ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the Effects on Edinburgh University of the introduction in 1855 of examination entry to the new Indian Civil Service (ICS). Merit, measured through examinations, replaced patronage in selecting candidates for the Raj’s covenanted and coveted administrative service. Edinburgh University had always played an important role in educating many of the Scots who chose assorted careers in Britain’s expanding empire in India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although a university education was necessary for professions such as medicine, it was not a requirement for most other Indian careers, including that of Writer. Concern was expressed, even before the first examinations, that Scots would be severely disadvantaged in the ensuing competitions, especially by the subjects required for study. That the issue achieved the particular prominence it did in Edinburgh resulted from the harnessing of the ICS question to a wider movement for university reform.
