Curzon as Viceroy of India

The National Trust proposes to disrupt the historic arrangement of the Eastern Museum at Kedleston Hall, which houses objects collected by Lord Curzon. At Kedleston the National Trust portrays Curzon unfairly in a negative light and insinuates that there was malice or ill will towards the people of India in his conduct in government and his collection of Indian art and craft objects. Read more about the man and his artistic interests.

George Nathaniel Curzon was born on 11 January 1859 at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, the eldest son of the 4th Baron Scarsdale. He was educated at Wixenford School and Eton College before enrolling at the University of Oxford in 1878. At Oxford, he was elected President of the Union in 1880 and distinguished himself academically, being awarded a prestigious fellowship at All Souls College in 1883.

His first foray into politics came in 1885 as the assistant private secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. In the general election that autumn, he was defeated on his first attempt to enter Parliament as M.P. for South Derbyshire. However, on Salisbury’s recommendation, he stood and was duly elected for the constituency of Southport, Lancashire, in 1886, a seat he would hold for the next twelve years. Despite his parliamentary commitments, Curzon undertook a world tour during this period, which fostered an interest in Asian affairs and formed the basis of several books on the region. His specialist knowledge was recognised in 1891 when he was appointed Under-Secretary of State for India in the Tory Government.

On 22 April 1895, Curzon married Mary Victoria Leiter, daughter of Adolphus (Levi) Leiter, a Chicago millionaire in Washington, D.C. On his return to Britain, Curzon accepted Salisbury’s offer of the post of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and was admitted as a member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council.

The appointment he longed for was confirmed on 11 August 1898, when it was announced that at the age of just thirty-nine, he would succeed Lord Elgin as Viceroy of India. From the moment of his proclamation at Government House, Calcutta, on 6 January 1899 to his departure from the country nearly seven years later, Curzon would grapple with such diverse issues as securing the northern frontier, agricultural indebtedness, stabilising the rate of exchange in the currency, and the reduction of telegraphic communication costs between Britain and India. He also oversaw or initiated numerous beneficent reforms pertaining to education, police, armed forces, and the Indian Civil Service.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Lord Curzon’s terms as Viceroy, at least from a twenty-first-century perspective, was his handling of the Great Indian Famine of 1899-1900. The complete failure of the Monsoon in the summer of 1899 caused not only crop failure but also fodder and water famine and the death of cattle in millions.1 Sir John Eliot, the Government’s meteorologist, later explained that the drought that year was ‘the greatest in extent and intensity’ that India had experienced in 200 years. It affected an area of over 475,000 square miles and a population of approximately sixty million, including twenty-five million in British territory and more than thirty million in the native states. The British provinces afflicted included the greater part of the Bombay Presidency, much of Punjab, the whole of the Central Provinces and Berar. In the native states, the famine area extended from Hyderabad to Kathiawar, including Baroda, Rajputana and Central India. Even the rich province of Gujarat, which had not known famine for a century, was devastated.2

Human mortality estimates vary widely; however, numerous contemporary accounts place the figure in the region of 1,250,000. The figure is arrived at by taking the decennial average of deaths per year and subtracting from it the deaths recorded in 1900, thereby providing the figure for excess death.3 Of this 1,250,000, approximately a quarter of a million were from the native states, who sought refuge under British administration because the relief provisions were more attractive.4 Estimates suggest that of the 1,250,000, at least one-fifth of these deaths were due to cholera and smallpox brought on by famine conditions, leaving approximately one million people who died of actual starvation.5 However, exact figures are notoriously difficult to quantify; the above relate only to British India. Describing the difficulty of arriving at even an approximate figure for deaths outside the bounds of British administration, the contemporary journalist H. Caldwell Lipsett noted harshly:

There are no reliable statistics in a Native State at all, no means of ascertaining the mortality there. In the recesses of these ill-administered little principalities, careless of human life, the people die off like flies, with no eye to mark them, and no British official to record them. The only means of tracing their disappearance is in the decennial census which is taken for the whole of India.6

