SYKES, William Henry (1790-1872), of 47 Albion Street, Hyde Park West, Westminster, Middlesex; India House, City of London

‘A rather rugged, unorthodox individual’, Sykes had served as a soldier, geologist and statistician in India.1W.H. Fraser, ‘Politics before 1918’, in W.H. Fraser and C.H. Lee (eds.), Aberdeen, 1800-2000: a new history (2000), 184. Appointed chairman of the East India Company (EIC) in 1856, he entered Parliament the following year and ‘stood out manfully for the Company’ in the debates prompted by the Indian mutiny.2The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T.A. Jenkins (1990), 38 (30 Apr. 1858). Although he was something of an apologist for Company rule, Sykes held progressive views in other respects, consistently championing the right of native Indians and non-whites to enter public service. A Liberal on general party questions, Sykes was a well-informed, if rather lonely, critic of his government’s policy in India and China in the 1860s. In 1868 the Conservative foreign secretary Lord Stanley told the House that ‘nobody understood Chinese affairs better than the hon. and gallant member’.3Hansard, 3 July 1868, vol. 193, c. 672. ‘A man of iron vigour and activity’, even in old age, Sykes was ‘in the House at all hours’ listening to the ‘longest and dreariest debate’.4Aberdeen Journal, 19 June 1872. A frequent speaker, he was ‘a little prolix’, to put it mildly.5Ibid. He contributed on a broad range of subjects, including Scottish affairs, and was a familiar presence in supply debates, where he pressed for retrenchment.

Sykes hailed from the junior branch of an ‘ancient Yorkshire family’.6Dundee Courier, 18 June 1872. He entered the Bombay army in 1803, was present at the siege of Bharatpur in 1805, and fought in the battles of Kirkee and Poonah while serving in Deccan, 1817-20. From 1824 until 1831 he served as statistical reporter to the Bombay government, retiring from EIC service in 1833 and becoming a director of the Company in 1840.7J.F. Riddick, Who was who in British India (1998), 354. A polymath, Sykes authored over 60 papers in the transactions of learned societies on the history, geology, statistics, natural history and meteorology of India.8Dod’s parliamentary companion: new parliament (1857), 286-7. See also P.A. Talbot, ‘Colonel William Henry Sykes: his contribution to statistical accounting’, Accounting History, 15 (2010), 253-76. His books on that country included Notes on the religious, moral and political state of India before the Mahomedan Invasion (1841) and Administration of civil justice in British India (1853).9Riddick, Who was who in British India, 354. He had the distinction of serving as president or chairman of the Society of Arts (1857), Royal Asiatic Society (1863) and Statistical Society of London (1863).10Dundee Courier, 18 June 1872; F. Boase, Modern English biography (1901), iii. 853-4.

Sykes returned to Britain in 1846. At the general election the following year he was invited to stand for Aberdeen, having been ‘highly recommended’ by many of the leading London commercial houses.11Aberdeen Journal, 4 Aug. 1847. The main difference between Sykes and a rival Liberal candidate was religious. Local Whigs and Conservatives rallied to Sykes, believing that his Anglicanism ensured that he would defend the Church of Scotland against the Free Church party represented by his opponent.12Aberdeen Journal, 28 July 1847. During the election he voiced support for free trade, but not repeal of the navigation laws, which he thought would damage the navy, and played up his Scottish ancestry.13Aberdeen Journal, 28 July 1847. He noted that his grandparents included members of the Innes and Hay families, both from north-east Scotland. Although he was defeated by a comfortable margin, he retained his connection with Aberdeen, serving as lord rector of Marischal College in 1854. He was elected for the city at the 1857 general election, defeating another Liberal. In his public speeches he endorsed franchise extension and, reluctantly, the ballot. Although he conceded that in principle there should be no religious endowments, he defended the Maynooth grant on pragmatic grounds, a brave move given its widespread unpopularity in urban Scotland.14Aberdeen Journal, 18 Mar. 1857, 1 Apr. 1857. He was re-elected unopposed at the 1859 and 1865 general elections.

