Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, KCB (April 2, 1807 - June 19, 1886) was a British civil servant and colonial administrator. As a youth, he worked with the colonial government in Calcutta, India; in the late 1850s and 1860s he served there in senior level appointments.
A century and a half later, Trevelyan continues to share opinions. It has been said that:
Trevelyan's most enduring sign in history is probably the quasi-genocide anti-Irish race sentiment he declared during his tenure in a critical position of aid to the millions of Irish farmers who suffered under the Irish famine as Assistant Secretary HM Treasury (1840-1859)) at under Whig Lord Russell rule.
On the other hand, the BBC Historic History website states:
His most enduring contributions, however, began in the 1850s with the publication of his report and Sir Stafford Northcote on the 'Permanent Civil Service Organization'. The report led to the transformation of civil service. Competitive acceptance standards and exams ensure that higher-quality civil service bodies will become administrators.
During the peak of famine, Trevelyan deliberately dragged his feet in melting direct government food and financial aid to Ireland due to his soaring belief in the laissez-faire economy and free hands from the market. In a letter to an Irish colleague, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, former Minister of Finance of the United Kingdom, he described hunger as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus populations" and "God's judgment" and wrote that "the true crime we must fight is not a physical famine. , but the moral evil of a selfish, misguided and turbulent nature. "
Trevelyan never expressed regret for his comments, even after the terrible scope (about 1 million souls) of Irish famine were known. His defenders claim that other factors besides Trevelyan's personal actions and beliefs are more important to the problem.
Cecil Woodham-Smith writes about him:
his mind is strong, his character is admirable, meticulous and honest, his devotion to a praiseworthy task, but he has an extraordinary sensitivity. Because he takes action only after sincerely satisfying himself, what he proposes is ethical and justified, he steps immune to other considerations, sustained but also blinded by his conviction to do what is right.
Video Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet
Early life and education
Trevelyan was born in Taunton, Somerset, son of a Cornish priest, His Holiness George Trevelyan, who became Archdeacon of Taunton, and his wife Harriet, daughter of Sir Richard Neave. His father's grandfather was Sir John Trevelyan, the 4th Baronet (see Trevelyan's baronet for previous family history) a Cornish ethnic family from St Veep, Cornwall. He was educated at Blundell's School, Charterhouse School and East India Company College. R.A.C. Balfour stated that "life was initially affected by the membership of his parents from Clapham Sects - a group of sophisticated families known for their principal severity and also for their powerful evangelism."
In particular, Trevelyan was a student economist Thomas Malthus while in Haileybury. His steadfast adherence to Malthus population theory during Irish famine is often associated with formative coaching.
Maps Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet
Careers
In 1826, as a youth, Trevelyan joined the East India Company as a writer and was stationed at the Bengal Civil Service in Delhi, India. There, with a combination of diligence and self-discipline along with his extraordinary intellectual talents, he achieved a rapid promotion. He occupied several important and influential positions in various places in India, but his pretentious and often unwise behavior made him fond of some of his associates and engaged him in near-perpetual controversy.
Upon his return to England in 1840 he was appointed as assistant secretary to HM Treasury, and served in 1859, during both the Irish Hunger and the Highlands Potato Famine of 1846-1857 in Scotland. In Ireland, he provided famine relief, while in Scotland he was closely linked to the work of the Central Council for the Help of the Highlands. His inaction and negative personal attitude toward the Irish people is widely believed to have slowed aid to starvation. In a letter dated 29 April 1846, Trevelyan writes:
Our steps should be continued with the least amount of disturbance possible from ordinary private trade, which should be a major source of people's subsistence, but, coefficient te que coÃÆ'Â »te te (/at whatever cost) people should not, under any circumstances , be allowed to starve.
Meanwhile, Ireland watched with rising anger as shiploads of wheat and homegrown wheat set off as scheduled from their shores for delivery to England. Food riots erupt in ports like Youghal, near Cork, where people try unsuccessfully to confiscate cargo shiploads of wheat. At Dungarvan, in County Waterford, British troops were stoned as they fired into the crowd, killing at least two people and injuring several others. British naval escorts are then provided for river boats.
He was one of the founders in 1851, with Sir John McNeill, of the Highland and Island Emigration Society during which Highland Clearances supported the exodus of nearly 5,000 people to Australia between 1851 and 1858.
