George Bruce Malleson

Colonel George Bruce Malleson CSI (8 May 1825 – 1 March 1898) was an English officer in India and author.

Biography

Malleson was born in Wimbledon. Educated at Winchester, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry in 1842, and served through the second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young maharaja of Mysore. He retired with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C.S.I. in the 1872 Birthday Honours.^[1][2]

He was a voluminous writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous "Red Pamphlet", published at Calcutta in 1857, when the Sepoy Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the History of the Indian Mutiny 1857-8 (6 vols., 1878-1880), which was begun but left unfinished by Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are History of the French in India (2nd ed., 1893) and The Decisive Battles of India (3rd ed., 1888).^[1]

He authored the biographies of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, the French governor-general Dupleix^[3] and the British officer Robert Clive for the Rulers of India series.^[4]

He died at 27 West Cromwell Road, London, on 1 March 1898.^[1]

Works

• Charles Allen (of the Bengal Civil Service); George Bruce Malleson (1858). A few words anent the 'red' pamphlet (i.e. The mutiny of the Bengal army, by G.B. Malleson) by one who has served under the marquis of Dalhousie (i.e. C. Allen).
• History of the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1858: Commencing from the close of the second volume of Sir John Kaye's History of the Sepoy War. Full text online at ibiblio.org (All six volumes, including the first two originally by Sir John Kaye, in HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations, footnotes and a combined index)
  • Volume I. 1878.
  • Volume III. 1880.
  • Volume V. 1889.
• The Decisive Battles of India from 1746 to 1849. Pub. 1883. Full text online at ibiblio.org (In HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations and footnotes)
• Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire. Pub. 1896. Full text online at ibiblio.org (In HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations and footnotes)
• Archive.org - History of the French in India
• History of Afghanistan, from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878. Pub. 1879. 2nd ed. London: W.H. Allen & Co. A translation of this work was used for training British military interpreters in the Pashto language.^[5]

References

1. Lloyd 1901.
2. The London Gazette: no. 23863. p. 2575. 31 May 1872.
3. H. P. (1891). "Akbar (Rulers of India) by G. B. Malleson; Dupleix by G. B. Malleson". Revue Historique. 47 (2): 387–393. JSTOR 40938228.
4. H. P. (1895). "Lord Clive, (Rulers of India) by G. B. Malleson". Revue Historique. 59 (2): 404–408. JSTOR 40939319.
5. History of Afghanistan: Official Text-Book for the Examination of Military Officers in Interpretership Pushtu. World Digital Library, January 13, 2015.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lloyd, Ernest Marsh (1901). "Malleson, George Bruce". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement​. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Further reading

• "Malleson, George Bruce". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17886. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Works by George Bruce Malleson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George Bruce Malleson at Internet Archive