William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst

William Pitt Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst GCH (January 14 1773 - March 13 1857), was Governor-General of Bengal. He was the nephew of Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, and succeeded to his title in 1797 by the remainder provided when the letters patent was renewed in 1788.

Ambassador extraordinary to China

In 1816 he was sent as ambassador extraordinary to the court of China's Qing Dynasty, with a view of establishing more satisfactory commercial relations between that country and the United Kingdom. Before arriving in Pei Ho, the ships of British Navy and East Indian Company reached Hong Kong for supply. They landed Little Hong Kong and made survey around the Hong Kong Island [cite book|title=Visit to Places of Interest on Hong Kong Island|author=James Hayes|work=Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society|volumn=7|date=1967-04-01] . On arriving at the Pei Ho (Hai River) he was given to understand that he could only be admitted to the Jiaqing Emperor's presence on condition of performing the kowtow, a ceremony which Western nations considered degrading, and which was, indeed, a homage exacted by a Chinese sovereign from his tributaries. To this Amherst, following the advice of Sir George Thomas Staunton, who accompanied him as second commissioner, refused to consent, as Macartney had done in 1793, unless the admission was made that his sovereign was entitled to the same show of reverence from a mandarin of his rank. In consequence of this he was not allowed to enter Peking (Beijing), and the object of his mission was frustrated.

His ship, the "Alceste", after a cruise along the coast of Korea and to the Ryukyu Islands, on proceeding homewards was totally wrecked on a sunken rock in Caspar Strait. Amherst and part of his shipwrecked companions escaped in the ship's boats to Batavia, whence relief was sent to the rest. The ship in which he returned to England in 1817 having touched at St Helena, he had several interviews with the emperor Napoleon (see Ellis's "Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China", 1817; McLeod's Narrative of a Voyage in H.M.S. "Alceste", 1817).

Governor-general of Bengal

Amherst held the office of Governor-General of Bengal from August 1823 to February 1828. The principal event of his government was the first Burmese war of 1824, resulting in the cession of Arakan and Tenasserim to the British Empire.

His appointment to Calcutta came on the heels of the removal of the hawkish Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings in 1823. Hastings clashed with London over the issue of lowering the field pay of officers in the Bengal Army, a measure that he was able to avoid through successive wars against Nepal and the Marathas. However, his refusal in the early 1820s during peacetime to lower field pay resulted in the appointment of Amherst, who was expected to carry out the demands from London.

However, Amherst was an inexperienced governor who was, at least in the early days of his tenure in Calcutta, influenced heavily by senior military officers in Bengal such as Sir Edward Paget. Not willing to lose face in a time of Burmese territorial aggression, when a territorial dispute that he inherited from John Adam, acting Governor-General prior to his arrival, involving the Anglo-Burmese border on the Naaf River spilled over into violence on 24 September, 1823, he ordered the troops in.

The war was to take two years, with 15,000 killed on the British side and cost 13 million pounds, contributing to an economic crisis in India. It was only due to the efforts of powerful friends such as George Canning and the Duke of Wellington that he was not recalled in disgrace at the end of the war. The war significantly changed Amherst's stance on Burma, now adamantly refusing to annex Lower Burma, but did not repair his reputation entirely, and he was replaced in 1828.

He was created Earl Amherst, of Arracan in the East Indies, and Viscount Holmesdale, in the County of Kent, in 1826. On his return to England he lived in retirement till his death in March 1857.

Notes

References

*A. Thackeray and R. Evans, Amherst (" Rulers of India * series), 1894.
*1911
* Webster, Anthony. (1998) "Gentlemen Capitalists: British Imperialism in Southeast Asia", Tauris Academic Studies, New York, ISBN 1-86-064171-7.