Trevelyan was Governor of Madras from 1859 to 1860, and Minister of Finance of India from 1862 to 1865. As a civil servant reformer, he was widely regarded as the founder of the modern British civil service.
Marriage and family
On December 23, 1834, while in India, he married Hannah More Macaulay, sister of Mr. Macaulay, then a member of India's supreme council, and one of his closest friends. The only son, who inherited Baronetcy for his father's death, was Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, statesman. Hannah Macaulay Trevelyan died on 5 August 1873.
Trevelyan was married, second, on October 14, 1875, Eleanor Anne, daughter of Walter Campbell of Islay.
Biography
He entered the civil service of East India Bengal as a writer in 1826, having demonstrated from an early age his remarkable abilities in Asian languages ​​and dialects. On January 4, 1827, Trevelyan was appointed assistant to Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, commissioner in Delhi, where, during a four-year stay, he was entrusted with several important missions. For some time he acted as guardian for the youth of Madhu Singh, Rajah Bhurtpore. He also works to improve the conditions of the indigenous population. He abolished the transit duties in which India's internal trade has long been shackled. For this and other services, he received special thanks from the governor-general on the council. Before leaving Delhi, he donated personal funds for the construction of a large road through a new suburb, then in the process of erection, which became known as Trevelyanpur.
In 1831, he moved to Calcutta, and became deputy secretary to the government in the political department. Trevelyan was very passionate about education, and by 1835, largely because of his tenacity, the government was led to decide to support the publishing of European literature and science among the Indians. A report on the government's effort, entitled About the Education of the People of India, was published by Trevelyan in 1838. In April 1836, he was nominated as secretary of the Sudder revenue council, an office he had held until he returned on the month January 1838.
On January 21, 1840, he entered the Assistant Secretary's job for the Treasury of Her Majesty in London, and served the office for nineteen years. In Ireland he arranged for aid work 1845-47, when over 734,000 people were employed by the government during the Great Famine. In all, about a million people in Ireland are believed to have died of starvation and epidemic diseases between 1846 and 1851, and about two million emigrated in the slightly over a decade (1845-55) period. On April 27, 1848 he was made a KCB in return for his services.
The Great Hunger in Ireland began as an enormous natural catastrophe, but the impact was greatly exacerbated by the Whig government's actions and inaction, led by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852. Many members of Britain and the middle class believed that hunger is divine judgment - an act of God. A prominent exponent from the religious perspective is Trevelyan, who is primarily responsible for organizing Irish aid policies during the famine years. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan described hunger as "a direct blow from the Almighty and Merciful God", which laid bare "the deep and extraordinary root of social evil". Famine, he states, is "a keen but effective medicine that can cure the medicine... God confers that the generation in which this great opportunity has been offered may well be doing its part..." This mentality is Trevelyan influential in convincing the government not to do anything also to withstand mass evictions - and this has the obvious effect of restructuring the rural Irish people radically along the lines of the capitalist model favored by British policymakers.
During the Great Famine, in particular 1846, the Whig-Liberal Government held power in England with Trevelyan acting as treasurer. This position gave Trevelyan much influence over parliamentary decisions, especially plans for relief efforts in Ireland. Trevelyan, along with the Whig government, believes Ireland is needed to heal itself and that laissez-faire attitude is the best solution. Although the efforts made by Trevelyan did not result in a permanent effort for this situation, it is his belief that if the British Government gave Ireland everything it needed to survive, the Irish would depend on the British government instead of fixing the problem.
The Peelite Aid Program operating during the early famine years was closed on 21 July 1846 by Sir Charles Wood, on the orders of Trevelyan. Trevelyan believes that if they are still open while a new food crisis is in progress, the poor will be permanently conditioned to keep the country in check. Following the end of the Peelite Assistance Program, the Whig-Liberal government implemented the Labor-Level Act, which follows many bureaucratic procedures, only providing assistance to hunger-affected areas. The Employment Act takes time to implement, as well as Trevelyan's intentions, which allow the UK to spend the least to feed the starving people from starvation, earning it the nickname "lynchpin relief operation". Trevelyan believes that workers should see this as a fun event to take advantage of what he calls "a time to breathe" to harvest their own crops and do harvesting jobs that generate wages for the big farmers. This may look good on paper for Trevelyan, but ignores the fact that the return of pests has robbed the workers of every harvest and the farmers from farm work to give workers.
