Echoes from old Calcutta : being chiefly reminiscences of the days of Warren Hastings, Francis and Impey / by H.E. Busteed.

  • Henry Elmsley Busteed
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Echoes from old Calcutta : being chiefly reminiscences of the days of Warren Hastings, Francis and Impey / by H.E. Busteed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ECHOES FROM OLD CALCUTTA. CHAPTEK 1. THE BLACK HOLE, 1756. ].—The Capture of Calcutta. “ We have always thought it strange that while the history of the Spanish Empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. ‘‘It might have been expected that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history, would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated in the course of a few years one of the greatest Empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is to most readers not only insipid, but positively distasteful.”—Macaulay. The indiiference thus reflected on by the historian is not confined to the English residing at home; it characterizes them when they come to live in India also. But if the sojourners in India manifest a want of acquaintance with, or but little interest in, early Indo-Britisli history, the reason may partly be found in the circumstance that the majority of Europeans come to India for real hard work, and that, engrossed in the busy present, they cannot concern themselves with the past. This, perhaps, is specially the case of those whose lot is cast in. the large centres of commercial and official activity. Speaking for Calcutta, where life is always at high pressure, the past seems, almost of necessity, to be a sealed book, which it would be unprofitable to open; and the generation of the present goes on, knowing or caring little of the generations which dwelled there before it.
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