Valerie Haye, of the British in India Historical Trust, has supplied the following details of a live lecture being given on Tuesday 26 May 2026, by Sam Dalrymple:

SHATTERED LANDS: FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ASIA
Sam Dalrymple
Tuesday 26 May 2026 11:30am-1:00pm
University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, Mayfair, London W1K 1DB

11:30am: Meeting/refreshments
12:00 noon: Lecture
1:00pm: Lunch (optional)

‘As recently as 1928 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait were bound together as the Indian Empire. It was the British Empire’s crown jewel: a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population’.

‘And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart: carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division’.

‘Shattered Lands presents the story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches’.

Sam Dalrymple is a Scottish historian, film-maker and activist. The son of historian William Dalrymple, he grew up in Delhi, and graduated from the University of Oxford as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar.

His work has been published in the New York Times, TIME, New Yorker and Economist. His book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, was an international bestseller, and a ‘Best Book of 2025’ for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine and History Today.

This lecture is presented in association with the Indian Civil Service Society.

Tea and coffee (self-serve and included in the ticket price) will be available in the Library on arrival. At 11.45 am there will be a short meeting for members of the (and anyone interested in joining).
The lecture will be presented in the Library at 12 noon. For those who would like to stay, an optional two-course meal (main course, dessert and coffee) from 1pm to 2.30pm will follow in the Drawing Room. Drinks can be purchased separately from the pay bar in the Drawing Room after the lecture. Dietary requirements accommodated where notified. Dress code: smart casual. All welcome.

Tickets for the lecture cost £15. Tickets for the lecture and meal cost £65.
Bookings for the meal close on 21 May.
Bookings for the lecture close on 23 May.

HOW TO BOOK
Click to book tickets online by card (fees apply), by bank transfer or by cheque.

Valerie Haye, British in India Historical Trust

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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)

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Our tour was arranged by Â鶹´«Ã½Chairman Paul Dean, and led by Dr Jennifer Howes, an art historian whose book (Routledge, 2023) has recently become available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to replace the building destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, St Paul’s Cathedral was completed in 1710. The cathedral floor was intended to be an open area, with monuments located in the crypt. This changed in the 1790s, when Parliament demanded that St Paul’s be used to commemorate Britain’s heroes of empire. The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s stipulated that the ‘first four’ floor memorials should be to ‘men of knowledge’, and placed at the NW, NE, SE and SW crossing points below the dome.

1799: William ‘Orientalist’ Jones (1746-1794)

A prominent Orientalist scholar, William Jones, a Judge on the Bengal Supreme Court at Calcutta, studied Sanskrit at Varanasi and established the Asiatic Society, sponsoring the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita and triggering ‘an outpouring of scholarship on the civilisation of what Jones called ‘this wonderful country’ (Dalrymple, 2019).

Jones died in 1794, and was buried at South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta.

Commissioned by the EIC, a memorial honouring him was executed in white marble by John Bacon the Elder (1740-1799), and installed under the SW corner of the dome of St Paul’s in 1799.

Wearing a toga, Jones holds a quill in one hand; a scroll labelled ‘Plan of the Asiatic Society’, in the other. He leans on a copy of his book ‘The Institutes of Hindu Law’, which rests on a podium decorated with the scales and sword of Justice, and a lyre – symbols of his legal career, and early poetic writing. The plinth below shows three images reflecting his later interest in Indian languages and culture – a young woman dressed in a sari – personifying the Ganges; flanked by Brahma and the Kurma Avatar of Vishnu.

In contrast to the military memorials it had commissioned for Westminster Abbey, the EIC here presented its support for the peaceful, civilising activities of the late 18thc ‘Oriental Renaissance’. The inscription mentions the Company’s gratitude for Jones’s public services; admiration for his ‘genius and learning’, and respect for his ‘character and virtues’.

Positioning Jones’s memorial in such a prominent location, grouped with Baker’s memorials for John Howard, prison reformer and philanthropist, and Samuel Johnson, poet, scholar and lexicographer (which were already in situ in the SE and NE points under the dome), ‘suggests an appreciation of scholarly assiduity and a humanitarian, tolerant, facet of British rule in India’.
 
