Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings FRS (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-General of Bengal in 1772–1785. He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India.[2][3] He was an energetic organizer and reformer. In 1779–1784 he led forces of the East India Company against a coalition of native states and the French. In the end, the well-organized British side held its own, while France lost influence in India. In 1787, he was accused of corruption and impeached, but he was eventually acquitted in 1795 after a long trial. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.
For several vessels of this name, see Warren Hastings (East Indiaman) and Warren Hastings (1789 ship).
Warren Hastings
Position created
Sir John Macpherson, Bt
As acting Governor-General
Position abolished
6 December 1732
Churchill, Oxfordshire
22 August 1818 (aged 85)
Daylesford, Gloucestershire
Later life[edit]
Hastings' supporters from the Edinburgh East India Club and a number of other gentlemen from India gave a reportedly "elegant entertainment" for Hastings when he visited Edinburgh. There was a toast to "prosperity to our settlements in India" and a wish that "the virtue and talents which preserved them be ever remembered with gratitude."[48]
In 1788, Hastings bought for £54,000 an estate at Daylesford, Gloucestershire, including the site of the Hastings family's medieval seat.[41] Thereafter he remodelled the house to designs by Samuel Pepys Cockerell with classical and Indian decoration and gardens landscaped by John Davenport. In 1801, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[49]
In 1816, he rebuilt the Norman church, where he was buried two years later. In spite of substantial compensation from the East India Company, Hastings was technically insolvent on his death.[40]
Legacy[edit]
The city of Hastings, New Zealand, and the Melbourne outer suburb of Hastings, Victoria, Australia, were named after him. There is also a road and the neighbourhood of Hastings, Kolkata, in India named after him.
"Hastings" is the name of one of the four schoolhouses in La Martiniere Calcutta (Kolkata). It is represented by the colour red. "Hastings" is also the name of one of the four schoolhouses in Bishop Westcott Girls' School, Ranchi, again represented by the colour red. "Hastings" is a senior wing house at St Paul's School, Darjeeling, India, where all the senior wing houses are named after Anglo-Indian colonial figures.
RIMS Warren Hastings was a Royal Indian Marine troopship built by the Barrow Shipbuilding Co. and launched on 18 April 1893. The ship struck a rock and was wrecked off the coast of Réunion on the night of 14 January 1897.
Literature[edit]
Hastings took an interest in seeing the Bhagavad Gita translated into English. His efforts led to a first translation by Charles Wilkins appearing in 1785. He wrote the introduction to it which appeared on 4 October 1784 in Benares.[55]
"Warren Hastings and His Bull", a short story by the Indian writer Uday Prakash, was adapted for stage under the same title by the director Arvind Gaur. It presents Hastings's interaction with traditional India in a work of socio-economic political satire.
A short story by the Hindi author Shivprasad Singh 'Rudra' Kashikeya called Bahti Ganga features Chait Singh, then Raja of Banaras, in conflict with Hastings, who is imprisoned by the Raja, but escapes, though ordinary people of the city make fun of him.
The Hastings career is much discussed in the historical mystery novel, Secrets in the Stones, by Tessa Harris.[56]
Hastings is named in Book 5 of George Eliot's novel Middlemarch, where his greed for Daylesford is compared to the character Joshua Rigg's greed for money.
Hastings was rumoured to be the biological father of Eliza de Feuillide, the daughter of Philadelphia Austen Hancock and a cousin of Jane Austen.[57] Some scholars have seen parallels between Hastings and Colonel Brandon in Austen's Sense and Sensibility: both left for India at age 17; both may have had illegitimate daughters named Eliza; both participated in a duel. Linda Robinson Walker argues that Hastings "haunts Sense and Sensibility in the character of Colonel Brandon."[58]
