Mark Wilks

Colonel Mark Wilks FRS (1759 – 19 September 1831) was a Madras Army officer, historian and colonial administrator who worked in southern India principally in the princely state of Mysore.

[1] He purchased cadetship through Sir Henry Fletcher, in the court of the Directors of the East India Company in 1781 at the age of 18, joining the Madras Army.

Wilks served as a secretary to the Military Board in 1787, accompanying Sir Barry Close on a diplomatic mission to Mysore.

His early education included Greek and Latin classics which and he would later in life promote its study by his nephew Mark Cubbon.

Wilks served alongside General James Stuart during the storming of Srirangapatna resulting in the death of Tipu Sultan in May 1799.

Wilks denounced the reign of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in his historical enquiries and sought to find the causes for the decline of the Vijaynagar Empire.

In 1813 he was appointed Governor for three years of Saint Helena where the exiled former French Emperor Napoleon is said to have found Wilks a highly engaging and affable man.