Sykes had become chairman of the EIC in 1856, and when news of the Indian mutiny reached Britain he reassured the House that the company ‘would not spare any expense to put down the revolt’, 5 Aug. 1857. In the debates that followed he was one of the leading defenders of the Company, his role being even more important given that Sir James Weir Hogg, a former EIC chairman, had lost his seat at the 1857 election. Sykes, however, receives scant attention in modern histories of the EIC, which generally focus on the heyday of its economic power, before it lost its trading monopoly in 1833.15For example, there is no reference to Sykes in any of the following works: P. Lawson, The East India Company: a history (1993); J. Keay, The honourable company: a history of the English East India Company (2010); A. Webster, The twilight of the East India Company: the evolution of Anglo-Asian commerce and politics, 1790-1860 (2009); R.J. Moore, Sir Charles Wood’s Indian policy, 1853-66 (1966). Sykes rejected charges that the EIC’s court of directors had been slow to respond to the mutiny, 11 Dec. 1857. After Palmerston introduced a bill to place India directly under the Crown, abolishing the system of ‘double government’ by the EIC and the board of control, Sykes moved that this breached the Company’s privileges and endangered British rule of India, 18 Feb. 1858. His amendment was defeated 318-173, with support for Sykes mostly coming from Conservative MPs.16Hansard, 18 Feb. 1858, vol. 148, cc. 1715-18.

Sykes counselled against any hasty legislation when the new Derby ministry introduced its own measure to reform Indian government along similar lines. Critics assailed the system of ‘double government’, he complained, without demonstrating that it had proved to be inadequate, 26 Apr. 1858. He found it an ‘extraordinary fact’ that the opinion of the natives, which he thought favourable to Company rule, had been entirely overlooked in the debate, 7 June 1858. He also warned of the dangers of direct British rule. The Indian population were increasingly distrustful of the British, he claimed, because of the petitioning campaigns of Dissenters and Evangelical Anglicans to promote Christianity and to interfere with traditional customs, such as the caste system.17Hansard, 30 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 2082; 7 June 1858, vol. 150, cc. 1662-3.

After the 1858 Government of India Act ended EIC rule, Sykes turned his attention to the Indian military reorganisation, namely the absorption of the Company’s army into the regular British force. Stationing over 100,000 European troops in India was an expensive mistake in Sykes’s opinion.18A point made on many occasions: e.g. Hansard, 5 Aug. 1859, vol. 155, c. 1069; 14 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 299-300. He pointed out that only one of the three Indian armies had mutinied and a European force of less than 50,000 had proved sufficient to suppress the mutiny, and argued that India could only be governed with the goodwill of the population, not by force, 19 July 1859.19See also Hansard, 23 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1164-5. He voiced concern that the reductions in the numbers of native troops was likely to create discontent among long-serving and loyal soldiers.20Hansard, 9 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 1268-9; 29 June 1865, vol. 180, cc. 957-9; 19 July 1866, vol. 184, cc. 1125-8. The size of the force also had financial implications, which Sykes repeatedly emphasised during the annual debates on the East India revenue accounts. He approvingly quoted the statement of Lord Canning, the governor general, that ‘he would rather maintain India with 40,000 Europeans and no new taxes, than with new taxes and 100,000 Europeans’, 17 July 1862.21See also Hansard, 18 Feb. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 590-1; 11 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 281-2. In this view, a large army made it impossible to balance the Indian budget and necessitated heavy taxes on the population. Accordingly, a large standing army made it more, not less, difficult to govern India successfully and peacefully. Sykes was later active in pressing the claims of officers in the former EIC army, who claimed that the government had reneged on promises to honour their pay, privileges and pensions.22Hansard, 21 June 1861, vol. 163, c. 1461-3; 12 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 883-91; 6 June 1864, vol. 175, cc. 1264-70; Trelawny diaries, 284 (6 June 1864).

