John Prinsep - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

John Prinsep (1748–1830) was born the son of a vicar in rural Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....

, England, with limited horizons for advancement. He joined the East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

as a cadet, travelling to Bombay

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, and was soon engaged in mercantile pursuits, eventually becoming the earliest British merchant to plant indigo

Indigofera

Indigofera is a large genus of about 700 species of flowering plants belonging to the family Fabaceae.The species are mostly shrubs, though some are herbaceous, and a few can become small trees up to tall. Most are dry-season or winter deciduous. The leaves are pinnate with 5–31 leaflets and the...

, and becoming extremely wealthy in the process. Prinsep subsequently returned to England, where he became a London alderman

Alderman

An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...

and a Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

, but he eventually lost both large fortunes he created. He was the progenitor of an Anglo-Indian family of merchants, all of whom were artistically gifted.

John Prinsep was born on 23 April 1746, the son of Rev. John Prinsep, BA graduate of Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

and vicar of Bicester, Oxfordshire. The young Prinsep arrived in Bombay in 1771 as a cadet

Cadet

A cadet is a trainee to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. The term comes from the term "cadet" for younger sons of a noble family.- Military context :...

, shortly after the arrival of Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...

as the first Governor-General of Bengal.

The vicar's son and former London cloth merchant arrived in Calcutta

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

with almost nothing to his name. "I landed with my baggage at the Custom House," Prinsep recalled in an unpublished memoir, "and proceeded to the 'Punch House' in the Bazaar with ten guineas

Guinea (British coin)

The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...

that I had borrowed from my friend to bear my expenses till I should have presented myself to the Fort Major." It was an inauspicious beginning, but like so many other English arrivals in India, it was fraught with the frisson of Empire and ambition.

In spite of being nearly penniless, Prinsep arrived with a valuable commodity: letters of introduction. Soon, he discovered, Calcutta was not London. "I could not help being surprised at the hospitality offered me," Prinsep later wrote, "for, once respectably introduced, I found myself at home everywhere. No formality, no stiffness or reserve, everybody happy to receive the stranger." The point of view would be echoed by the English ever since, down to E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

.

Prinsep was apparently distracted by commercial opportunities almost on arrival. He never joined the Army, and resigned his commission in 1772, the year after his arrival in India. A servant of the East India Company

East India Company

, Prinsep became close friends with Warren Hastings, an opportune relationship which served him well. It was his friend Hastings who first secured for Prinsep his lucrative hold on the production of indigo.

The young Prinsep lost his father and two of his sisters to an outbreak of fever in 1768. By then Prinsep seems to have taken up employment in the cotton trade of the East India Company, having worked before his arrival in India in several London merchant houses specializing in fabrics. Within a few years, though, Prinsep discovered indigo. In 1779 Prinsep introduced the cultivation and manufacture of indigo at a factory

Factory

A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...

(plantation) located in Nilgang, near Baraset. Indigo was also being grown in South Carolina

South Carolina

South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...

for export to England as textile dye, but Prinsep's establishment of the Indian indigo business, simultaneously with the Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

having slashed American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

indigo export to England, meant that the Indian producers soon controlled the market.

The business was apparently profitable from the outset, to the extent that within a year Prinsep opened a copper mint at Pulta in 1780 under authority of the government, after he and Alexander Cunningham discovered the copper mines at Rotasgarh, producing the first copper coinage in India. Prinsep also traded on his background in the textile business, opening a cotton fabric printing plant in Bengal, as well as acting for ten years as the chintz

Chintz

Chintz is glazed calico cloth printed with flowers and other patterns in different colours. Unglazed calico is called "cretonne". The word Calico is derived from the name of the Indian city Calicut to which it had a manufacturing association.-History:Chintz was originally a woodblock printed,...

contractor for the East India Company, an enormously successful venture. (The chintz venture involved adapting British calico-making techniques to making a cloth called chintz.)

In a few short years, Prinsep's near-monopoly had made the country vicar's son one of the wealthiest men in India. He had also made an auspicious marriage to a sister of James Peter Auriol, secretary to government during Warren Hastings' administration. Auriol was a descendant of an old French Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

family from Chartres

Chartres

Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...

.