Sir Thomas Holderness, secretary to the Revenue and Agricultural Department of the Government of India, calculated deaths in the native states based on the census returns. In 1891, the native states affected by the famine had a population of 42,000,000, and in 1901, a population of only 36,000,000. The decline during the decade was 14.5 per cent, whereas in the states not visited by famine, the population increased by over 12 per cent. However, he believed it would be problematic to ascribe the excess mortality solely to famine. For example, in the states of Western India, plague contributed a considerable quota of deaths.7

The nature of the excess mortality in British territory is also contentious. In Curzon’s opinion, to say that the greater part of the people who died in British India had ‘died of starvation or even destitution would be an unjustifiable exaggeration’.8 Holderness concurred, explaining that in the Central Provinces where relief was so liberal that a starving person was unknown, there was nevertheless considerable excess mortality from cholera, dysentery, and malarial fever, especially in the rainy season of 1900.9 Curzon’s contemporary, the writer Lovat Fraser concluded that ‘Upon the evidence available, I should say that there were probably comparatively few deaths from actual starvation in British India; but I think there must have been many such deaths in native states, where, although considerable help was given, the famine administration was rarely under direct British control.10

Lipsett argued that from 1891-1901 the total population of India only increased by approximately seven million, considerably less than expected. However, the population of British India grew by 10.5 million, leaving an actual decrease of 3.5 million in the Native States. Moreover, there should have been an increase of about six million in proportionate figures instead of a decrease. Therefore, in ten years, approximately ten million people died or disappeared from these native states.11

Curzon modelled his relief scheme on the recommendation of the Famine Commission of 1898, which stressed the necessity of relief operations before the people were in extremis. It extended the area of gratuitous relief, especially kitchen relief for children and older people, meting out special treatment to aboriginal and forest tribes and starting small village relief works in exceptional cases in preference to large works.12

Critics of Curzon’s famine policy frequently reference his controversial circular letter to local governments issued during the first months of the crisis, recommending greater stringency in famine tests and advising against excessive generosity. He wished to avoid the recurrence of a pattern established during the 1897 famine when Indians who were not in a state of deprivation were adjudged to have abused the Government’s charity by availing themselves of unnecessary relief. The interpretation of Curzon’s directive depended much on the local governments. Districts in the Central Provinces that had suffered severely during the famine of 1897 disregarded the circular and never allowed wages to fall to the ‘penal minimum’. Accordingly, their populations fared better than in neighbouring provinces such as Bombay, where the circular engendered frugality.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the famine, Lipsett argued that ‘Lord Curzon’s most valid defence [was] that the responsibility for the harsh application of his circular did not really rest with him but with others; and that when he discovered its misapplication, he at once revoked his own policy.’13 Commenting on the decentralised nature of Indian administration and the relative autonomy of the Bombay Government in particular, Curzon remarked, ‘I am no more responsible for them than the man in the moon, and…for some time past, in public and private I have done nothing but hammer away at Bombay’.14

He subsequently defended his handling of the crisis, distinguishing between the cautiousness he adopted at the onset of the famine to encourage frugality and at its height when circumstances suggested that the preservation of life required further expenditure. ‘…when extraordinarily high death rates revealed the existence of very wide-spread destitution and suffering’, Curzon explained, ‘the Government of India did not hesitate to advise the Bombay Government to meet the situation by enlarging the customary bounds of gratuitous relief…’15

The notion that the British administration showed a callous indifference to Indian suffering is disputed by the enormous sum of £10 million spent on famine relief in 1899-1900 and 1900-1901. The figures demonstrate that Curzon did not begrudge aid when necessity demanded. In 1900, the high-water mark of relief was £6 million, as against £4 million under his predecessor during the earlier famine of 1897, and the relief ratio was 18 per cent against 10 per cent. In the district of Merwara, 75 per cent of the population availed themselves of government relief.16 In total, during the spring and summer of 1900, between five and six million Indians received relief. Contemporary author Lovat Fraser described the Government’s response as ‘exceptionally rapid’,17 while in the estimation of Curzon’s biographer Sir David Gilmour, ‘The energy and thoroughness with which Curzon handled the famine crisis considerably reduced the degree of suffering…’.18 Curzon himself remarked with satisfaction that ‘There was no was parallel in the history of India, or in that of any other country in the world, to the numbers who had for weeks on end been dependent on the charity of the Government’.19

