Henry Prinsep

Henry Thoby Prinsep (15 July 1793 – 11 February 1878) was an English official of the Indian Civil Service, and historian of India.

After serving in the Jungle Mehuls and in Bákarganj, Prinsep was appointed, in 1814, to a subordinate office in the secretariat, and a member of the suite of the governor-general, Lord Moira, whom he accompanied through Oudh and the North-Western Provinces.

He was subsequently the first holder of the office of superintendent and remembrancer of legal affairs, protecting the interests of the government in the courts of the provinces; but was summoned to join the governor-general's camp during prolonged tours.

When Lord William Bentinck conferred with Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Sikh Empire in October 1831, at the Ropar Meeting, Prinsep was in attendance.

His ambition at that time was to enter the House of Commons, and he contested four constituencies as a Conservative candidate (Kilmarnock Burghs, Dartmouth, Dover and Harwich).

At Harwich in March 1851 he was returned by a majority, was unseated by petition on technical grounds connected with his qualification, which were removed by the House of Commons.

[3][1] At the end of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, Prinsep obtained the permission of the governor-general to write A History of the Political and Military Transactions in India during the Administration of the Marquis of Hastings, i.e. from October 1813 to January 1823.

George Canning, President of the Board of Control, prohibited the publication, but Prinsep went ahead on his own responsibility, and John Murray brought out the book in 1823.

[3] Prinsep wrote also works on: the origin of Sikh power in the Punjáb (1834); recent discoveries in Afghanistan (1844); social and political conditions of Tibet, Tartary, and Mongolia (1852).

He also, when in India, brought out Ramachandra Dasa's Register of the Bengal Civil Servants 1790–1842, accompanied by Actuarial Tables (Calcutta, 1844).