By 1773, Prinsep's connections had paid off: he was named an Alderman of the Mayor's Court. For some years afterwards Prinsep's legendary business acumen, first proved to the East India Company

East India Company

when he was still in the fabric business in England and gave advice on improving the Company's fabric business, resulted in his being named Assistant Superintendent of Investments for the Company. By this time Prinsep had set himself up in regal digs in the village of Monirampur close to the Phulta waterworks which supplied Calcutta with drinking water.

As soon as Prinsep began generating returns on his early investments, he did what other successful English merchants had done: he bought the ships with which he traded. No longer would he be at the mercy of the shipping fleet.

By 1788 Prinsep left India and decamped for home, arriving in London with an enormous £40,000 fortune – primarily derived from his indigo ventures – which he used to set himself up in business as an East India

East India

East India is a region of India consisting of the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa. The states of Orissa and West Bengal share some cultural and linguistic characteristics with Bangladesh and with the state of Assam. Together with Bangladesh, West Bengal formed the...

agent and Italian silk merchant, a step made easier by his role as an East India Company

East India Company

shareholder. Back in England, Prinsep proved to be a vocal, if not particularly subtle, advocate for the unencumbered rights of English merchants. One tract he authored in 1793, for instance, was entitled: "The right in the West India merchants to a Double Monopoly of the Sugar Market and the Expedience of all Monopolies Examined."

Prinsep simultaneously urged a government policy of opening up the India market to the free competition of British merchants, a policy eventually adopted, but one which he was not able to participate in due to financial reversals resulting from the market crisis occasioned at the end of the Revolutionary War.

In 1780 Prinsep wrote to Lord North

Frederick North, Lord North

Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, KG, PC , more often known by his courtesy title, Lord North, which he used from 1752 until 1790, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most of the American War of Independence...

while still in Calcutta "outlining his intention of introducing indigo, sugar and tobacco into Britain from South Asia", wrote historian H. V. Bowen in his The Business of Empire. "He did so with the belief that a 'richer tribute may by such means be drawn from Bengal than is furnished by the present almost worn out system of investing it in manufactures which are every day falling in estimation at home since European industry has adopted such variety of imitation and improvement on the fabricks of the East."

Prinsep continued to write, sometimes under pseudonyms, to put across his political views. In modern parlance, he would probably be called a 'spinner,' so anxious was he to advance his economic and social agenda.

John Prinsep subsequently launched himself on an auspicious political career, as well as purchasing an enormous frescoed mansion at 147 Leadenhall Street

Leadenhall Street

Leadenhall Street is a street in the City of London, formerly part of the A11. It runs east from Cornhill to Aldgate, and west vice-versa. Aldgate Pump is at the junction with Aldgate...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, which would later become part of the East India Company

East India Company

's offices, as well as Thoby Priory in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

.

Back in London, Prinsep became one of the founders of the Westminster Life Assurance Society. He served as MP

Member of Parliament

for Queenborough

Queenborough

Queenborough is a small town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England.Queenborough is two miles south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to The Swale where it joins the River Medway...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, from 1802–06, as a London alderman

Alderman

from 1804–09, and, following financial reverses, as High Bailiff

High Bailiff

In the Isle of Man the High Bailiff is the head stipendiary magistrate.In Vermont, a high bailiff is a county officer.-Isle of Man:The current High Bailiff is His Worship John Needham, who took office on 30 January 2010 on the retirement of Mr Michael Moyle. Mr Needham was previously Clerk to the...

for Southwark

Southwark

Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

from 1817–24. Prinsep also served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Skinners

Worshipful Company of Skinners

The Worshipful Company of Skinners is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. It was originally an association of those engaged in the trade of skins and furs...

of London.

Prinsep died in London on 30 November 1830. He was survived by seven sons, most of whom became Anglo-Indian merchants and English businessmen, artists and gentlemen farmers. All seven attained official positions of authority while still in India, including one (Henry Thoby Prinsep) who served as a director of the East India Company

East India Company

.

Prinsep and his wife had one daughter. Prinsep Ghat in today's Kolkata

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

is named for the Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indian

Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...

family and its long legacy to the subcontinent

Subcontinent

A subcontinent is a large, relatively self-contained landmass forming a subdivision of a continent. By dictionary entries, the term subcontinent signifies "having a certain geographical or political independence" from the rest of the continent, or "a vast and more or less self-contained subdivision...

, from the scholarship and artistry of some family members to the naked imperialism of others.

See also