James Welsh (East India Company officer)



James Welsh (1775–1861) was an English army officer in the East India Company.

Early life and family
He was born on 12 March 1775, the son of Sir John Welsh, who sat on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Calcutta, and his wife Primrose Hook Gascoigne, the sister of the industrialist Sir Charles Gascoigne and daughter of Capt. George Woodroffe Gascoigne and his wife the Hon. Grizel Elphinstone. Grizel was the daughter of Charles, 9th Lord Elphinstone, and thus an aunt to several eminent imperial officials, including the admiral George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith and the colonial administrator Mountstuart Elphinstone, who twice refused the post of governor-general of India, preferring to finish writing his book The History of India instead. Through her mother, Grizel was a great-aunt of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, who married Hannah de Rothschild and held, successively, the offices of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister.

With the assistance of his grandmother's Elphinstone relations, Welsh obtained a commission as ensign in the army of the East India Company on 22 May 1790, and arrived at Madras on 23 January 1791. He joined the 3rd European regiment at Vellore, and in November went with Colonel Floyd's detachment to serve in the grand army under Lord Cornwallis.

Military career
Welsh was promoted to be lieutenant in the 24th native infantry on 1 November 1792, and took part with it in the siege of Pondicherry in July and August 1793. Transferred in 1795 to the 9th native infantry at Mandura, Welsh served at the capture of Colombo and Ceylon in February 1796, and remained at Point-de-Galle as fort-adjutant until the end of 1798, when he was transferred in the same capacity to Masulipatam.

On 10 December 1799 Welsh was promoted to be captain, and appointed adjutant and quartermaster of the 3rd native infantry, which in 1803 formed part of a force under Major-General Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington to operate against the Marathas. He marched with it across India to Poona, and was present at the assault on the great hill fort at Ahmednagar, which was captured on 12 August 1803.

Welsh served on the staff at the battle of Argaon (29 November) and in the siege and assault (15 December) of Gawilgarh, and led a body of 250 men, after a forced march of 54 miles, to the capture of Mankarsir on 6 February 1804. He was appointed judge-advocate and assistant surveyor to the Poona subsidiary force, and with it on 10 August 1804 took part in the assault and capture of Chandur, and the occupation of Dhurp on 14 October. He commanded a party of 300 men at the capture of Galna on 26 October, and on 13 November went with a small force to open communications with Surat, where he arrived on 25 November. In December Welsh was sent on a mission to a Bhil chief by an unexplored pass to the northward, and caught a malignant fever from which he suffered for many years.

On 15 May 1805 Welsh succeeded to the command of his battalion of native infantry at Poona, continuing to hold his staff appointment until the end of the year, when he marched with his regiment to Palamcottai in the Carnatic, arriving on 27 March 1806. He was in command there on 19 November, when, as the garrison were assembling under arms, he discovered a plot among the sepoys to murder the Europeans at the station. Acting with promptitude he seized the leaders, disarmed the sepoys, and expelled trouble-makers from the fort. He was tried by court martial at Madras, beginning 24 February 1807, charged with precipitate conduct in having disarmed the sepoy garrison with insufficient cause, for expelling Muslim troops in the garrison without sufficient reason, and creating false alarms of rebellion ‘stimulating measures of the most injurious tendency to the general interest of the state’. Welsh was honourably acquitted on 7 March 1807, and congratulated by government on this vindication in general orders from the governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, on 20 March. However, the governor added in the general orders that Welsh's conduct ‘must necessarily tend to the degradation and distrust of a large portion of a most loyal and faithful branch of our Army … To involve the innocent with the guilty, and include in a sweeping implication of guilt, a numerous body of men, on the ground of general suspicion or apprehension, is a mode of proceeding which … no just Government can tolerate.’

Welsh felt this comprised an ‘unqualified censure’ by the governor, and protested to the governor and the directors of the East India Company in London. Following a recurrence of his illness he embarked for Britain in July, having been promoted major on 22 May 1807, but his efforts to convince the directors of the East India Company to speedily vindicate him were unsuccessful.