The growth of the Indian population under British rule, an increase of a hundred million over the previous forty years, added to the enormity of Curzon’s task.20 Conversely, the Famine Fund raised in 1900 was not as large as in 1897, despite the greater calamity (£1,130,000 in 1897 as against £930,000 in 1900). Of this total, India subscribed over £200,000, while the United Kingdom contributed approximately £580,000 as against £820,000 in 1897. Contemporaries attributed the shortfall to the re-direction of valuable resources to South Africa to alleviate the suffering caused by the Second Anglo-Boer War.21 Nevertheless, the contributions raised in individual British cities were impressive, notably, Glasgow, which raised over £53,000 (slightly more than the £50,000 raised by Australia), Liverpool, which contributed £28,000, in addition to the £106,000 that came from the rest of Lancashire. Elsewhere, in a notable demonstration of Anglo-German cooperation prior to the Great War, and as evidence of a broader European sympathy for India’s plight, the Kaiser telegraphed Curzon with a sympathetic message confirming a contribution of half a million marks raised in Berlin.22

The Indian Congress Party, in common with modern critics, was inclined to blame the British administration for the severity of the famine, notably the high land revenue tax and the drain of the ‘home charges’ (money colonial India contributed towards the maintenance of the Raj, including its administrative and military expenses). While acknowledging the poverty of the Indian cultivator and admitting that taxation was high, Curzon justifiably attributed the famine to drought, which, he maintained, dwarfed other considerations. He also disputed that Indian poverty was increasing, arguing that average incomes had risen since 1880. In his resolution of 16 Jan 1902, he explained, ‘There is no country in the world, where the meteorological and economic conditions are at all similar to those prevailing in India, that could by any land-revenue system that might possibly be devised escape the same results’.23 As Lipsett acknowledged, ‘The prosperity of India depends ultimately on the ratio of its resources to its population, and only immediately upon the clemency of the seasons.’

Curzon enquired into the relationship between land revenue tax and the causation of famine and found little correlation. As historian David Dilks explains, ‘although the general movement of revenue assessments had been downwards, the incidence of famine had increased. In the latest visitation, the most highly assessed regions, except Gujarat, had not been the most grievously afflicted. In relation to the fickleness of the climate, land revenue became a relatively minor factor.’ For example, Dilks continues, ‘In the Central Provinces, the agricultural classes had lost between 1894 and 1900 produce worth £26 million, equal to the land revenue for fifty years. Since 1896, the state itself had spent there, on famine relief alone, the equivalent of seven years’ land revenue.’24 A Viceroy could make the country more efficient, but he could not make it richer. Nevertheless, Curzon had definite opinions about how Indian prosperity might be increased and future famines avoided. Instead of relying on the single precarious agriculture industry, he encouraged the diversification of the Indian economy, and the investment of capital and labour employment upon railways, canals, factories, workshops, mills, coalmines, metalliferous mines, tea, sugar, and on indigo plantations.25

Critics of the British Empire and its officials frequently conflate ill-advised policies with malevolent intent. The effect is to create the entirely unjust impression that British officials either sought or were indifferent to the suffering of indigenous peoples. It is well to remember that at the height of the famine, Curzon had himself inoculated and left the highlands of Simla during the hottest period of the year to tour the famine camps and assess the people’s needs. He later told Queen Victoria that he had visited every plague hospital in Bombay and Poona and had personally seen almost every infected patient.26

Curzon’s tour at the end of July 1900, during which he visited the worst affected districts of Gujarat, coincided with the arrival of much-needed heavy rains and gave rise to the superstition among the Indian peasantry that Curzon was responsible for their appearance. The Indian Mirror, representing the native press, reported on 12 August 1900, ‘Our noble Viceroy intensely wished that the famine must cease, and the long-delayed rains come. Such a wish is a prayer. And the prayer has been granted…The gods have begun to bless Lord Curzon. May the blessing light also upon the millions whom the Viceroy loves, and seeks to serve and succour!’27 The Pioneer concurred, reporting that ‘for generations to come the story will be told of the miracle that he worked’. Of Curzon’s touring, the journal added, ‘his movements have been faithfully chronicled in the native Press, his benevolent spirit has been applauded, and there is unquestionably a wide feeling of satisfaction that he put aside all other public duties for the moment in order to devote his time to one special object…’28

