The Age of George III

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Robert Orme (1728-1801)

This document was written by SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda

Robert Orme, historian of India and East India Company servant, was born on 25 December 1728 at Anjengo in Travancore, India. One of four children, he was the second son of Alexander Orme (d. 1736), chief of the settlement at Anjengo, a physician and surgeon in the service of the East India Company. At the age of two Orme was sent to England to be brought up by his aunt Mrs Adams, at her home in Cavendish Square, London. From 1734 to 1741 he was educated at Harrow School, where he showed considerable promise as a scholar and excelled himself at classics. Destined for a career in India, he was withdrawn early from Harrow and placed in a private academy in London to learn the business of trade and commerce.

In 1742, aged thirteen, Orme was sent to Calcutta. Upon his arrival he was engaged to a private English mercantile concern, Jackson and Wedderburn. Two years later, in 1744, he was appointed a writer in the East India Company service. Not content with performing his daily duties, Orme devoted himself to improving and educating himself, reading and studying as widely as he could. His efforts earned him the affectionate nickname of Cicero and he acquired a reputation for his knowledge of Indian affairs. In 1752 he produced a study of Indian society entitled ‘A general idea of the government and people of Indostan’, eventually published in the new edition of his Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire (1805). At the same time he began work on his magnum opus, his history of the Anglo-French conflict in southern India. In 1753 he visited England in the company of his close friend Robert Clive. During this brief stay he used his writings to good effect, making several influential friends in the government and among the directors of the company. These new connections secured him an immediate and unprecedented promotion to the senior ranks of the Madras council.

Orme arrived at Madras on 12 September 1754 as export warehouse keeper and seventh member in council. Despite an aloofness and arrogance which made him extremely unpopular, he proved himself a highly competent bureaucrat and administrator. Always conscious of his superior talents, Orme's besetting sins were his overriding ambition and impatience. In March 1756 he was appointed third in council, and in September 1758 he became next in line to the governor. However, not content with rapid promotion, he had begun sending home confidential reports to the directors, criticizing his seniors on the council. News of his activities leaked back to Madras, and Orme found himself completely ostracized. Within days of his final promotion he was indicted by the council, charged with extortion and with deserting his post. Finding his position quite untenable, Orme made no attempt to defend himself. By October 1758 he had already left India, his reputation in tatters and his career in ruins. He finally reached London in October 1760, having returned by way of France. He bought a house at 11 Harley Street, London, where he lived for the next thirty years. He had not had the chance to make his fortune and he returned with an estate of only £5597. For a man with his tastes and aspirations this proved a quite inadequate sum, and for the rest of his life Orme was beset by persistent financial difficulties.

In 1761 Orme wrote another dissertation, ‘The effeminacy of the inhabitants of Indostan’, which analysed the effects of climate on the peoples of India (also published posthumously in Fragments, 1805). Then in August 1763 he published the first volume of his History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan. A work of military history, it narrated the battle for supremacy in southern India which had been waged from 1750 to 1754 between the English, the French, and their Indian allies. It was received with great critical acclaim: Orme was applauded on all sides for his style and accuracy, was hailed as a historian in the true classical tradition, and achieved renown and recognition. In 1769 he was created the first official historiographer of the East India Company, at a salary of £400 a year. In 1770 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

A cultured and very learned man, with a wide range of interests, Orme was well known and respected in the intellectual and social circles of the day. Described by Boswell as ‘that able and elegant historian of Indostan’ (Boswell, Life, 3.284), he was highly esteemed by his peers, who included the historian Dr William Robertson and the orientalist Sir William Jones. He became particularly close to Jones, with whom he forged a lifelong friendship. A passionate collector of books, Orme was also a great lover of art and beauty. Among his friends were the painter Joshua Reynolds and the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, who in 1774 made a bust of Orme at the age of forty-five, which shows a highly intelligent and very refined face, with finely drawn, sensitive features.

In 1778, after an interval of fifteen years, Orme finally published the second volume of the History of the Military Transactions. This recounted the third and final phase of the Anglo-French struggle in India, from 1756 to 1761. Critically this too was very well received, but once again sales were slow and rather poor, although the History was to be reprinted four times between 1763 and 1803. Considered as something of a landmark in the history of writing on India, it made a substantial impression on the next generation of British historians. Macaulay later described it as one of the most authentic and finely written in the English language, although he found its attention to detail ‘minute to the point of tediousness’ (Macaulay, 3.110).

As its title indicates, the History was intended to commemorate Britain's military successes in India. It highlighted the stirring deeds of Orme's contemporaries, especially those of his great friend Clive, whom he made the hero of his first volume. Despite this, the History was never meant to be a celebration of either conquest or empire. Orme regarded the sweeping conquests which had been made since 1753 with deep dismay. He believed that trade and commerce should remain the East India Company's primary objective. Conquest and empire only brought corruption and decay, which threatened to ruin all the benefits of trade. The saga of bribery and corruption which had followed the conquest of Bengal left Orme bitterly disillusioned with his subject and with Clive, his hero. Rather than continue to chronicle what he saw as an increasingly sordid story he turned elsewhere.

In 1782 Orme published his last major work, Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, which described the reign of Aurangzeb, the last Mughal emperor, and the rise of Maratha power in India. Although dependent on secondary materials, the Fragments was highly valued for its accuracy and information. James Grant Duff, writing almost half a century later in his History of the Mahrattas (1826), was full of praise for Orme's efforts to open up such a difficult and uncharted field.

The strain of so much work took its toll on Orme's health, which had always been fragile. By 1781 it had deteriorated very sharply, forcing him to retire to the countryside. He leased a house at Colney in Hertfordshire, and finally, in 1793, retired permanently to Ealing. In 1796 he gave up his house in Harley Street and, finding he was beginning to go blind, sold off part of his beloved library: 2000 items fetched the considerable sum of £1179 16s. 3d. Orme died at Ealing, aged seventy-two, on 13 January 1801, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Ealing. He left behind his mistress, whom he appears to have eventually married in secret. In his will he bequeathed £1000 and all his remaining possessions to ‘my friend Mrs Mary Dixon who now lives with me’.