Early life

Forsyth was born in Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

 on 7 October 1827. He was the tenth child of Thomas Forsyth, a Liverpool merchant. He was educated at Sherborne and Rugby, and under private tuition until he entered 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...

's College at Haileybury, where he remained until December 1847.

In the subcontinent

He embarked for India in January 1848, and arrived at Calcutta in the following March. Here he gained honours in Persian, Hindustani, and Hindi at the company's college, and in September of the same year was appointed to a post under Edward Thornton

Edward Thornton

Edward Thornton may refer to:*Edward Thornton , British Privy counsellor*Sir Edward Thornton , British Ambassador to Russia and Constantinople*Eddie Thornton , Jamaican trumpeter...

at Saharanpur

Saharanpur

Saharanpur is a city and a Municipal Corporation in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It is the administrative headquarters of Saharanpur District as well as Saharanpur Division...

. On the annexation of the Punjab

Punjab region

The Punjab , also spelled Panjab |water]]s"), is a geographical region straddling the border between Pakistan and India which includes Punjab province in Pakistan and the states of the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and some northern parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi...

 after the Second Anglo-Sikh War

Second Anglo-Sikh War

The Second Anglo-Sikh War took place in 1848 and 1849, between the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company. It resulted in the subjugation of the Sikh Empire, and the annexation of the Punjab and what subsequently became the North-West Frontier Province by the East India Company.-Background...

 in March 1849, he was appointed to take part in the administration of the new province, and was sent by Sir Henry Lawrence, together with Colonel Marsden, as deputy-commissioner over him, to Pakpattan

Pakpattan

Pakpattan is the capital city of the Pakpattan District in the Sahiwal Division in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Pakpattan is one of the ancient cities of Pakistan. It is the city that has the shrine of the well-known Sufi of all times, Baba Fareed...

. He was shortly afterwards appointed by Lord Dalhousie to the post of assistant-commissioner at Simla

Simla

-Politics/History:Simla , the summer capital of British India, often refers generically to the government of the British Raj.-Places:* Shimla , city in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh...

. While holding this post he married in 1850 Alice Mary, daughter of Thomas Plumer of Canons Park, Edgware

Edgware

Edgware is an area in London, situated north-northwest of Charing Cross. It forms part of both the London Borough of Barnet and the London Borough of Harrow. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....

.

He was next stationed at Kangra, where he remained till 1854, when an attack of brain fever

Brain fever

Brain fever describes a medical condition where a part of the brain becomes inflamed and causes symptoms that present as fever. The terminology is dated, and is encountered most often in Victorian literature...

 obliged him to return for a time to England. On going back to India he spent a short time as deputy-commissioner, first at Gurdaspur

Gurdaspur

Gurdaspur is a city in the state of Punjab, situated in the northwest part of the Republic of India. It is located in the center of and is the administrative head of Gurdaspur District. It was the location of a fort which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Mughals...

 and subsequently at Rawalpindi

Rawalpindi

Rawalpindi , locally known as Pindi, is a city in the Pothohar region of Pakistan near Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, in the province of Punjab. Rawalpindi is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad...

, whence he was transferred in 1855 to Umballa. He was here at the outbreak of the Indian Rebellion of 1857

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...

, detected the first signs of disaffection, and reported them. After the capture of Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

 he was one of the special commissioners appointed to hunt up the rebels, and in this capacity was principally engaged in examining the papers of the Nana of Cawnpore. He arrived at Lucknow in time to see the city evacuated by the rebels, and after this event acted as secretary successively to Sir James Outram, Sir Robert Montgomery

Sir Robert Montgomery

Sir Robert Montgomery GCSI, KCB, LLD was a British colonial administrator in India....

, and Charles John Wingfield

Charles John Wingfield

Sir Charles John Wingfield KCSI, CB, MP , who had a distinguished career with the Bengal Civil Service, was later elected as the first Member of Parliament for the United Kingdom's Parliament constituency of Gravesend....

, until, in 1860, he was appointed commissioner to the Punjab. For his services during the rebellion he received the Order of Companion of the Bath.

In 1867 he visited Leh, the capital of Ladakh

Ladakh

Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...

