Earlier diplomatic career
Before his Indian appointment, Amherst had led a British diplomatic mission to the Qing court in China in 1816, intended to expand trade relations following the earlier Macartney embassy of the 1790s. The mission ended in failure when Amherst refused to perform the kowtow, the full prostration the Qing court required of envoys presenting themselves to the Jiaqing Emperor, and he was consequently denied an imperial audience and sent away without achieving any of his mission's objectives, an outcome that left Anglo-Chinese diplomatic relations largely unchanged until they were later reshaped by force in the Opium Wars.
Governor-Generalship
Amherst arrived in India in 1823 as Governor-General. His term was shaped chiefly by conflict on the eastern frontier and by an unresolved dispute in Rajasthan left over from earlier decades.
Anglo-Burmese War
Rising tension with the Kingdom of Burma over territory and border incidents in Assam and Arakan led to the First Anglo-Burmese War, which began in 1824. The conflict was costly and prolonged, fought partly in difficult terrain and climate that produced heavy losses from disease among British and Indian troops, but ended in British victory. The 1826 Treaty of Yandabo required Burma to cede Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and the Tenasserim coast to British control and to pay an indemnity, establishing the first substantial British territorial gains in mainland Southeast Asia.
Bharatpur
In 1825–26, Amherst's government also moved against the fortress-state of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, following a disputed succession there. An earlier British siege of Bharatpur in 1805, under Lord Lake, had failed to take the fort, and its walls had since acquired a reputation among both British and Indian observers as effectively unbreachable. Under Amherst, British forces under Lord Combermere successfully besieged and captured Bharatpur in January 1826, removing a long-standing symbol of resistance to British arms in northern India and reinforcing the perception of British military ascendancy across the subcontinent. Amherst returned to Britain in 1828 and was succeeded as Governor-General by Lord William Bentinck.
Further reading
- Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Bloomsbury, 2019
- Bayly, C. A. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1988
- Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
- Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. Oxford University Press, 2009
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 August 2026.