Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning
English statesman and Governor-General of India
1812 CE to 1862 CE
Charles John Canning, 1st Earl Canning KG GCB KSI PC (December 14, 1812 – June 17, 1862), also known as The Viscount Canning and Clemency Canning), is an English statesman and Governor-General of India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the first Viceroy of India after the transfer of power from the East India Company to the Crown of Queen Victoria in 1858 after the rebellion is crushed.
Canning is credited for ensuing that the administration and most departments of the government function normally during the rebellion and takes major administrative decisions even during the peak of the Rebellion in 1857, including establishment of the first three modern Universities in India, the University of Calcutta, University of Madras and University of Bombay, based on Wood's dispatch.
Canning passes the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 which had been drafted by his predecessor Lord Dalhousie before the rebellion.
After the rebellion he presides over a smooth transfer and reorganization of government from the East India company to the crown. The Indian Penal Code is drafted in 1860 based on the code drafted by Macaulay and comes into force in 1862.
Canning meets the rebellion '"with firmness, confidence, magnanimity and calm" as per his biographer.
Canning is very firm during the rebellion but after that he focuses on reconciliation and reconstruction rather than retribution and issues a clemency proclamation.
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It had been drafted by Lord Dalhousie, but it is passed by his successor Lord Canning.
It is the first major social reform legislation after the abolition of Sati by Lord William Bentinck.
To protect what it considers family honor and family property, upper-caste Hindu society had long disallowed the remarriage of widows, even child and adolescent ones, all of whom were expected to live a life of austerity and abnegation.
The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856 provides legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for remarrying a Hindu widow, though, under the Act, the widow forsakes any inheritance due her from her deceased husband.
Especially targeted in the act are Hindu child widows whose husbands had died before consummation of marriage.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who has been the most prominent campaigner. had petitioned the Legislative council.
There was a counter petition against the proposal with nearly four times more signatures by Radhakanta Deb and the Dharma Sabha, but Lord Dalhousie had personally finalized the bill despite the opposition and it being considered a flagrant breach of Hindu customs as prevalent at this time.
In the context of the Great Game, they oppose an extension of Persian influence in Afghanistan because of the perception that Persia is unduly influenced by the Russians.
The Persian influence on Central Asia had caused the creation of Greater Iran, and the Persians had succeeded in taking Herat on October 25.
In response, the British Governor-General in India, acting on orders from London, declares war on November 1.
Separate from and preceding the dispute over Herat is an incident concerning one Meerza Hashem Khan, whom the British ambassador had hoped to appoint as a secretary in the mission in Tehran.
The Persians had objected, creating a dispute that escalated when rumors appeared that the British ambassador had improper relations with the man's wife, who was the sister of the Shah's principal wife.
The dispute had escalated still further when the Persians arrested the woman; the British ambassador had broken relations when they refused to release her.
Indeed, the initial mobilization of British forces begins in response to this incident, although it is unlikely that the British would have gone beyond the occupation of one or two islands in the Persian Gulf had the issue of Herat not arisen.
The British Government has decided to attack in the general area of Bushire/Bushehr, the primary port of entry into Persia at this time.
It orders the Government in India to launch a maritime expeditionary force.
In the aftermath of the disastrous First Afghan War, the British are reluctant to send a force through Afghanistan to relieve Herat directly.
Instead, they elect to attack the Persians on the Persian Gulf coast.
Initially a division, under Major General Foster Stalker, is organized comprising twenty-three hundred British soldiers and thirty-four hundred Indian sepoys of the Bombay Presidency army, which lands in Persia in early December 1856.
This included two companies of the Bombay Sappers & Miners.
The first division of the expedition disembarks in the neighborhood of Bushehr on December 5, 1856.
During the rebellion, Allahabad, with a number of European troops, had been the scene of a massacre.
After the mutiny, the British establish a high court, a police headquarters and a public-service commission in Allahabad, making the city an administrative center.
They truncate the Delhi region of the state, merging it with Punjab and moving the capital of the North-Western Provinces to Allahabad (where it will remain for twenty years).
In January 1858, Earl Canning departs Calcutta for Allahabad.
In this year he reads Queen Victoria's proclamation, transferring control of India from the East India Company to the British Crown (beginning the British Raj), in Minto Park.