William Pitt Amherst 1st Earl Amherst 1773 1857 British diplomat colonial administrator Governor General of India Politician
William Pitt Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst, GCH, PC (14 January 1773 – 13 March 1857) was a British diplomat and colonial administrator. He was Governor-General of India between 1823 and 1828. Amherst was Governor-General of India from August 1823 to February 1828. The principal event of his government was the first Burmese war of 1824, resulting in the cession of Arakan and Tenasserim to the British Empire. His appointment came on the heels of the removal of Governor-General Lord Hastings in 1823. Hastings clashed with London over the issue of lowering the field pay of officers in the Bengal Army, a measure that he was able to avoid through successive wars against Nepal and the Marathas. However, his refusal in the early 1820s during peacetime to lower field pay resulted in the appointment of Amherst, who was expected to carry out the demands from London. However, Amherst was an inexperienced governor who was, at least in the early days of his tenure in Calcutta, influenced heavily by senior military officers in Bengal such as Sir Edward Paget. Not willing to lose face in a time of Burmese territorial aggression, when a territorial dispute that he inherited from John Adam, acting Governor-General prior to his arrival, involving the Anglo-Burmese border on the Naaf River spilled over into violence on 24 September, 1823, he ordered the troops in. The war was to take two years, with 15,000 killed on the British side and cost 13 million pounds, contributing to an economic crisis in India. It was only due to the efforts of powerful friends such as George Canning and the Duke of Wellington that he was not recalled in disgrace at the end of the war. The war significantly changed Amherst's stance on Burma, now adamantly refusing to annex Lower Burma, but did not repair his reputation entirely, and he was replaced in 1828. He was created Earl Amherst, of Arracan in the East Indies, and Viscount Holmesdale, in the County of Kent, in 1826.
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