re-opening of the Central Asian Question in the early 1860s, it became MacGregor's mission in life completely to recast the Indian defence structure and it counter-insurrectionary role to enable it to undertake large-scale offensive operations against a major European military power. Almost single-handedly, he began to create the machinery within the Indian Army establishment—the special departments, professional institutes, journals and literature—to stimulate a greater awareness of the special and peculiar nature of Indian defence problems that this new role involved, and to encourage an iconoclastic re-examination of prevailing defence assumptions. From MacGregor's groundwork there was logically bound to arise a sense of Indian Army professionalism separate and distinct from that of Great Britain, and the beginnings of the belief that obligations of national defence are inseparable from nationhood. It was MacGregor who first appreciated on the basis of systematic and scientific study that India constituted a vast manpower reservoir, greater than that of Ireland and Egypt together, upon which Britain relied for the prosecution of her imperial, military and foreign policies in the East; that the North-West Frontier presented the only strategic boundary that Britain had to defend; and that the geo-strategic and demographic facts of her existence had made India potentially a great military power bound to adopt a ‵Continental′ military policy and defence structure in many respects parallel to those of the major European military powers.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1969 , pp. 58 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 MacGregor, Lady (ed.), The Life and Opinions of Major-General Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor (London, Blackwood, 1888),Google Scholar 2 vols.; Major-General SirMacGregor, C.M., The Defence of India: A Strategical Study (Simla, Government Central Branch Press, 1884).Google Scholar MacGregor's papers are now deposited in the United Service Institution of Scotland.

2 See especially Preston, A.W., ‘British Military Policy and the Defence of India: A Study of British Military Policy, Plans and Preparations during the Russian Crisis, 1875–1880’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1966, pp. 76–8.Google Scholar

3 MacGregor to Major R. G. MacGregor, 13 October 1858; 26 April, 27 May, 17 and 21 November 1859; 6 and 21 September 1860; 29 July, 30 August, 17 and 31 November 1861; 29 January 1862; 4 February, 8 and 28 July 1864, MacGregor Papers; see also Life and Opinions, I, 69–202.Google Scholar

4 Havelock, Sir Henry M., Three Main Military Questions of the Day (London, Longmans Green, 1867), pp. 66–115.Google Scholar See also official rebuttal by Sir Henry Durand, Roberts' Papers, misc.

6 Denison, Colonel G.T., Modern Cavalry (Toronto, Macmillan, 1868).Google Scholar

6 Preston, op. cit. pp. 25–33; Maj.-Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, Memorandum on the Central Asian Question, 20 July 1868, I[ndia] O[ffice] P[olitical and] S[ecret] R[ecords, Misc.,] C 14, India Office Library; see also Russia and England in the East (London, Murray, 1875);Google ScholarThornton, A.P., ‘The Reopening of the Central Asian Question, 1864–9’, History, XLI (1956).Google Scholar

7 Memorandum by Sir John Lawrence, 23 November 1868, on Rawlinson's memorandum, I.O.P.S.R., C 14.

8 Preston, op. cit. pp. 34–9.

9 MacGregor, Lieut. C.M., Mountain Warfare: An Essay on the Conduct of Military Operations in Mountainous Countries (London, Nissen and Parker, 1866);Google Scholar see also MacGregor to Major R. G. MacGregor, 8 July 1864, MacGregor Papers.

10 Same to same, 12 June 1865, Ibid.

11 Minute in Council by Sir Henry Durand, 30 August 1869; Minutes by the Commanderin-Chief, Sir William Mansfield, 3 August, 11 September 1869, Mayo Papers, Cambridge; see also Hunter, W.W., A Life of the Earl of Mayo (London, Smith Elder, 1876), 2 vols. II, 122–6;Google Scholar Preston, op. cit. pp. 78–9.

12 See for example, Note on the Reorganisation of the Army, 1867, MacGregor Papers.

13 MacGregor to Major R. G. MacGregor, 19 October 1868, MacGregor Papers; Central Asian Gazetteer, confidential, Calcutta, 1870–5, 6 vols.; Life and Opinions, I, 321–47.

14 Scheme for Association for Publishing Military Works, Scheme for Introduction of Military Libraries, 1871, MacGregor Papers.

15 Life and Opinions, I 329; Capt. Colquhoun, J.A.S., ‘Essay on the Formation of an Intelligence Department for India’ (Durand Medal Essay), Proceedings of the United Service Institution of India, IV, no. 13 (1875), 1–73.Google Scholar

16 War Office Confidential Paper 0457, Report of a Committee on the Topographical and Statistical Department, 24 January 1871, Secretary of State's Papers, 1871, War Office Library.