1826: Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766-1814)

Noted for his exploits in the West Indies, Java and India, Gillespie, aged 48, was killed in 1814 during the Battle of Kalunga, following which he was buried at Meerut.

Parliament moved quickly to arrange a national monument to the hero of Kalunga. A memorial to Gillespie was proposed by Lord Castlereagh, the Tory Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 21st June 1815. Executed by Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841), it was installed in the South Transept, Centre Aisle of St Paul’s in 1826.

Eschewing classical allegory, Chantrey depicted Gillespie in a Major-General’s uniform, with a highly decorated, embroidered jacket and a medal pinned to his chest. A heavy cloak, held on his shoulders with tassels and a thick cord, falls to his feet. A fringed sash sits around his waist. In one hand he holds a scroll, which, like the scroll at his feet, presumably represents military orders and plans.

 
1835: Bishop Reginald Heber (1784-1826)

After being consecrated as Bishop of Calcutta, Reginald Heber arrived in India in October 1823.

Alan Tritton, erstwhile Â鶹´«Ã½President, quotes Heber’s impressions of Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens: ‘It is not only a curious but picturesque and most beautiful scene and more perfectly answers Milton’s idea of Paradise than anything I ever saw’.

Heber triggered two centuries of historian headache during his 1824 visit to Dacca, where (per the Â鶹´«Ã½post of 25/3/25), he consecrated the Narinda burial ground, and noted in his diary that ‘the old Durwan’ called the large monument the tomb of ‘Colombo Sahib’.

Following her chance discovery of Archdeacon Firminger’s 1917 epitaph transcriptions in Bengal Past and Present, Â鶹´«Ã½historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones concluded that Heber’s note was based on an aural distortion of ‘[Nicholas] Clerembault, Esq.’ the London-based Huguenot family member who had become ‘Chief of Ye English Factory at Dacca’, and died in 1775.

Heber died, aged 42, in 1826, and was buried at St John’s Church in Trichinopoly. A collection of his hymns, including ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand…’ and ‘Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty’, was published shortly afterwards.

Heber’s memorial was, like Gillespie’s, executed by Francis Leggatt Chantrey. Completed in 1835, it was installed in the Crypt of St Paul’s (Chapel of St Faith, South Aisle).

A note on the sculptor:
Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841): Famously self-taught – he had ‘never had an hour’s instruction from any sculptor in my life’ – Chantrey displayed ‘a great gift for characterisation’; his ‘ability to render the softness of flesh’ was much admired. (Per the Â鶹´«Ã½post of 11/5/25), his 1820 sculpture of Dr James Anderson at St George’s Cathedral, Madras, was called a ‘wonderfully lifelike and natural’ work).

Ironically, as Â鶹´«Ã½member Stephen McClarence points out, ‘D±ðspite all the wonderful memorials he sculpted, Chantrey’s own [at Norton, near Sheffield] is a plain unornamented slab’.

1862: Henry Montgomery Lawrence (1806-1857)

The Chief Commissioner of Oudh, Henry Lawrence died on 4 July 1857 from wounds received during the attack on the Residency at Lucknow. He was buried in the Residency grounds.

A memorial to Lawrence, funded by the SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) and the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), was executed by John Graham Lough (1798-1876), and installed on the west wall of the East Aisle of the North Transept of St Paul’s in 1862.

The statue, in white marble, shows Lawrence with one hand holding an unfurling scroll; the other a leather-bound volume, resting on a second book. Beside him is a sword with a curved Indian, talwar–style Sikh blade – possibly modelled on the sword presented to him in 1842 by the Maharajah of Lahore.

In a reference to Lawrence’s ‘Military Asylum’ at Sanawar – a hill station boarding school for protecting the children of British soldiers from ‘the debilitating effects of the tropical climate, and the demoralizing influence of Barrack-life’ – a relief below the plinth portrays him seated on a low chair, welcoming a group of three children with a matronly woman.

By omitting Lawrence’s medals (eg his KCB) from the sculpture, and any mention of his military rank (Brigadier-General) from the inscription, Lough’s memorial focuses attention on Lawrence as a philanthropic ‘man of action’, in keeping with his chosen epitaph ‘Here lies Henry Lawrence who tried to do his duty’.