, with the object of obtaining from the Kashmir

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

 officials a removal of restrictions on trade between Eastern Turkestan and the Punjab. On his return he instituted an annual fair at Palampur

Palampur

Palampur is a green hill station and a municipal council in the Kangra Valley in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, surrounded on all sides by tea gardens and pine forests before they merge with the Dhauladhar ranges. Palampur is the tea capital of northwest India but tea is just one aspect that...

, in the Kangra valley, to which he invited traders from Turkestan. The experiences which he gained in this way encouraged him in the idea of improving relations between the Indian government, Central Asia and the Russians. Lord Mayo approved and authorised him to proceed to England, and if possible to St. Petersburg, with the object of arranging with the Russian government a definition of the territories of the Amir of Kabul. In this mission he succeeded in proving that the disputed districts belonged to the Amir, and obtained from the Russian government an acknowledgment to that effect.

Forsyth returned to India in 1869. At this time Yakub Beg

Yakub Beg

Muhammad Yaqub Bek was a [Turkic peoples] adventurer who became head of the kingdom of Kashgaria.-Spelling variants:In English-language literature, the name of Yaqub Beg has also been spelt as Yakub Beg , Yakoob Beg , or Ya`qūb Beg...

, as amir of Yarkand and Kashgar

Kashgar

Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...

, in order to to establish relations between his country and India, had sent an envoy to the viceroy with the request that a British officer might be deputed to visit him. Forsyth was instructed to return with the envoy, without political capacity, for the purpose of acquiring information about the people and country. The journey from Lahore

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

 to Yarkand and back, a distance of two thousand miles, was accomplished in six months; but the expedition failed to produce all the results expected from it, because of the absence of the amir from his capital on its arrival.

In 1872 resistance by the Namdhari

Namdhari

Namdhari are a sect of Sikhism. The main difference between Namdhari Sikhs and mainstream Sikhs is their belief in Jagjit Singh as their living Guru...

 (Kuka) sect of Ram Singh

Ram Singh

Ram Singh was a religious leader and social reformer and the first Indian to use non-cooperation and boycotting of British merchandise and services as a political weapon. He was the religious leader of the Namdhari sect of Sikhism...

 occurred at Malerkotla

Malerkotla

Malerkotla is a city and a municipal council in Sangrur district in the Indian state of Punjab. It was the seat of the eponymous princely state during the British Raj...

. Troops were at once ordered to the disaffected districts, and Forsyth was entrusted with the duty of suppressing the insurrection. His powers on this occasion seem not to have been sufficiently defined, and Lambert Cowan, the then commissioner of Ludhiana, had anticipated his arrival by executing many of the rebels, a course of action which, though contrary to instructions, Forsyth felt himself bound to support. When the insurrection was put down, an inquiry instituted into the conduct of Forsyth and Cowan resulted in the removal of both from their appointments. Forsyth appealed against this decision to Lord Northbrook

Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook

Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook PC, GCSI, FRS , was a British Liberal politician and statesman...

 who had recently come out as viceroy; he was compensated by being appointed in 1873 envoy on a mission to Kashgar. The object of this mission was to conclude a commercial treaty with the Amir, and it resulted in the removal of hindrances to trade between the two countries. On his return Forsyth received the order of Knight Commander of the Star of India.

In 1875 Forsyth was sent as envoy to the King of Burma to obtain a settlement of the question which had arisen between the British and Burmese governments as to the relation of the Karenee States, a question which was settled by an agreement, proposed by the king of Burma, that these states should be acknowledged as independent.

Later life

Forsyth left India on furlough in 1876. In the following year he resigned, and occupied himself during the remaining years of his life in the direction of Indian railway companies. In 1879 he formed a company for the purpose of connecting Marmagao, in Portuguese India

Portuguese India

The Portuguese Viceroyalty of India , later the Portuguese State of India , was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.The government started in 1505, six years after the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Viceroy Francisco de...

, with the Southern Mahratta and Deccan countries; and in 1883 he was deputed by the board of directors to visit India and report upon the progress of the works.

He died on 17 December 1886 at Eastbourne

Eastbourne

Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...

.