Talk:James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie

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A few minor grammatical and stylistic corrections[edit]

I've just made a few minor grammatical and stylistic corrections to the first part of the article (whose rathe purple prose could do with a thorough bleaching), but there's one point at which I was stymied. He's supposed to have "aggravated the crisis by his overbearing self-consciousness", but this doesn't really make sense. My problem is that I don't know what the writer meant to write instead of "self-consciousness" — arrogance? self-centredness? selfishness? or what?
Oh, and was he born at or in Dalhousie Castle? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:37, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

self-confidence, I would imagine. I would also guess that he was born in Dalhousie Castle, but who knows. In terms of the prose, it's copied from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. So that explains that. john k 23:59, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's all right; I've made the changes. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:56, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Adraeus[edit]

Regardless of your grammatical preferences, it's a title, and it has a hyphen. GGoC is the exception, not the rule. Try reading about the subject before making pronouncements on it. You could start here: Governor-General. Proteus (Talk) 12:05, 14 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Coverage of his time in India needs to be totally rewritten[edit]

The quality of this page is very low. There is too much one-sided defense of Dalhousie and his conduct during the Indian Mutiny. The accounts of his wars of expansion in India are all biased. Those wars were controversial even at the time. the accounts presented on the page read like a pro-war political manefesto. Dalhousie led the Company in India to Financial ruin through his wars of expansion and then nearly lost everything because of his conduct during the mutiny. I can think of few (if any) people who would agree with the page that he was some sort of far-sighted great leader vindicated by history.

That is your opinion to which you are entitled. However, the history books present a different story, largely echoed here. Wikipedia is not set up to rewrite history according to the contempory nationalist movements in various countries, nor should it be a vehicle for history judged by 21st century yardsticks rather than those of the time. It is to those historians we must look to get a grasp of how the individual is judged. Not by us, today. David Lauder 18:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
History is nothing but the opinion of people of that time. I agree that we should not judge history through the prism of a later period. However, in this case, the references used are only British and no counter opinions (of the people from the same period in India or elsewhere) are offered. This makes the piece totally biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.147.164 (talk) 20:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism Alert[edit]

User 82.110.219.204 has made edits to this article (→Second Anglo-Sikh War) which may be vandalism. A knowledgeable editor should review the history to determine if those changes are factually correct. NThurston 20:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Out of Date and biased[edit]

The article needs to be rewritten, the text in the article comes directly from the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. This was written at a time when the British empire was at it's height, as a consequence it is full of bias. Pahari Sahib 11:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We are not here to rewrite history. If you feel something as splendid as the Encyclopaedia Britannica was in 1911 is biased then that is rather sad. If you wish to present rewritten history (and there is plenty of it about today) then you should possibly find another forum? David Lauder 18:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is need for me to find another forum, and it is not a question of "rewriting history" simply that the article needs to be brought up to date, the Encyclopaedia Britannica good as it is - does contain bias, this is noted in Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition#1911 Britannica in the 21st century. The article in its original version is here wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/James Andrew Broun Ramsay Dalhousie. As long as the article has a NPOV then fine. Pahari Sahib @13:43, 15 August 2007 (GMT)
Fascinating. Just how do you "bring history up to date"? It sounds to me as though it is you who wishes to introduce a point of view. David Lauder 13:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My point is simply that the article needs to be brought up to date, for instance it describes his wife as "a lady of gentle lineage and distinguished gifts" and of his mother "while to his mother he owed his high-bred courtesy", do you see what I mean. These words "gentle lineage" and "high-bred", this is the point of view of the author who wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica article. Good as the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, it does contain out of date ideas and expressions. Pahari Sahib @16:43, 15 August 2007 (GMT)
Agreed. The EB is not flawless by any stretch of the imagination, and contains biases like any other historical source (including Wikipedia). Additionally, EB will by definition present the 19th-century British point of view. The article needs updating. Victorianist (talk) 18:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Political party[edit]

The infobox says "chut" for political party. Tempting to delete it on the assumption it is editing cruft, but perhaps someone who knows can fix it, if it is wrong. --KenWalker | Talk 16:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. --KenWalker | Talk 07:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Major additions 5/2009[edit]

I have added groups of information in a series of changes over the last few days. Hopefully this will help with the neutrality dispute of some of the sections I have worked on (primarily governor general, first anglo-sikh war, and second burmese war sections).

Also added a section on domestic reforms under his rule.

I attempted to substantiate claims as best as possible with specific citations from a variety of academic sources. If anything is unclear with regards to this, please let me know and I will fix it. As discussed above, the 1911 EB has a nuber of issues regarding date/bias, however remains an important source of information. I have left the 1911 information for the most part, but have supplemented it with a wide range of sources (from American, British, and Indian scholars). Hopefully this will give the article a more holistic, less biased viewpoint.

The sentence in the governor general section regarding writing back to England about calm in India seems a bit unnecessary and needs citation, but I have left it in the article.

In addition, the introduction seemed to have some inflammatory information. I have reworded this to better suit a neutral viewpoint, or at least to better reflect the debate surrounding the significance of Dalhousie's reign in India. The only change in content to this section I made reflected the statment that earlier British administrators were more culturally open-minded and that Dalhousie personally garned in an era of european closed-mindedness. If anything, dalhousie himself was the opposite (especially in comparison to the TB Macaulay-influenced 1830's). The SarDesai source I have referrenced has quite a bit of information regarding this for those concerned.

Not many sources to choose from, but Cobden's account of the annexation of "Upper Burma" remains the one-and-only source on that chapter of history --and so must be cited somewhere (somehow) in the encyclopedia entry.
  1. The facts of the event were obscured by conflicts between colonial administrators reporting to the admirals of the navy, rather than the company or civil authorities. The nature of the dispute was mis-represented to Parliament, and Parliament played a role in further "suppressing" the facts released to the public, but most of the facts were established by comparative reading of these conflicting accounts in what was originally an anonymous pamphlet, How Wars are Got Up In India; this account by Richard Cobden remains almost the sole contemporaneous account of who actually made the decision to invade and annex Burma.
Looks like the full text is now available for free as a digitized book: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UT4dAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22How+wars+are+got+up+in+India%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=dQm9uo9xJr&sig=HKv6itU1VpFV1ul9q2TfY2a0CBo&hl=en&ei=N7eiSpeGDY2j4Qa0vJnRAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=&f=false —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.179.174 (talk) 19:24, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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Where did the money come from for Dalhousie's projects in India?[edit]

The article makes much of Dalhousie's projects in India - his education system, railways, and so on. But where did the money come from for these services and infrastructure schemes? Surely Dalhousie did not provide for all this out of his own pocket? If Dalhousie increased the taxation of Indians, or borrowed money for his projects, the article should say so.2A02:C7E:1C8D:3800:FC74:D7F8:AD0C:4CD5 (talk) 10:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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