For details on the many other memorials with Indian connections at St Paul’s, please click on the , created with Stepney Community Trust, and , an academic research project hosted at the University of York’s Department of the History of Art.

Information about the Cathedral’s opening hours, times of services, range of tours and other events is available on their website

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter readers, family and friends may be interested in the following events:

Date / Time	Event	Place
On now (until Monday 4 May 2026)	‘Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters’ An exhibition about the lives and work of the seven Anglo-Indian sisters whose influence in art, literature, photography and society ‘extended from Calcutta to Kensington, and from the salons of Little Holland House to the Bloomsbury Group’.	Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford GU3 1DQ Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 21 June 2026)	‘Painters, Ports and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850’ Exhibition featuring ‘over 100 objects from Asia’, including ‘rich opaque watercolours, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts’and a ‘spectacular’ 37′ long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow.	Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 8 Nov 2026)	‘The last Princesses of Punjab’ Exhibition about the ‘Punjabi princess and suffragette icon’ Sophia Duleep Singh, and ‘the women who shaped her’	Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX. Click for further details, including registration.
On now (until Sunday 13 Dec 2026)	‘Colonial Views of India’ The ‘first exhibition focusing on photographs and negatives in the Ashmolean’, featuring ‘previously unseen photographs of India by Colonel Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904)’	Ashmolean Museum (Gallery 29), Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH. Click for further details.
Wednesday 13 May 2026 – Friday 15 May 2026	‘The Indentured Labour Route at the Crossroads: Imagining New Futures for the Global Diaspora’ A 3-day conference in Mauritius on ‘Indenture, Migration, Memory, Identity and the Future of the Global Diaspora’	University of Mauritius, Reduit Click for further details, including registration.
Tuesday 26 May 2026, 11:30-13:00	‘Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia’ A joint BIHT and Indian Civil Service Society lecture by Sam Dalrymple, followed by (optional) lunch	University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, Mayfair, London W1K 1DB. Click for further details, including registration.
From Monday 1 Jun 2026, 10:30-15:00	‘The Visakhapatnam Cabinet’ Made from padauk wood in the port city of Visakhapatnam c.1760, this ivory-inlaid cabinet (‘the largest and most ornate piece of furniture of its kind in the National Trust’s collection’) returns to display at Kingston Lacy after conservation work at the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio at Knole, Kent.	Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. Click for further details (and directions, eg ‘satnav unreliable; follow B3082 and brown signs’).
From Monday 8 Jun 2026 – Monday 13 Jul 2026	‘The relentless rise of the East India Company’ Lecture tour by the historian William Dalrymple, covering ‘more than two hundred years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations, and bloody resistance’	Lectures will be held at venues in: Birmingham, Chester, Tunbridge Wells, Guildford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Malvern. Click for further details (and to purchase tickets).
Sunday 14 Jun 2026, 2pm-3pm	‘Indian Forces Chattri Memorial Service’ Memorial Service in remembrance of ‘the Indian and Nepalese soldiers from Undivided/Prepartitioned India who were cremated in Brighton during the First World War’	Indian Forces Chattri Memorial, Patcham Down, Standean Lane, Brighton BN1 8ZB. Refreshments afterwards at Hove Albion Football Club, American Express Stadium, Village Way, BN1 9BL. Click for further details.
Saturday 27 Jun 2026, 10:00am-15:00pm	‘FIBIS Open Meeting and AGM’ FIBIS (Families in British India Society) Open Day and AGM. Lectures include ‘Curzon’s Chosen Men’ (Alan Dillon); ‘Mutiny 1857 – the Indian Perspective’ (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones) and ‘With Ox Carts & Dooli Bearers – Medals of India to 1947’ (Nathan Smith)	Union Jack Club, Sandell Street, London SE1 8UJ. Click for further details, including registration.
From Wednesday 1 Jul 2026 – Friday 31 Jul 2026	‘South Asian Heritage Month 2026’ Launched at Cardiff University’s Bute Building on 26 April 2026, this year’s SAHM theme is ‘#UnityInDiversity’. ‘Our histories are different. Our experiences are varied. But the values that run through us, family, resilience, hospitality, belonging, connect us all. This July, we celebrate exactly that’.	Use ‘#UnityInDiversity’ ‘#SouthAsianHeritageMonth’ and ‘#SAHM2026’ on social media to sign up to the SAHM Newsletter, find out how to get involved, and learn about planned SAHM events.
From Tuesday 8 Sep 2026 – Sunday 7 Mar 2027	‘A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire’ An exhibition of ‘treasures from the vibrant world of song, poetry and performance of Mughal South Asia from around 1750 to 1850’ .	Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB. Click for further details.
From Saturday 19 Sep 2026 – Sunday 31 Jan 2027	‘Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now’ This major survey exhibition will reveal Sunil Gupta’s (b. 1953, New Delhi) ‘pioneering contribution to photography over five decades… in Delhi, Montreal, New York and London’.	Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ. Click for further details.

