Charles U. Aitchison

Sir Charles Umpherston Aitchison (20 May 1832 – 18 February 1896) was a Scottish colonial administrator who was Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, then a province of British India. He founded Aitchison College, Lahore in 1886. He served as Chief Commissioner of the British Crown Colony of Burma from March 1878 to May 1880.

Biography

Education Charles Umpherston Aitchison, born in Edinburgh on 20 May 1832, was the son of Hugh Aitchison of that city, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Umpherston of Loanhead near Edinburgh. He was educated at the Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.A. on 23 April 1853. While a university student, Aitchison attended the lectures of Sir William Hamilton on logic and metaphysics. He afterwards passed some time in Germany, where he studied the works of Fichte, and attended the lectures of Tholuck at the University of Halle.

Indian civil service In 1855 he ranked fifth at the first competitive examination for the Indian Civil Service, and after spending a year in England in the study of law and oriental languages he landed at Kolkata (then Calcutta) on 26 September 1856. In March 1857 he was appointed an assistant in Hissár, then a district of the North-Western Provinces and in the following month was transferred to the Punjab, where he joined shortly after the outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Owing to this transfer he escaped a massacre of Europeans which took place at Hissár on 29 May. His first station in his new province was Amritsar, and immediately after his arrival there he was employed under the orders of the deputy commissioner in carrying out the measures which were taken to prevent the Jalandhar mutineers from crossing the Beas River. Shortly afterwards he was appointed personal assistant to the judicial commissioner, in which capacity he compiled A Manual of the Criminal Law of the Panjáb (1860). While thus employed, he was much thrown with Sir John Laird Mair Lawrence (afterwards Baron Lawrence), with whose policy, especially on the Central Asian question, and on British relations with Afghanistan, he was strongly imbued during the remainder of his life. In 1892 he contributed a memoir of Lord Lawrence to Sir William Wilson Hunter's Rulers of India series. Their daughter Beatrice Clementia married British Indian Army official James Dunlop Smith.

Published works These include: Charles Umpherston Aitchison, ed., A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries; 7 vols. Calcutta (with Index compiled by Manuel Belletty). 1862-65 Revised edition. 8 vols. 1876. 3rd edition. 11 vols. 1892. 4th edition. 13 vols. 1909. 5th edition. 14 vols. 1929–33.