Francis Loraine Petre OBE (22 February 1852 – 6 May 1925) was a British civil servant in India and a military historian upon his retirement.
[11] Petre maintained his connections to his illustrious family; in 1873, his cousin married George Forbes, 7th Earl of Granard, and he was listed as a guest.
[12] In 1887, Petre married Maud Ellen Rawlinson, the daughter of a clergyman; their son, Roderic L(oraine), born 1888 in Indore, India; Roderick attended school near Midsomer Norton and Stratton-on-the-Fosse,[13] where he sang treble in the boys choir.
[14] Roderick served in the South Wales Borderers in the Gallipoli campaign of World War I,[15] and was awarded the Military Cross.
[22] In 1888, his article on "Progress and Prospects of Native States of Central India" was published in the Asiatic Quarterly Review.
[24] In 1901, he presented a paper, The Indian Sectarists and their Relation to the Administration, which was published in the Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review.
[25] On his retirement from the Indian Civil Service, his interest in the Napoleonic Wars led him to seek out studies of the European campaigns.
[26] Similarly, his Napoleon & the Archduke Charles; a history of the Franco-Austrian campaign in the valley of the Danube in 1809 reflected the dearth of English language material on the subject.
[37] Petre also wrote two books on South America, responding to the need for investors to find additional information in a convenient form in English.
In it, he maintained, he simply collated information and in his tour of the country he remained on what he called "the beaten tracks", principal cities, and the countryside.
[38] His second book on South America was Simon Bolivar—El Libertador; a life of the chief leader in the revolt against Spain in Venezuela, New Granada and Peru.