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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Opened in 1977, the Yale Center for British Art is situated on the Yale university campus, in a modernist building designed by Louis I Kahn. The collection, the ‘largest and most significant collection of British art outside the United Kingdom’, spans more than five centuries, and is free and open to all.

This exhibition features over 100 objects from Asia, including ‘rich opaque watercolours, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts’, and a â€ÈÙ±è±ð³¦³Ù²¹³¦³Ü±ô²¹°ù’ 37’ long scroll, depicting the city of Lucknow.

As the YCBA curators, Laurel O Peterson and Holly Schaffer, explain:

‘By the mid 18th century the British East India Company had developed from being a private trading company into a military and political force which encouraged its agents to commission works of art – for use as gifts, and to provide a visual record of the places and societies where the Company traded and governed.

The Company’s rule was abolished in 1858, and India was incorporated into the British Empire’.

Many thanks to Â鶹´«Ã½member Michael Kellett for sending us details of this exhibition, which runs until 21 June 2026, at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

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Thursday 18th June 2026 at 11.30am

The Royal Pavilion was extended in 1815 in an Indo-Saracenic style by John Nash, with Mughal inspired features such as bulbous domes, chattri-topped minarets and cusped arches. Its exterior is a tour de force, or an aberration in taste, depending on your point of view. Its interiors, designed by Frederick Crace, are lavish, with, among others, Indian and Chinese influences.

During the First World War the Pavilion was offered by King George V as a military hospital for troops of the Indian Army wounded on the Western Front. As a result of the inevitable fatalities among some of the patients, a cremation site was set up on the South Downs just north of Brighton where the remains of Hindu and Sikh soldiers could be cremated (Muslims were buried at the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking). After the war, the site was turned into a war memorial with a Chattri at its centre. It is a very moving place.

Our tour of the Pavilion will begin at 11.30am. We will meet at the entrance (detailed instructions will be sent to those who have signed up in the week leading up to the event). Inside the Pavilion, we will visit, amongst other places, the Indian Hospital Gallery.

On exiting the Pavilion we will look at the Indian Gate, the southern entrance to the Royal Pavilion estate, ‘the gift of India in commemoration of her sons who – stricken in the Great War – were tended in the Pavilion in 1914 and 1915’.

Lunch: will follow the tour. There are a large number of eating places close by. If you wish to lunch in a group, probably over a curry, this can be arranged closer to the time. Please note that the price of lunch is not included in the charge for the tour.

After lunch, for those who are interested, a visit is proposed to the Chattri War Memorial. Please note that this involves a walk of about a mile (so 2 miles roundtrip) over flat downland. Whilst not unduly strenuous, it is not on a metalled path, so suitable footwear is advisable.

Travel: You will be expected to make your own way to Brighton. If coming by train, it is a 15 minute walk from the station to the Pavilion, downhill (but uphill on the way back). There is plenty of parking available in Brighton but it is not cheap. If numbers are sufficient for the proposed visit to the Chattri, we may hire some form of transport or take public transport. Any cost will be additional.

Price: The price of the tour is £15. However, in addition to this, you will have to pay for entry into the Royal Pavilion. Normal admission is £21.50, but we are being offered a special price of £18.50.
There are various other discounts available:
• If you are a member of the Art Fund, entry is free.
• If you travel by rail to Brighton, you can purchase two entry tickets for the price of one (£21.50) on production of your rail ticket. (You will have to do this yourself, either on the Royal Pavilion’s website or at the ticket office on arrival).