A letter from Trevelyan to Lord Monteagle of Brandon and an article in The Times reinforced Trevelyan's conviction that Ireland needed to heal itself from within, without substantial help from the British Government. Both were written in the second year of the lean season, 1846, when more than ninety percent of the potato crops had been destroyed. With this knowledge, it is easy to see how Trevelyan would persuade Lord Monteagle in his letter to believe that "government companies are fully pressured to alleviate this great catastrophe and avoid this danger" as it is within their power. Trevelyan praised the government and denounced the Irish nobles in his letter, blaming them for starvation. He believes that it is not the government's responsibility to provide food supplies or increase the productivity of land, but the landlords. The Times agreed with Trevelyan, blaming the nobles for not instructing their owners to repair their plantations and not planting crops other than potatoes. In his letter to Lord Monteagle, Trevelyan identifies the nobility with a "defective part of the national character" and punishes them for expecting the government to fix everything, "as if they themselves have no part to appear in this great crisis." By blaming hunger on the nobility, Trevelyan justifies the action - or inaction - of the British Government.
Potato damage eventually spread to the Western Highlands of Scotland, causing similar poverty. In 1851, in response to the crisis, Trevelyan and Sir John McNeill founded the Highland and Island Emigration Society. From 1851 to its end in 1858, the public sponsored the emigration of about 5,000 Scottish people to Australia. In 1853, Trevelyan proposed the organization of a new system of acceptance to civil service. The Northcote-Trevelyan Report, signed by himself and Sir Stafford Northcote in November 1853, entitled Permanent Civil Service Organization , laid the groundwork for securing acceptance of qualified and educated people into formerly disposal situations aristocratic and influential families.
In 1858, Lord Harris resigned as governor of the Madras presidency, and Trevelyan was offered the appointment. Having retained his knowledge of oriental affairs by observing all subjects affecting Indian interests, he entered his duties as governor of Madras in the spring of 1859. He soon became popular in the presidency, and in large measure through his behavior. in the office, the indigenous peoples become at peace with the government. An assessment is done, the police system is organized in every part, and, contrary to the East India Company tradition, the land is sold at a cost to anyone who wants to buy. These and other reforms introduced or developed by Trevelyan won the gratitude and dignity of the Madras population.
All went well until February 1860. By the end of 1859, James Wilson was appointed a member of the finance of the Indian legislature. At the beginning of the new year, he proposed a reduction and taxation plan that he hoped could improve the financial position of the British government: the plan was introduced in Calcutta on February 18, and forwarded to Madras. On March 4, an open telegram was sent to Calcutta which implied a bad opinion from the governor and Madras council. On March 9, a letter was sent to Madras who expressed the central government's objection to the transmission of such messages in open telegram at a time when indigenous feelings could not be considered stable. At the same time, Madras government representatives in the Indian legislature are banned from following the instructions of their superiors to put their views on the table and to advocate on their behalf. On March 21, another telegram was sent to Madras stating that the bill would be introduced and referred to a committee to be reported within five weeks. On March 26, the opinion between Trevelyan and his council was noted and, by virtue of his authority, the document found its way to the newspaper.
On the arrival of this intelligence in England, the Governor of Madras was immediately recalled. This decision led to much discussion both inside and outside Parliament. Palmerston, in his place in parliament, when defending the withdrawal, said:
No doubt it denounces a public behavior of Sir Charles Trevelyan, but Sir Charles Trevelyan also has an edge, inherent in his character, to be shrouded and overshadowed by this simple act, and I believe in his future career he may be useful to public service and self-respect.
Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, said:
A more honest, zealous, honest, and independent servant can not. He is a loss to India, but there will be danger if he is allowed to remain, having adopted such a subversive course of all authority, so fearfully tends to jeopardize our rule, and very likely provoke the people to rebellion against the center and responsible authorities.
In 1862, Trevelyan returned to India as finance minister. His tenure was marked by important administrative reforms and by extensive measures for the development of natural resources in India through public works. In 1862, Colonel Douglas Hamilton was given a commission tour by Trevelyan to conduct surveys and draw a picture for the Government of all the hill plains in South India that might be suitable as Sanitaria, or a place for European troops. Upon returning home in 1865, he became involved in discussions about the army purchase question, where he had provided evidence before a royal commission in 1857. Later he was linked with various social questions, such as charity, poverty, and the like, and in the care this.
