Thomas George Percival Spear OBE (1901–1982) was a British historian of modern South Asia, in particular of its colonial period.
Born in Bath in 1901, Percival Spear attended Monkton Combe School and later St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he studied History.
[1] He also served for a time in 1944 as a government whip in the Federal Assembly, the precursor to independent India's Parliament.
After the war, Spear returned to Cambridge, becoming a Fellow and Bursar of Selwyn College and later a university lecturer in South Asian History.
In his book Master of Bengal: Clive and his India, Percival Spear wrote, "The dominion of Bengal was not desired in itself, but only as a safeguard for peaceful commercial operations ... Rule by legal fiction and by deputy was both safer and cheaper in the conditions of the time."