Booking:
• The price for the Â鶹´«Ã½tour plus admission to the Pavilion (but excluding lunch and a trip to the Chattri) is £33.50.
• (If you intend to use either the 2-for-1 rail ticket or Art Fund concessions for Pavilion admission, please pay £15 for the Â鶹´«Ã½tour).

Please book via the Events tab on the Â鶹´«Ã½website. You can pay via the website using a credit card or by bank transfer; or send an e-mail to events@bacsa.org.uk.

Paul Dean, Â鶹´«Ã½Chairman

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’).

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Churchill’s Forgotten Generals
Raymond Callahan
Tuesday 14 April 2026 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)

‘Generals Auchinleck, Slim and Savory and their role in the campaigns in Northeast India and Burma have been largely forgotten by historians. Auchinleck, as C-in-C India, made sure the Army was geared towards jungle warfare and improved the lot of Indian officers and men. Slim was the successful Commander of the 14th Army, who led it from defeat into victory. Savory, as Director of Infantry, ensured that all infantry battalions were trained for jungle warfare. The appointments of Auchinleck, Slim and Savory in 1943 were pivotal in the defeat of the Japanese in Burma. For the first time in the war the key figures in Indian military affairs were all drawn from the Indian Army and understood its traditions and ways.’

Raymond Callahan is the author of Triumph at Imphal-Kohima: How the Indian Army Finally Stopped the Japanese Juggernaut and four other books on the Indian Army, including (with Daniel Marston) The Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army (2021), which won the Templer Medal Prize. He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware.

Lectures are broadcast via Zoom and are available UK-wide and to an international audience. Lectures are recorded and uploaded to YouTube for two weeks. Links are emailed to all ticket-holders.

Tickets for this lecture cost £5. Click to book tickets (online, by post, or by bank transfer).’

Valerie Haye, British in India Historical Trust
* (Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter readers, family and friends may be interested in the following events:

Date / Time	Event	Place
On now (until Sunday 12 Apr 2026)	‘Flora Indica’ Exhibition of botanical illustrations by Indian artists commissioned by British botanists between 1790-1850.	Galleries 1-4, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, London TW9 3EG. Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 12 Apr 2026)	‘Botanical Tales and Seeds of Empire’ In an exhibition inspired by Kew’s botanical archives, Amrit and Rabindra Kaur Singh (‘the Singh twins’) explore ‘the deep connections between botany, empire and trade’.	Gallery 5, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, London TW9 3EG. Click for further details.
On now (until Monday 13 Apr 2026)	‘Beyond Burma: Forgotten Armies’ An exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Burma Campaign, and the role played by the Indian, British, African and Asian forces in defeating the Imperial Japanese Army.	National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HT Click for details of the exhibition and the accompanying series of public events.
On now (until Monday 4 May 2026)	‘Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters’ An exhibition about the lives and work of the seven Anglo-Indian sisters whose influence in art, literature, photography and society ‘extended from Calcutta to Kensington, and from the salons of Little Holland House to the Bloomsbury Group’.	Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford GU3 1DQ Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 8 Nov 2026)	‘The last Princesses of Punjab’ Exhibition about the ‘Punjabi princess and suffragette icon’ Sophia Duleep Singh, and ‘the women who shaped her’	Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX. Click for further details, including registration.
Tuesday 14 Apr 2026, 18:30-20:00	‘Churchill’s Forgotten Generals’ A BIHT lecture by Raymond Callahan (online)	Zoom Lecture Click for further details, including registration.
Tuesday 26 May 2026, 11:30-13:00	‘Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia’ A joint BIHT and Indian Civil Service Society lecture by Sam Dalrymple, followed by (optional) lunch	University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, Mayfair, London W1K 1DB Click for further details, including registration.
From Monday 8 Jun 2026 – Monday 13 Jul 2026	‘The relentless rise of the East India Company’ Lecture tour by the historian William Dalrymple, covering ‘more than two hundred years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations, and bloody resistance’	Lectures will be held at venues in: Birmingham, Chester, Tunbridge Wells, Guildford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Malvern. Click for further details (and to purchase tickets).

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This is an abridged version of Andrew’s personal blog article. Click to read his full account.

‘This is the stunning Dutch cemetery at Pulicat in the north-east corner of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It’s just about all that’s left of Fort Geldria, the first Dutch settlement – and the only Dutch fort – in India.