Reflecting on the post-mutiny reforms, with which he had little sympathy, Sykes observed that ‘the fact was, they [the British] had lost that confidence in themselves which they possessed when India was under the rule of the East India Company’, 3 Mar. 1862. If Sykes was an apologist for the record and reputation of the Company, he possessed progressive views on other issues.23He complained on one occasion that the ‘obloquy’ that was attached to the EIC was in nine out of ten cases undeserved: Hansard, 26 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, c. 817. In 1861 he pressed Sir Charles Wood, the Whig secretary of state for India, as to whether all public offices would be open to native Indians regardless of caste or creed.24Hansard, 15 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 2097-9. He abandoned his resolution on public employment in India in the same session, which sought to affirm the principle that ‘Her Majesty’s subjects, whether black or white, or of an intermediate hue, were entitled to the civil rights of other British subjects’.25Hansard, 23 July 1861, vol. 164, cc. 1379-87 (at 1382). He later complained that racial prejudice prevented well-qualified natives from entering the Indian medical service, 19 July 1864. Impressed by the quality and increasing quantity of graduates produced by the Indian education system, Sykes warned that unless they were found posts in public service commensurate with their talents they would grow resentful towards British rule, 20 June 1861, 5 May 1868.

Sykes was also a staunch critic of his government’s Chinese policy. He had approved of Palmerston’s bombardment of Canton, declaring at the 1857 general election that the premier had ‘acted as a man of vigour, sound sense and as a patriot’.26Aberdeen Journal, 18 Mar. 1857. However, by 1861 Sykes had become alarmed that Britain was not honouring her promise of neutrality in the civil war between the Imperial government and the Taiping rebels, and clashed with Palmerston on a number of occasions in the House.27Hansard, 31 May 1861, vol. 163, c. 405-6. He spoke frequently on the issue, and his public letters to newspapers were later published in his book, The Taeping rebellion in China (1863).28The modern spelling is Taiping, but Sykes and other contemporaries referred to the rebels as Taepings. In defending Shanghai and permitting British subjects to serve in the Imperial forces, Britain had effectively intervened on behalf of the Chinese emperor, he argued, 2 May 1862. While there were many critics of the government’s intervention, Sykes was unique in claiming that the rebels had superior virtues to the Tartar government (as he insisted on calling the Imperial regime, to the bemusement of ministers).29J.S. Gregory, Great Britain and the Taipings (1969), 147-8; Hansard, 26 June 1862, vol. 167, cc. 1104-5. Indeed Austen Henry Layard, under-secretary for foreign affairs, sniped that far from preaching impartiality, Sykes wanted the government to support the rebels, 8 July 1862. Britain had no quarrel with the Taipings, Sykes argued throughout 1862, as the rebels had carefully avoided damaging the property or person of Europeans while attacking the Imperial government.30Hansard, 18 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 1805-6; 8 July 1862, vol. 168, c. 52; 28 July 1862, vol. 168, c. 926. He also contended that atrocities committed by Imperial forces had been falsely blamed on the rebels, and asserted that the Imperial government ‘was a myth, … it had no executive power whatever’, 6 July 1863.31Hansard, 18 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, c. 1805; 5 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 97-100 (at 98). In endorsing Cobden’s abortive motion for non-intervention in Chinese affairs, 31 May 1864, Sykes declared that Britain’s policy had been ‘dishonourable and disastrous’.

In reality, the British government, still counting the cost of suppressing the Indian mutiny, had little appetite for an expensive intervention in China. Palmerston had a low opinion of the Taipings, whom he described as ‘nothing but destroyers’.32Hansard, 28 July 1862, vol. 168, c. 927. See also ibid., 5 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, c. 125. When Palmerston reported that the rebels had roasted alive captured sailors, Sykes shouted ‘No, no!’33Hansard, 20 May 1864, vol. 175, c. 534. In Palmerston’s view it was in Britain’s interests that Imperial authority was reasserted. If the rebels had a chance of success, ‘then there might be a choice between the two governments’, but this was not the case, the premier asserted, 4 Mar. 1864. However, Palmerston did announce, in the same speech, that the orders-in-council allowing Britons to serve in the Imperial forces had been withdrawn.34On this episode and British policy more generally see J.S. Gregory, ‘British intervention against the Taiping rebellion’, Journal of Asian Studies, 19 (1959), 11-24; Gregory, Great Britain and the Taipings.

Throughout his career Sykes was a prolific and prolix speaker, who contributed on a wide range of issues, but his style was not to everyone’s taste. In 1861 the Liberal MP Sir John Trelawny wrote of one speech:

Sykes bored the House till it became nearly demented. He read voluminous documents, greatly abusing the privileges usually accorded to a member by the courtesy & patience of the House. … the House dwindled away & … another & another member got up to leave … Sykes is certainly too bad.35Trelawny diaries, 160 (12 Mar. 1861).

