ABSTRACT
Entry into the service of the East India Company came easily to Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835–1911): his father’s brother, George Lyall, was a director of the Company, and held the office of chairman in 1841–3 and 1844–6. Lyall attended Haileybury (where some of his earliest literary efforts were contributed to the Haileybury Observer), and went to India in 1856. On arrival, he was appointed assistant magistrate of Bulandshahr district. The following year, Lyall’s bungalow went up in flames, and the normal order of the district collapsed, at the outbreak of rebellion, and Lyall joined the volunteer cavalry corps at Meerut, and took part in several actions. ‘We are exercising unsparing revenge and hang people daily’, he wrote during the aftermath (quoted in Durand, p. 72). He eventually received the Mutiny medal for his services. After a period of leave in 1861 (during which he married Cora Cloete), he began a rapid climb through the ranks of the civil service, starting as assistant magistrate in Agra in 1862, and moving on to posts in the Central Provinces and West Berar. By 1873 he was home secretary, and in 1874 took charge of Rajputana as Agent to the Governor-General; in 1878 he returned to Calcutta as foreign secretary. He held this post during the second Anglo–Afghan War (1878–81), having favoured the idea of intervention in Afghanistan. As initial success for the British forces was followed by a revolt in Kabul and a series of battles, Lyall travelled to Kandahar in autumn of 1880 to take part in negotiating the terms for a British withdrawal, and the recognition of Abdur Rahman as ruler of Afghanistan. In 1881 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces and chief commissioner of Oudh; in this role he founded the University of Allahabad. He left India in 1887, but on his return to England served on the Council of India for fifteen years. He received a knighthood in 1887. Lyall was a prolific writer, producing essays (collected in two volumes of Asiatic Studies, published in 1882 and 1889); biographies of Warren Hastings (1889) and the former Viceroy of India Lord Dufferin (1905); and The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, which itself expanded over several editions until it reached its full growth in 1910. He also wrote on other subjects, including a biography of Tennyson (1902).