17 See for example, Capt. Evelyn Baring, Staff College Essays (London, Blackwood, 1869).Google Scholar

18 Northbrook to Ripon, private, 25 June 1880, Ripon Papers, BM.Add.MSS. 43570; Northbrook Papers, IOMSS.Eur.C. 144/23.

19 Preston, op. cit. p. 83.

20 War Office Confidential Paper 0547, Secretary of State's Papers, War Office Library; Memorandum to consider our Military Position in India and the arrangements that would be necessary in the event of the Russians advancing South of the Oxus, F. S. Roberts, 1 July 1874, Roberts Papers.

21 Major-General SirWolseley, G.J., ‘Our Coming Guest’, Blackwood's, CXXII (06 1873) 427–46;Google ScholarBaker, Colonel V., Clouds in the East: Travels and Adventures on the Turco-Persian Frontier (London, Chatto and Windus, 1876);Google Scholar‘The Military Geography of Central Asia1’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, XVIII (05 1874), 454–68;Google ScholarMaj -GeneralGoldsmid, F.J., ‘On certain roads between Turkestan and India independent of the Oxus, or of any Oxus boundary’, J.R.U.S.I. XVIII (06 1874), 469–88;Google Scholar Colonel Fred Burnaby, Ride to Khiva (London, Bell, 1875); Rawlinson, Russia and England; Open Letter by Sir H. Bartle Frere to Sir John Kaye, 12 June 1874, Roberts Papers.

22 Baker, Clouds in the East, pp. 1–10, 329–76.

23 MacGregor, Colonel C.M., Narrative of a Journey through the Province of Khorasan and on the North-West Frontier of Afghanistan in 1875 (London, Allen, 1879), 2 vols. II,Google Scholar ‘The Merv Question’, appendix vi, pp. 241–67.

24 Memorandum on the Military Aspect of the Central Asian Question, Col. G. P. Colley, 7 June 1876, I.O.P.S.R., C 24; Preston, op. cit. pp. 91–4.

25 Napier to Northbrook, 13 November 1874; Northbrook to Napier, 15 October 1874; Norman to Northbrook, private, 9 July 1875; Northbrook to Eden, 24 July 1879; Northbrook to Ripon, 25 June 1880, ‘Correspondence with Persons in India’ Cambridge to Northbrook, 25 September and 23 October 1872, 20 January 1873; Northbrook to Cambridge, 22 July 1872, ‘Correspondence with Persons in England’, Northbrook Papers, IO.MSS.Eur.C 144/13, 14, 20 and 21; see also Napier Papers, misc., H.M.C.; Ripon Papers, BM.Add.MSS.43570; Cambridge Papers, Royal Archives, Windsor.

26 Northbrook to Rawlinson, private, 31 March 1875; Rawlinson to Northbrook, 5 March 1875; Northbrook to Davies, private, 17 September 1875, Northbrook Papers, Ibid.

27 Northbrook to Salisbury, 30 April, 2 and 10 June 1874; same to Halifax, 21 March 1873, Northbrook Papers, IO.MSS.Eur.1441 11; see also Salisbury Papers, loose bundles, Christ Church, Oxford; MacGregor to Major R. G. MacGregor, 3 May 1872. MacGregor Papers.

28 Memorandum on the Central Asian Question, Capt. E. Baring, n.d., Cromer Papers, PRO/30/6/16; Maj.-General J. M. Adye, Blackwood's (June 1875); Recollections of a Military Life (London, Smith, Elder, 1895).Google Scholar Adye, a soldier of strong Liberal views, had been Master-General of Ordnance during Cardwell's administration, and was retained an unofficial military critic and consultant by the Ministry when in opposition. See Northbrook Papers, IO.MSS.-Eur.C.144/7.

29 Salisbury to Northbrook, private, 3, 10 and 17 July 1874; Northbrook to Salisbury, private, 30 April, 2 and 10 June 1874; 22 January 1875; Northbrook to Napier, private and confidential, 14 November 1874, Northbrook Papers, IO.MSS.Eur.C. 144/11; Napier to Roberts, 10 July 1874, Roberts Papers, R49/8.