Welsh rejoined his regiment on 5 February 1809 before the lines of Travancore, where it formed part of a force under Colonel St Leger, and led the storming party in the successful assault on the formidable defences on the night of 10 February. He was mentioned in dispatches, and the court of directors of the East India Company praised his services on the occasion. On 19 February 1809, leading the advance from the south, Welsh was successful in capturing several hill forts, arriving at Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore, on 2 March. Welsh and a fellow officer, Captain Lindsey, were appointed prize agents for the campaign by their colleagues, and successfully sold off property seized during the Travancore conflict. Welsh hoped to use his agent's commission to pay off debts incurred in connection with his court martial and subsequent campaign to clear his name, but the government ruled that the taking of prize was not valid during this campaign, as it had never declared war on the raja. In April 1812 he commanded a small force sent to quell a rising in the Wainad, which he accomplished after a month of heavy marching and desultory fighting. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel on 25 January 1813, and was appointed deputy judge-advocate-general, residing at Bangalore.

On 6 February 1821 Welsh was appointed to command the troops in the provinces of Malabar and Kanara; on 6 May 1823 to command at Vellore; on 23 January 1824 to command in Travancore and Cochin; and on 1 August 1826 to command the Doab field force. He arrived at Belgaum in September, and was immediately engaged with the Resident in measures which were successful in preventing a threatened rising at Kolhapur.

Early in 1829 Welsh went to England on furlough and was promoted colonel on 5 June. He published his informative Military Reminiscences (2 vols., 1830) with more than ninety illustrations, and also A Memorial, Addressed to the Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company (1830), presenting, with commentary, an account of his actions at Palamcottai in 1806, his court martial and unsuccessful attempts to obtain a complete vindication of his conduct, together with the government's refusal to allow him to act as a prize agent at Travancore in 1809. The preface to the volume shows that he was living in Cheltenham in 1830.

Marriage and Descendants
He married at Calcutta, on 28 December 1794, Sarah (1779–1839), second daughter of Sir Francis Light, the governor of Prince of Wales's Island, Penang, and Martina Rozells. They had several children, of whom six daughters and a son survived to adulthood. According to numerous contemporary sources, including statements made by her son Colonel William Light, Martina Rozells was the daughter of Prince Muhammad Jiwa Zainal Adilin II, the 19th sultan of Kedah, by a lower-ranking wife of mixed Siamese and Portuguese ancestry. The surname 'Rozells' was evidently adopted in civil and ecclesiastical documents to reflect the Roman Catholic parentage of Martina's mother and emphasize her European identity in social circles.

The statement of the 1848 edition of the East Indian Gazeteer as to the acquisition of Penang was as follows: 'it was granted to Francis Light ... by the King of Kedah as a marriage portion with his daughter'. Light subsequently received the exalted title of Deva Raja, an honorific traditionally reserved for the highest court officials in the kingdom and members of the sultan's family. In this way, Welsh's father-in-law firmly ensconced himself in the ranks of the Malayan aristocracy, allowing him to skilfully maneuver the sultan's young successor to cede full sovereignty over Penang island to the HEIC in 1785-6 in return for a nominal pension.

General Welsh and his wife had seven offspring including one son, William J. Welsh, who died in 1846 at the age of thirty-one in Missouri, after being crushed by his horse in a riding accident. He was enrolled in an American medical school at the time of his death and was survived by a young son, John W. Welsh. Though he died young, before ever completing his medical education, William began a tradition of entering the profession of Medicine and Surgery, which has persisted in the Welsh family to the present day. Among William's living descendants are the prominent Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Charles J. Lancelotta, MD; his son of the same name, a well-known cardiac anesthesiologist in private practice in Pennsylvania; the successful geriatric physician Prof. Dr. William D. Welsh, president and CEO of a premier Los Angeles medical group; his son, Sean Welsh, MD; and pediatrician James J. Welsh, MD of Gaithersburg, Maryland. The General's six surviving daughters had numerous offspring, establishing branches of the family in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Later Years and Death
Welsh did not return to India until his promotion to major-general on 10 January 1837. He was appointed on 1 June to the command of the northern division, Madras presidency, to which was added, in November 1838, the command in Cuttack. He was promoted lieutenant-general on 9 November 1846, and relinquished his command on 16 February 1847. When he left India the governor in council praised his gallantry and zeal in his remarkable service of fifty-eight years. He was promoted general on 20 June 1854. He died at his home, 10 North Parade, Bath, on 24 January 1861.