[2] Wheeler developed his interests to become, in the words of S. C. Mittal, a "bureaucrat-historian", of whom William Wilson Hunter and Alfred Comyn Lyall are other examples.
[6] While holding these two offices, he produced various summary reports relating to the history and politics of countries that bordered on British India for the government,[1] and also some memoranda on topics such as vernacular literature and the amirs of Sindh that were well received.
[1] According to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), in an article originally written in 1899 by Stephen Wheeler and later revised by David Washbrook in 2004, he had a three-year furlough in England between 1873 and 1876 and then returned to Calcutta, where he produced further reports based on records held by government departments and also an official history of the Imperial Assemblage (the Delhi Durbar) that took place in 1877.
He was given permission to publish these later works, which had not been the case with his earlier official reports, he was "one of the first historians of British India to rely primarily on documentary sources.
Mittal agrees with the ODNB, saying that Wheeler was ... not an original thinker or a genius professional historian but [...] a compiler, a record-keeper and a good editor.
The government also denied his request in 1888 for financial recognition, in the form of a grant or pension, for his efforts in producing the History of India series.