As a witness to Curzon’s characteristically meticulous and hands-on approach to the crisis, the Pioneer’s account of his actions is instructive:

Lord Curzon did not merely content himself with halting at this and that station and summoning famine staff to his railway carriage. With his characteristic energy and desire to know everything in detail, he went conscientiously into the camps and hospitals, seeing with his own eyes how the people fared and how the operations for their relief were carried out. If he had to ride through pelting rain and wade in deep mud, any feeling of personal discomfort was outweighed by the thought that the long-continued drought had come to an end, and that his presence was hailed as that of a god who had commanded the rain to fall.29

Curzon himself later reflected on his profound sense of duty and recalled his ‘incessant anxiety’, his sense of ‘almost overpowering responsibility’ and ‘unending toil’.30 When at length the rains arrived, removing the threat of another famine, he declared that their arrival had brought him the happiest weeks he had spent in India.31

The Viceroy was also quick to acknowledge the debt owed to his subordinates, who had willingly risked their lives to preserve others:

…I remember the brave men who, with no reward to hope for, and no public applause to urge them on, have, for month after month, whether in the scorching heat or through the soaking rains, spent of their energy and life-blood and strength in fighting the real battle, wherever the enemy threatened or the worst danger lay.32

Notable among his subordinates was Lord Northcote, Governor of Bombay, who contemporaries credited with having saved the cattle of Gujarat from extinction by establishing a cattle farm at Charodi and requesting the Director of Agriculture in Bombay to collect the pick of the dying herds. Another Bombay civilian, Martin Wood, who was in charge of the Jambusar district, took to having his meals served in the cholera hospital amid the dead and dying to deter the people – panic-stricken from the spread of cholera – from fleeing the administrative centre to wander the countryside, where they would assuredly have died of starvation. Wood’s senior officer, R.B. Stewart, buried the cholera corpses with his own hands when the “sweepers” had fled. Beyond the administration, there were numerous stories of missionaries tending to the sufferings of those they ministered, living and dying alongside them. As contemporary writer Lovat Fraser concluded, ‘The deeds done in the 1900 famine are worthy of epic narration. To tell them fully would take volumes…’33

As a reforming Viceroy of India, Curzon had engendered the resentment of those he sought to reform, including members of the army, civil service, and judiciary. However, as the opinion of at least one Indian civil servant testifies, there was also a mutual respect for their chief’s handling of the crisis. Evan Maconochie, an Indian Civil Service official, remembered Curzon’s ‘simple and never-failing humanity’ and claimed that no Viceroy had been so accessible or eager to communicate with men of all classes. Maconochie would subsequently describe Curzon as ‘the greatest viceroy of our times – possibly of all time – fearless, creative, ardent, human’.34 The description may have surprised Curzon’s critics in Britain, who were inclined to regard him as brusque, egotistical, and lacking in humour. However, those closest to the Viceroy would have recognised Curzon’s empathy. Walter Lawrence, having worked at Curzon’s side for over three years as his private secretary, noted in his diary that his chief had never spoken a rude word to him, and after a further year, he recalled that hardly a day had passed without some striking act of generosity or of practical sympathy for those in trouble.35

A small commission presided over by Sir Anthony MacDonnell was later appointed to inquire into the results of the famine operations. The commission concluded that the relief distributed was excessive and that the excess was accounted for ‘by an imperfect enforcement of tests on relief works, by a too ready admission to gratuitous relief, and by a greater readiness on the people’s part to accept relief owing to the demoralising influences of the preceding famine’. As Fraser concluded, ‘At any rate these were faults on the right side’. Central to the Commissions’ recommendations for the revision of the Famine Codes was the replacement of the minimum wage by payment by task-work for the able-bodied, and the provision of rules dealing with a fodder famine.36