It’s also all that remains of a much more sinister enterprise. Fort Geldria was for several decades the centre of the Dutch slave trade on India’s Coromandel coast.

Pulicat is now a fishing village on the south side of the vast Pulicat lake. In the medieval period it was a substantial coastal trading centre, particularly during the powerful and prosperous Tamil Chola dynasty. Middle Eastern merchants were present here from the 7th century. The Portuguese arrived at the start of the 16th century.

Around 1613 the and later ousted the Portuguese from this corner of South India. For the best part of a century, this was the centre of governance of the Dutch in India. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC (‘Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie’), was a powerful commercial force in Asia through the 17th and 18th centuries. The Dutch bought textiles produced in South India to trade with the Moluccas for their spices.

Under the Dutch, Pulicat also became a Labourers were forced onto ships and sent to work on plantations in what is now Indonesia. So the wealth and confidence so clearly expressed in these graves and monuments rested on the pernicious trade in human beings.

Research by Wil O Dijk in the National Archives of the Netherlands has indicated that to Java. The factors who captured and sold the slaves were in Chennai (then Madras) and that’s where they were shipped from – but Fort Geldria was the nerve centre of this trade, and the location of the money and power which underpinned this grotesque form of commerce.

The Dutch cemetery is now under the care of the Archaeological Survey of India (Chennai Circle, The gates have macabre ‘memento mori’ symbols – visual reminders that we all will die – which were common to both Catholic and Protestant religious iconography at the time.

There is nothing at all to indicate any connection with slavery. Indeed the slave trade on the Coromandel coast is one of the darker recesses of the Netherlands’ – and India’s – past, not erased, but not much talked about.

Most of the graves are from the 17th century, with inscriptions in Dutch. The adjoining fort was demolished by the British about 200 years ago, and the remnants are shielded under dense scrub.

The cemetery is broadly in good condition. The grounds are well kept and not at all overgrown. That’s probably thanks to the local goats which are sufficiently agile to leap over the wall into the burial ground even when the gates are closed. They seem to have taken it upon themselves to keep the grass cropped.

There are a small number of much later British graves in the cemetery, again in generally good condition. Some of the obelisks and mausoleums and a few of the graves could do with restoration before they suffer further erosion.

I went to Pulicat completely unaware of this magnificent cemetery and I was pleased to have the chance to look around – and then disturbed to discover the chilling link with the slave trade while researching this blog’.

Andrew Whitehead

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Jason Beckett, BACSA’s Cemetery Records Officer, recently came across these beautifully situated Scottish graves with fascinating Indian connections:

‘Tucked into the corner of a small Scottish churchyard, in the village of Rosemarkie, lie the graves of three people who experienced some of the most remarkable events in the history of British India.

Dr William Brydon, his wife Colina and her brother Major General Donald Macintyre VC lie side by side, overlooking the beautiful Moray Firth.

William Brydon was born on the 10 October 1811, coming from an old Scottish border family. He studied medicine at University College, London, and at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1835 he entered the service of the East India Company as an assistant surgeon. His first three years were served with both British and native regiments in the wild North-Western Provinces of India. During this time, he accompanied the then Governor General Lord Auckland to the court of Maharajah Ranjit Singh.

At the outbreak of the First Afghan war in 1839 William was posted to the 5th native infantry and stayed behind in Kabul whilst the main body of the invading army returned to India. As a result, he took part in one of the most disastrous episodes in British Military history, the terrible 90-mile retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad in the winter of 1842.

The retreating army consisted of 16,500 souls, both British and Indian including camp followers. Over the course of just a few days the army was brutally slaughtered until only a handful of survivors remained. Some were taken hostage whilst a few officers tried to reach the British garrison at Jalalabad. Only Brydon, despite suffering a sword wound to the head, succeeded. This moment is famously captured in Lady Butler’s painting The Remnants of an Army.

Brydon recovered from his wounds and resumed his duties as a regimental surgeon with the ‘Army of Retribution’under General Pollock, which briefly reoccupied Kabul in September 1842. He once again narrowly escaped death from an exploding enemy shell.