He retained until the end of all local native energy. He was a persistent Liberal, and gave his support to the Liberal Party in Northumberland, while living in the Wallington Hall in the area. He was pulled by Trollope at The Three Clerks, published in 1857 in 3 volumes, under the pseudonym Sir Gregory Hardlines. Trevelyan died at 67 Eaton Square, London, on June 19, 1886, aged 79 years.
Inheritance and honor
Trevelyan was appointed as KCB on April 27, 1848. Three decades later on March 2, 1874, he created the first Trevelyan baronet, from Wallington.
When his cousin Walter Calverley Trevelyan, 6th Baronet, of Nettlecombe, died at Wallington on March 23, 1879, his two marriages had no children, so he left his north-country property to Charles. A family biographer notes that Walter changed his will in 1852, impressed by Charles's son; The young George Otto Trevelyan had become one of the couple's visitors and received instructions on secret wills. A simple family social position was suddenly lifted to one of property and property, recorded as an important event in the history of the baronetcy.
The change would be a surprise to Alfred Trevelyan, who suggested at the end of a long letter on alcohol crimes. He issued a costly and unsuccessful challenge to his degree and real estate.
Publications
In addition to the works mentioned, Trevelyan writes the following:
- Implementation of the Roman Alphabet for all Oriental Languages, 1834; Edit the third. 1858.
- Report on Inland Customs and City Duties of the Bengali Presidency, 1834.
- The Irish crisis, 1848; Edit the second. 1880.
- Questions and Reports of Army Purchases and Evidence from the Royal Commission are considered, 1858.
- Purchase System in the British Army, 1867; Edit the second. 1867.
- the British Army in 1868, 1868; Edit 4th. 1868.
- Stand or Popular Army, 1869.
- Three Letters to Devonshire Workers, 1869.
- From Pesth to Brindisi, a Tour Note, 1871; Edit the second. 1876.
- Compromise offered by Canada in relation to the reprint of the Book of English, 1872.
- Christianity and Hinduism are opposite, 1882.
His letters to the Times, with the signature Indophilus he collected with the Additional Notes in 1857; Edit the third. 1858. Several addresses, letters, and speeches were also published.
In conjunction with his cousin, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, he edited Trevelyan Papers (Camden Society 1856, 1862, 1872).
Popular culture
- Trevelyan is called in the modern Irish folk song "The Fields of Athenry," about the Great Irish Famine: "Michael, they have taken you away/because you stole Trevelyan corn/so young people may see the morning/now a ship prison waiting in the bay. "Because of Trevelyan's policy, Ireland regards it as one of the most hated figures in their history, along with Oliver Cromwell, who conquered the country in the 17th century.
- Anthony Trollope acknowledges that Trevelyan was a model for Sir Gregory Hardlines in his novel The Three Clerks, in 1858.
- Charles Dickens is likely to base the aristocratic nistotism of Tite Barnacle, the character in his novel Little Dorrit, in Trevelyan. Barnacle controls the "Circumlocution Office", where everything goes round and round, and nothing has ever been done.
- Irish-American rock band Black 47, in their song of the same name from their 1992 Fire of Freedom album, refers to Trevelyan, as well as Queen Victoria and Lord Russell, as one of them. those responsible for starvation.
References
- BBC History profile
- An article about Irish, Irish Hunger for Visitors
- "Charles Edward Trevelyan", The Multitext Cork Project
- Space Biography Dictionary , 1990, ISBNÃ, 0-550-16040-X
- "Irish amnesia Paul Ryan... Because of his role in famine, Trevelyan became a knight.English people remember it differently..." Timothy Egan, NYTimes SundayReview, March 15, 2014
- Balfour, R.A.C. (1990-92). "The Highland and the Island Emigration Society, 1852-1858". Transactions from the Gaelic Society of Inverness . LVII : 429-566.
- Woodham-Smith, Cecil (1962). The Great Hunger - Ireland 1845-49 . London. JSTORÃ,20495761. Note
- Attribution
Ã, This article contains text from publications now in the public domain: Ã, "Trevelyan, Charles Edward". Biography Dictionary . London: Smith, Elder & amp; Co 1885-1900 Ã,
External links
- The BBC: An ancient Chinese test inspiring the recruitment of modern jobs
- Charles Trevelyan pearls
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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