A regular contributor to supply debates, Sykes thought that there was ‘much mystification’ in the public accounts.36Hansard, 24 May 1860, vol. 158, c. 1686. Every year, he complained, ‘some “bugaboo”’ was invoked as a reason to increase the naval fleet at great expense.37Hansard, 25 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1099-1101. Sykes had few illusions that independent members could reduce public expenditure through detailed scrutiny, noting that the government could always call on loyal, docile MPs to pass their estimates.38Hansard, 9 May 1861, vol. 162, c. 1807. He frequently compared the inadequacy of the British estimates with the virtues of the French system, on one occasion prompting the junior minister Lord Hartington to declare that ‘he doubted whether there were more than one or two members in the House who understood the French principle’, 8 Mar. 1866. When Derby’s government decided to send an expeditionary force to Abyssinia in late 1867, Sykes dismissed it as a costly overreaction. It was an ‘absurdity’ to talk of the damage to British prestige caused by the actions of the Abyssinian ruler Theodore, a ‘bloody tyrant’ Sykes admitted, when hardly anyone had heard of his country.39Hansard, 26 Nov. 1867, 5 Dec. 1867, vol. 190, cc. 291-5, 613.

Although he lived 600 miles away from Aberdeen, which he seldom visited, Sykes remained popular in his constituency.40Aberdeen Journal, 19 July 1865. He was a diligent representative of local interests, for example, in 1859-60 he led an unsuccessful rearguard action against the amalgamation of Marischal College with King’s College, and was part of a deputation that lobbied the government on the issue.41Hansard, 6 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 68-9; Caledonian Mercury, 20 Apr. 1859. A regular speaker on Scottish affairs, in the reform debates of the 1860s Sykes repeatedly pressed for more seats to be granted to Scotland at the expense of the small English boroughs.42Hansard, 1 Mar. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 2093-4; 13 June 1867, vol. 187, c. 1782; 2 July 1867, vol. 188, cc. 867-8; 17 Feb. 1868, vol. 190, cc. 830-1. More generally, he supported the franchise bills proposed by Liberal backbenchers such as Peter Locke King and Edward Baines, 10 June 1858, 11 May 1864, and the Russell ministry’s 1866 reform bill. He backed Caird’s 1858 bill to extend the English 40s. freehold franchise to the Scottish counties.43Hansard, 6 May 1858, vol. 150, c. 211. He dismissed Derby’s 1859 bill as a ‘mock reform’, and in the votes on the 1867 representation of the people bill divided in favour of enfranchising compounders and increasing the representation of the largest towns.44Aberdeen Journal, 4 May 1859. As the Scottish measure made its way through Parliament in 1868, he unsuccessfully proposed that Aberdeen be granted a second seat.45Hansard, 9 Mar. 1868, vol. 190, cc. 1254-5; 18 May 1868, vol. 192, c. 470.

Sykes was returned unopposed for Aberdeen at the 1868 general election and sat until his death aged 82 in 1872. His personal effects were sworn under £7,000 by his two executors in February 1873.46Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Adminstration (1873), 258. His two sons, Henry Peters and William Henry Frederick Sykes, both served in the Bombay army cavalry, but it is unclear whether they survived their father. Many of Sykes’s papers relating to India and his scientific and geological pursuits survive and are held by a number of different repositories.47Sykes’s statistical reports on Deccan, 11 vols., British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, MSS Eur D 140-50; notes and sketches, 20 vols., and MS notes relating to Deccan survey, Natural History Museum, L MSS SYK and 419574-1001; sketches and papers relating to Elloora Caves, University of Western Ontario Library; Papers from 1859, Royal Geographical Society, JMS; correspondence with Lord Dalhousie, 1847-56, National Archives of Scotland, GD45; correspondence with Sir John Herschel, 1839-62, Royal Society, HS; correspondence with Sir William Hooker, 1842-55, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; correspondence with Lord Lytton, 1858-9, Hertfordshire Archives, D/EK.