On 10 October 1844, in Bareilly, he married Colina Maxwell Macintyre, the daughter of an East India merchant. She accompanied him for at least part of his military service to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where their daughter Charlotte was born in 1850. In total they were to have three sons and three daughters.

In 1849 William was promoted to surgeon and posted with the 40th native infantry and served in Burma.

In 1853 he returned home on sick leave for three years before returning once again to India.

In May 1857 William and Colina, together with their two children, were living in a bungalow in the army cantonment in Lucknow. William was attached to the 71st Native Infantry.

In 1857 the Indian Mutiny tore through northern India and the city of Lucknow found itself flung into the midst of this catastrophic event. The famous siege of the Lucknow Residency commenced in June, lasting until November of that year. The defence of the Residency by the small garrison, including civilians and their families became a Victorian legend.

Colina’s account of the Siege can be found in ‘The Lucknow Siege Diary of Mrs. C.M. Brydon’, which was published in 1978. It sets out how she managed to feed her children, nurse the wounded and sick and even keep watch at Grants bastion, one of the Residency’s main defensive positions. Somehow the Brydon family survived, despite many close shaves including William being severely wounded when a rifle bullet passed through his loins, injuring his lower spine.

William was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in November 1858 in recognition of his service.

Worn out from campaigning he retired in 1859 and returned home with Colina and their children to Scotland where he became honorary surgeon to the 96th Highland Rifle Militia. He lived peacefully in Westfield House at Nigg, on the peninsula above Cromarty Firth and died in his bed on the 20 March 1873.

Colina moved to the small fishing village of Cromarty and lived there until her death at the age of 70, on the 15 December 1899.

Colina’s brother Donald Macintyre was born in Kincraig, Scotland in 1831, the second son of Donald Macintyre and his wife, Margaret Mackenzie. He was educated at Addiscombe Military Seminary from 1848 to 1850.

He entered the Bengal Army on 14 June 1850. Joining the 1st Goorkhas (then known as the 66th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry), he served in several small campaigns on the North West Frontier.

In 1856 he served with them, under Sir Neville Bowles Chamberlain (1820-1902), in an expedition to the Kurram Valley, Afghanistan.

During the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, while raising what is now the 4th Gurkha Regiment, he was employed in protecting the hill tribes on the Kale Kumaon Frontier from the Rohilkhand rebels, and in maintaining order in the district.

It was for his service in the Lushai Expedition of 1872, that the now Major Macintyre was awarded the Victoria Cross. It recognised his valour for the following action which took place on the 4th of January that year.

The citation reads:
‘During the assault on the village of Lalgnoora on 4th January, MacIntyre was the first to lead the attack, and he reached the stockade first. Despite it being over eight feet high, he proceeded to climb over and disappeared into the flames and smoke of the burning village. The stockade was successfully attacked following the actions of Macintyre under heavy enemy fire’.

Donald was presented with his VC whilst serving in India later in the winter of 1872.

He last saw active service in the 2nd Afghan War of 1878-1880, where he commanded the 2nd Gurkhas with the Khyber Column, and took part in the expeditions to the Bazar Valley.

He finally retired from the Bengal Staff Corps on Christmas Eve 1880, with the rank of Major-General.

In addition to his outstanding military career, Donald was also a great traveller and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1889 he published an account of his experiences in Hindu Koh: Wanderings and Wild Sports on and beyond the Himalayas, available on

He subsequently lived in Fortrose, Ross-shire where he died on 15 April 1903, aged 71, and was buried in Rosemarkie churchyard beside his sister Colina and her husband Dr Brydon, overlooking the beautiful Moray Firth.’

Jason Beckett

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‘I am pleased to report on the successful completion of a small Â鶹´«Ã½project at Cemetery No 2 in Lansdowne, Uttarakhand.

The cemetery was established early in the twentieth century and is in the care of the Garhwal Rifles Regimental Centre (GRRC). It is set among the serene and verdant landscape of the Garhwal Hills and is a well laid out site with a defined stone boundary, paths and graves in an organized set of plots.

The Regimental Centre was keen to repair breaks in the boundary, and to conserve the pre-Independence graves. Â鶹´«Ã½was happy to help, and the Centre asked the Architectural Division of INTACH (the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) to undertake the work, so that it would be carried out in accordance with sound conservation principles. Â鶹´«Ã½agreed to give £5160, the estimated cost of the work involved.