As Dilks acknowledges, ‘No feature of British rule appealed more forcibly to Curzon’s imagination than [the] alleviation of suffering by the transformation of the land.’37 Although irrigation was practised under native rule, Lovat Fraser boasted in 1911 that ‘it had been enormously developed by the British, who have made nearly all the great works now existing’.38 In his book on Indian irrigation published in 1893, Alfred Deakin, former Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth, described India’s irrigation system as ‘bold, comprehensive, and original’ and as ‘a monument to the sagacity, ability, and magnanimity of British rulers…’ Before concluding, ‘there is not a canal system in the world to compare with that of India’.39

Despite expending vast sums on famine relief, including the budget surplus, Curzon resolved to invest in irrigation works to guard against future droughts. A visit to the Chenab irrigation scheme, where 200,000 people were then settled on reclaimed soil, inspired him to expand the work of transforming the semi-desert wastelands of Punjab. He increased the annual grant for irrigation projects and appointed a commission to travel through the country and report on the viability of future works. In his final budget speech of 1905, Curzon reflected that the Indian Government had spent £31 million on state irrigation, dug nearly 50,000 miles of canals and distributaries, and irrigated an area of 21.5 million acres out of a total irrigated area in British India of about 47 million acres.40 As Gilmour explains:

When the commission’s recommendations were accepted in 1903, an immense twenty-year programme, designed to irrigate six and a half million acres and employ 280,000 men, was begun. Two years later Curzon was able to report that, since his first visit to the Chenab Canal, the area watered by it had doubled [from one to two million acres] while the settled population had multiplied by five [one million people by 1905].41

Addressing the significance of the irrigation works directly, Curzon concluded, ‘We are about to embark upon it with the consciousness that we are not merely converting the gifts of Providence to the service of man, but that we are labouring to reduce human suffering and in times of calamity to rescue and sustain millions of human lives’.42 In assessing Curzon’s contribution to Indian irrigation, Fraser concludes:

He only carried on, in the department of irrigation, what others had done before him; but the special merit of his labours lay in the fact that he systematised the whole enterprise, prepared a clear and final programme, which represented the utmost possible extension of the Indian irrigation system, arranged for its finance and for its steady prosecution, and incidentally silenced the foolish criticism which had been propagated without a check for years.43

Curzon also initiated legislation to protect the interests of the Indian peasant. While acknowledging the necessity of moneylenders for agrarian life, he was anxious to ensure that they did not displace the original inhabitants of the land. The Co-operative Credit Societies Act (1904) to tackle peasant indebtedness and the Punjab Alienation Act (1905) were steps in this direction. The latter Act prevented moneylenders from taking a holding in debt settlement and was subsequently extended to other regions. Such initiatives led one Hindu Prince to affirm:

We have never had a Viceroy so anxious to learn the real wishes of the children of the soil, so scrupulous in giving a patient hearing to their grievances, so full of schemes for the development of the resources of the Empire, so firmly resolved to leave India, at the conclusion of his term of office, a better, a more contented, and a more prosperous land than he found it.44

Curzon combined canal construction with the extension of India’s railways to combat famine and promote the country’s prosperity. India rarely, if ever, experienced famine to the same extent in all regions of the country simultaneously. Therefore, by connecting the bountiful districts to those in need, the railways could sustain entire populations with imported grain. Commenting on the significance of the railways, of which he had constructed more than any Viceroy, Curzon explained, ‘They have given to the landlocked districts access to external markets in times of plenty, and they have brought the produce of those markets to their doors in times of need.’45 The Chief Commissioner of Raipur Andrew Fraser, later Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, articulated the impact of railway expansion on his district at the time of the 1899 famine:

It is impossible to overestimate the benefits which railway extension has conferred upon the province. If Chhattisgarh, for instance, had not been opened up by railways, it is horrifying to think of what might have occurred. The recent extension of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway poured in supplies of the cheap scalded rice of Orissa, which penetrated far into the interior. In 1897, this source of supply was wanting, and the more expensive rice from Burma was the chief food-stuff brought in. In the famine of 1897, when exports were carried away in the early months, the Chhattisgarh people pointed to the railways as an exaggeration of their ills. In this famine, they have regarded them as their salvation. Within one year, the railways have brought into the province grain enough to feed three millions of people for a year.46