30 For a full and detailed account see Preston, op. cit.

31 See Lytton to Cranbrook, private, 28 October 1879, Cravbrook Papers, T501/49–54, Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office; Zulu Campaign Journal, Wolseley Papers, PRO/ WO/147/7; Lt -General SirButler, W.F., Life of Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley (London, Murray, 1899); Preston, op. cit. pp. 91–4.Google Scholar

32 Lytton to Salisbury, private, 1 April and 30 July 1876, Lytton Papers, IO.MSS.Eur.E.- 218/518/1; same to Northbrook, 6 April 1876; same to Rawlinson, private, 5 August 1876, Ibid.; ‘Minute on the Intelligence Department’, Notes and Minutes, Ibid. IO.MSS.Eur.E.- 218/526/1; ‘Note by Colonel Colley’, n.d. Ibid. For a full account, see Preston, op. cit. pp. 96–102.

33 Lytton to Salisbury, private, 30 July 1876, Ibid.; Salisbury to Lytton, private, 14 August 1877, Ibid.IO.MSS.Eur.E.218/518/2; Salisbury to Beaconsfield, private, 30 August 1876, Hughenden MSS, B/XX/Ce/202; Beaconsfield to Salisbury, confidential, 3 September 1876, bound volume, ‘Letters of Lord Beaconsfield’, Salisbury Papers.

34 Salisbury to Lytton, private, 4 August 1876, Lytton Papers, Ibid.

35 Salisbury to Lytton, private, 2 June and 4 August 1876, Ibid.; Life and Opinions, II, 1–46; ‘ Colonel MacGregor's Explorations in Beluchistan’, confidential, T. J. C. Plowden to H. K. Burne, Military Department, 31 July 1877, forwarding MacGregor's ‘Report of a reconnaissance to determine the practicability of sending a force from the sea, or from Quetta to a point… as near Herat as possible, without violating Persian or Afghan territory…’ 1 May 1877, I[ndia] M[ilitary] P[roceedings], CMLVI, India Office Library; Lt.-Col. C. M. MacGregor, ‘Memorandum on Armenia as a Theatre of War’, 15 December 1876, Roberts Papers, misc.; also contained as appendix c in The Defence of India, pp. 306–14.

36 For the Merv crisis, see especially Preston op. cit. chap. IV, pp. 287–361.

37 ‘Formation of an Intelligence Department in India’, Roberts to Burne, no. 196, 6 May 1876; Burne to Q.M.G. no. 198, 1 September 1876; Roberts to Burne, no. 199, 30 October 1876, IMP CMLIV and CMLVIII.

38 ‘Confidential Report of Committee on the Formation of an Intelligence Department,’ enclosed in MacGregor to Burne, no. 1406, 20 December 1877, IMP, MCCCLXIV; War Office Strictly Confidential Paper 0721, ‘Report on the Intelligence Branch’, Capt. E. H. H. Collen (July 1878), appendices n and in, 129–36, Secretary of State's Papers.

39 Cranbrook to Lytton, no. 31, 23 June 1879, enclosed in no. 1420, IMP, MCCCLXIV.

40 Lytton to Roberts, private, 12, 13 and 14 December 1879, Roberts Papers, R35/61

41 A copy of MacGregor's suppressed Official History may be found in the Roberts Papers.

42 For a full discussion of the Eden Commission, see Preston, op. cit. pp. 499–511.

43 Life and Opinions, II, 315.

44 Preston, op. cit. p. 510.

45 MacGregor to Napier, 5 June 1883; same to Sandeman, 15 June 1883; same to Roberts, 20 June, 13 and 23 August 1883; same to Stewart, 5 July, 28 September, 1 October 1883, MacGregor Papers.

46 Life and Opinions1, II, 342–5.

47 Ibid. p. 359.

48 Ibid. pp. 356–8.

49 Kimberley to Ripon, private, 2 October 1884, Ripon Papers, bound volume, ‘Secretary of State of Viceroy’, British Museum Reading Room.

50 Same to same, private, 15 October 1884, Ibid.; aiao Life and Opinions, 11, 358–61.

51 Ibid.

52 S.S.I, to Viceroy, secret telegram, no. 183, 3 November 1884; same to same, secret telegram, nos. 191 and 192, 6 November 1884, Ibid.

53 Viceroy to S.S.I., secret telegram, no. 213, 17 November 1884; Ripon to Kimberley, private, 6, 8 and 17 November 1884, Ibid.

54 Kimberley to Ripon, private, 17 November 1884, Ibid.

55 Life and Opinions, II, 359–60.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Waters, Brig.-General W.H.-H., “Secret and Confidential,” The Experiences of a Military Attaché (London, Murray, 1926), p. 42.Google Scholar