Ashley Eden

The Hon. Sir Ashley Eden, KCSI, CIE (13 November, 1831-8 July, 1887) was an Anglo-Indian official and diplomatist.

Eden was the third son of Robert John Eden, 3rd Lord Auckland and bishop of Bath and Wells. His uncle was George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland. He was born at Hertingfordbury in Hertfordshire, and educated first at Rugby and then at Winchester, until 1849, in which year he received a nomination to the Indian civil service. He spent 1850 and 1851 at the East India Company's college at Haileybury, but did not pass out last of his term until December 1851. In 1852 he reached India, and was first posted as assistant to the magistrate and collector of Rájsháhí.

In 1856 he was promoted to be magistrate at Moorshedábád, and during the Indian mutiny he did much to check sympathy with the revolt in that city. In 1860 Eden was appointed secretary to the government of Bengal and an "ex-officio" member of the Bengal legislative council. This post he held for eleven years, during the last part of Sir John Peter Grant's lieutenant-governorship, and throughout Sir Cecil Beadon's and Sir William Grey's terms of office.

In 1860 Eden accompanied a force ordered to invade the hill state of Sikkim in the Himalayas, as political agent, and in March 1861 he signed a treaty with the raja, which secured protection to travellers and free trade. This success caused Eden to be appointed special envoy to the hill state of Bhutan in 1863. He was accompanied by no armed force; his demands were rejected; and he was grossly insulted and forced to sign a treaty highly favourable to the Bhutiás. This treaty was not ratified by the supreme government, and the Bhutan war was the result.

In 1871 Eden became the first civilian governor of British Burma, which post he held until his appointment in 1877 as lieutenant-governor of Bengal. In 1878 he was made a K.C.S.I., and in 1882 resigned the lieutenant-governorship and returned to England on his appointment to the council of the secretary of state for India, of which he remained a member until his death. The success of his administration of Bengal was attested by the statue erected in his honor at Calcutta after his retirement.

His retirement from India on being appointed a member of the secretary of state's council in 1882 caused genuine regret among both the European and native communities of Calcutta, and his admirers founded in his honour the Eden Hospital for Women and Children in Calcutta. A more solid testimony to his memory is the Eden canal, which joins the Ganges and the Tistá, and will effectually save the greater portion of Behar from famine. Eden was an assiduous attendant at the council of India for the remainder of his life.

He died suddenly of paralysis on 9 July 1887.

External links

* http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Myanmar.htm

References

*1911
*DNB