Contradicting the argument that the railways had raised prices prohibitively, Curzon insisted that the export trade in food grains could not have produced any such result because it was infinitesimal. ‘Railways themselves cannot raise prices’, he explained, ‘their tendency is to equalise them. Prices may rise from an increase of demand over supply – that is, by the increase in the number of those to be fed or in the standard of living. But railways are not accountable for this consequence.’47

The Indian census of 1901 shows that the population of the Native States declined by over 5 per cent. However, the figures suggest that the districts under British rule fared significantly better, silencing critics who maintained that ‘native’ rule would have been preferable to British rule.48 In the final analysis, British administration and technology had mitigated the effects of a famine, which contemporaries acknowledged as the worst in India’s modern history. As Lipsett realised, ‘with the single exception of [his] ill-omened Circular, Lord Curzon did everything that was possible to mitigate the effects of this unparalleled famine’.49

Lord Curzon’s steadfast commitment to preserving the sub-continent’s cultural heritage contradicts latter-day notions of him as an arrogant cultural chauvinist. The Viceroy considered the conservation of India’s monuments ‘an elementary obligation of government’.50 He declared his intention not to ‘allow the memorials of an earlier and superior art of architecture to fall into ruin’. Accordingly, he appointed a Director-General of archaeology and gave grants to the provincial governments for restoration. He overruled those who advocated frugality and ‘happily multiplied the grants to local governments by a factor of eight’.51

Curzon’s biographer Gilmour tells us that ‘The preservationist mission was carried out with biblical fervour’.52 Curzon ordered the removal of inappropriate colonial additions from culturally significant buildings, such as an English club and a memorial chapel that occupied the Queen’s chamber and the King’s throne room at the Mandalay Palace. During his famine tour of 1900, he visited the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in Ahmedabad and ordered the Mamlatdar’s (tax collector’s) office removed from its sacred precincts,53 before restoring the artistic tracery of its windows.54 He hired or trained skilled artisans, including a Florentine mosaicist, who he tasked with repairing marble panels at the Red Fort in Delhi. The Mogul tombs and the minarets of the gateway to Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra were rebuilt. He restored the town of Fatehpur Sikri and built watercourses, fountains, and planted cypresses in the precincts of the Taj Mahal.

In addition to his many restoration projects, Curzon commissioned the Holwell Monument at Calcutta, donated a clock for the Golden Temple at Amritsar, a lamp for the Taj Mahal, a pulpit to one Lahore mosque and a lamp to another.55 Speaking of his dedication to India’s monumental heritage in 1904, Curzon declared, ‘As a pilgrim at the shrine of beauty I have visited them, but as a priest in the temple of duty have I charged myself with their reverent custody and their studious repair.’56 In the words of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘After every other viceroy has been forgotten, Curzon will be remembered because he restored all that was beautiful in India.’57

Curzon extended a similar spirit of conservation to India’s wildlife. Although a hunter himself, he opposed animal cruelty and was anxious to secure the survival of native species. He suppressed the barbaric treatment of large and small animals, from catching majestic elephants in pits to the clubbing to death of mad dogs in Madras. He intervened successfully to save the Gir lion and attempted to reverse declining lion numbers by obtaining beasts from Africa and persuading the Maharaja of Gwalior to reintroduce them to his estate. He supervised the preparation of legislation for a game bill, which was emasculated under his successor, and passed an Act to preserve wild birds, prohibiting the export of feathers torn from living birds to adorn ladies’ hats in Europe.58 He also intervened in preventing the destruction of fine landscapes. Hearing of a scheme for taking water from the Gersoppa (Jog) Falls, he refused to allow the Bombay Government to ‘sacrifice for the sake of some miserable cotton mill, one of the great glories of the Eastern world’.59

Curzon’s term as Viceroy ended prematurely in 1905 when the British Government accepted his resignation following a dispute with the commander-in-chief of the Indian army, Lord Kitchener. Acceding to the King’s wishes and on the advice of his doctors, Curzon did not stand in the general election of 1906 and found himself out of public life for the first time in twenty years. It was a time of professional and personal loss for Curzon, whose beloved wife Mary died later that year. The inheritance from her estate enabled him to indulge his passion for historical conservation, including the purchase and restoration of Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire and Bodiam Castle in East Sussex. He would later gift both properties to the National Trust.

