Robert Arbuthnot

Robert Arbuthnot ( – February 1809) was a British soldier turned diplomat who served between 1801 and 1806 as the Chief Secretary of Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was called before 1972), which had recently been transferred from Dutch to British military control, formally in 1796.

A promising career in imperial administration was terminated in February 1809. Arbuthnot was a passenger on when the small schooner was lost at sea between Cádiz and Gibraltar.

Life Robert Arbuthnot was born in about 1760 or 1761, at the height of the Seven Years' War. His father, also called Robert Arbuthnot (1728–1803), was an Edinburgh polymath and merchant, an earlier career as a banker having ended in "heavy pecuniary losses". Two decades later Arbuthnot had joined the army. It is known that he was present at the Siege of Gibraltar (1779–1782) in which French and Spanish forces, exploiting Great Britain's transatlantic distractions, engaged in a sustained but unsuccessful attempt to displace British forces from "The Rock". was recalled to head up the British diplomatic mission in Vienna during the build-up to the war. Murray Keith was a family friend, and he invited Robert Arbuthnot to join him as his private secretary. In January 1788 was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.