INTACH has now finished its work, and we have received a report from Major Francis Hiwale of the GRRC, with the following comments:

‘The renovation works were carried out with due sensitivity to the cemetery’s historical importance. Efforts included structural stabilization of boundary walls, restoration of headstones and memorial plaques, improvement of drainage systems, landscaping and overall beautification of the premises’.

‘Accessibility within the cemetery has also been enhanced through the creation of steps leading to the upper space of the Cemetery, while pathways have been thoughtfully maintained. An Interpretive signage has also been installed to highlight the cultural and historical significance of Lansdowne Cemetery’.

Major Hiwale concluded his report:

‘On behalf of our team, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude for your generous financial support toward the restoration of Lansdowne Cemetery. Your contribution has played a vital role in advancing the preservation and conservation efforts at the cemetery. Your assistance has helped ensure that its heritage is protected and respectfully maintained for future generations’.

Denise Love, Â鶹´«Ã½Projects Coordinator

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Date: Thursday 26 March 2026
Time: 11:30am
Venue: The Union Jack Club, Sandell Street, London SE1 8UJ

The Union Jack Club is in Sandell Street, directly opposite the Waterloo Station Jubilee Line ticket hall. Cross Waterloo Road at the traffic lights; Sandell Street is 11 yards to the left and the entrance to the Club is 16 yards along Sandell Street on the right-hand side.

Lunch will be served at 1:15pm, with drinks available at a pay bar. The charge for the two-course curry meal is £31.00. Payments and requests for lunch must reach Ms Tina Davies, the General Meetings Officer (GMO), by Tuesday 17 March. Requests received after this date may not be accepted.

Registration and Lunch:

If you wish to attend the meeting and have lunch, please either:
• Book and pay via the Meetings tab on the Â鶹´«Ã½website, or
• Make your cheque payable to BACSA, and email the General Meetings Officer (at gmo@bacsa.org.uk) for further instructions.

If you wish to attend the meeting but not stay for lunch, please notify the General Meetings Officer by email (at gmo@bacsa.org.uk).

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These exquisitely worked swords were acquired at auction and from private dealers in London and Paris, during the latter half of the 19th century, by Sir Richard Wallace and the 4th Marquess of Hertford.

Struck into coins and depicted on the city’s archways, ‘Fish of Dignity’ (Mahi maritib) became the prime emblem of the court of Lucknow during the reign of Sa’adat Khan, the first Nawab of Awadh (r. 1722-39).

Lucknow ‘Fish’ symbols feature heavily on both these sword hilts. The golden tiger heads ‘commanding symbols of wealth and strength’ in the sword on the left were incorporated into the proposed new coat of arms drafted for the coronation of Ghazi-al- Din-Haidar, the seventh Nawab of Awadh (r.1814-27).

Shuja al-Daula, Nawab of Awadh (r.1754-1775), whose name is engraved on the blade of this sword.

The camel’s red ‘d³Ü±ô±ô²¹â€™ (an internal organ exposed by male camels to ‘show dominance or attract a mate’) on the late 18th / early 19th century whalebone sword hilt on the left suggests ‘bravery, virility and readiness to fight’.

Elements of the East India Company’s crest (a lion holding a crown, standing above a shield) suggest that the sword on the right may have been intended for a British EIC representative.

The Craftsmen

The unnamed artisans who made these swords, and their scabbards, had large workshops attached to the court at Lucknow.

Each sword produced was the result of a collaborative effort by several specialists:

• Blacksmiths forged steel into blades, then gently polished them with a weak acid to reveal an intricate rippled pattern in the metal.
• Enamelwork was applied to the hilts by placing different colours of powdered glass into recesses made on a metal background. Once fired, the glass melted into the grooves, producing a shiny finish.
• Embroidery or leatherwork was then used for the scabbards.

A 2-day conference on is being held in the Lower Ground Floor Theatre at the Wallace Collection (Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN), the home of ‘one of the finest assemblages of arms and armour in a public collection’, from Friday 13 – Saturday 14 March 2026. It will also be broadcast live on zoom.

Meanwhile the ‘Lucknow Swords’ exhibition continues in the Housekeepers Room until 22nd March 2026.

Rachel Magowan
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