Curzon became Chancellor of Oxford University in 1907, and in 1911 received an earldom, along with the Viscountcy of Scarsdale and the Barony of Ravensdale. He joined H.H. Asquith’s coalition government in 1915 as Lord Privy Seal, a minister without portfolio, impressing colleagues, including former critics, with his selfless devotion to the war effort and willingness to make himself useful. His varied responsibilities included membership of the Dardanelles Committee — established to regulate the offensive in the Eastern Mediterranean and manage diverse campaigns — Chairman of the Shipping Control Board, Vice-president of the National Service League, and President of the newly established Air Board. When Lloyd George became Prime Minister in December 1916, Curzon became Leader of the House of Lords, in addition to his membership of the war cabinet. The following year he married his second wife, Grace Duggan (nee Hinds), the widow of an Irish-Argentinian rancher and daughter of Joseph Monroe Hinds, former United States Consul General to Brazil.

Curzon was appointed Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George’s post-war government, a position he continued to hold after the Tories returned to power in 1922, serving with distinction until 1924. In March 1925, Curzon was operated on, having suffered a severe bladder haemorrhage. He died of complications on 20 March 1925, aged sixty-six. On his death, The Times of India asserted that he was ‘in his prime the greatest Englishman of his time; to India he gave his superb best’.60

1 H. Caldwell Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, 1898-1903, (London, 1903), p.55; and David Dilks, Curzon in India, (2 vols, New York, 1969), i, p. 232.

2 Lovat Fraser, India under Curzon and After, (London, 1911), p. 283.

3 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 56.

4 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 284.

5 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, pp.56-7. See also Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 293.

6 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 57.

7 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, pp. 293-4.

8 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 294.

9 Ibid., p. 294. See also Dilks, Curzon in India, i, p. 232.

10 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 294.

11 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, pp.57-8.

12 Ibid., p. 64.

13 Ibid., p. 64.

14 Quoted in Dilks, Curzon in India, i, p. 77.

15 Quoted in Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 62.

16 Ibid., p. 65.

17 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 285.

18 David Gilmour, Curzon: Imperial Statesman 1859-1925, (London, 1994), p. 173.

19 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p.285.

20 Ibid., p. 281.

21 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, pp. 65-6

22 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, pp. 286-7.

23 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 87.

24 Dilks, Curzon in India, i, p. 232.

25 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 96.

26 Quoted in Gilmour, Curzon, p. 173.

27 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, pp. 289-90.

28 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, pp. 288-9.

29 Ibid., p. 289.

30 Thomas Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, (2 vols, London, 1906), i, pp. 41-2.

31 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 68.

32 Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, i, p. 28.

33 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, pp. 290-2.

34 Quoted in Gilmour, Curzon, pp. 162-3.

35 Ibid: p.162.

36 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 295.

37 Dilks, Curzon in India, i, p. 233

38 Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 296.

39 Alfred Deakin, Irrigated India: An Australian View of India and Ceylon, Their Irrigation and Agriculture, (London, 1893), p. 10.

40 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p.300

41 Gilmour, Curzon, pp. 173-4. See also Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 301.

42 Quoted in Fraser, India under Curzon and After, p. 304.

43 Ibid.

44 Quoted in Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 9.

45 Quoted in Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, i, p. 91.

46 Ibid: pp. 91-2

47 Ibid: p. 92.

48 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, p. 97.

49 Ibid: p. 64.

50 Quoted in Gilmour, Curzon, p. 178.

51 Ibid., pp. 178-9.

52 Ibid., p.179.

53 M.S. Commissariat, A History of Gujarat: Including a Survey of its Chief Architectural Monuments and Inscriptions, (3 vols, London, 1938), i, pp. 503-4.

54 Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, pp. 102-3.

55 Gilmour, Curzon, pp. 179-81.

56 Quoted in Gilmour, Curzon, p. 181.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid., pp 177-8.

59 Quoted in Gilmour, Curzon, p. 178.

60 Ibid., p. 600.