235. The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)

Summary

Empire Podcast Episode 235: "The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)"

Release Date: March 6, 2025

Hosts: William Dalrymple and Anita Anand
Guest: Professor Jane Olmeyer, Author of Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World

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Introduction

In Episode 235 of Empire, hosted by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, the discussion delves into the intricate and often paradoxical roles that the Irish played within the British Empire. The episode, titled "The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire," features insights from Professor Jane Olmeyer, whose expertise in Irish imperial history provides a nuanced perspective on this complex relationship.

The Irish as Pillars of the Empire

Anita Anand opens the conversation by highlighting the Irish involvement in the British Empire, particularly through the East India Company. She remarks, "Ireland is basically the blueprint, the roadmap, the laboratory for what the English will then go and do on a far bigger scale" (02:06). This sets the stage for exploring how Irish individuals were instrumental in shaping imperial policies and practices.

Professor Jane Olmeyer underscores the significant contribution of the Irish, noting that by the 1880s, Irish Catholics constituted two-thirds of both the East India Company's armies and the Raj's civil services (29:27). She emphasizes the economic and social conditions in Ireland, explaining, "The Irish peasants are poorer than the Bengali peasants. They need the king's shilling" (29:38), which drove many to seek fortunes abroad.

Gerald Anger: The Merchant and Founder of Bombay

William Dalrymple introduces the first key figure, Gerald Anger, an Irish merchant whose entrepreneurial spirit was pivotal in the establishment of Bombay (now Mumbai). Anger's early engagement with the East India Company in the 1660s marked the beginning of Ireland's serious involvement in India.

Professor Olmeyer highlights Anger's multifaceted contributions:

• Economic Foundations: Anger was instrumental in transitioning the East India Company from spice trading to textiles, particularly calico, which became a cornerstone of British wealth (14:10).
• Urban Development: As the second governor of Bombay, Anger laid the foundations for its legal system and attracted diverse communities, including Parsis and diamond merchants, fostering a cosmopolitan environment (16:32).
• Architectural Legacy: He constructed formidable forts like Worley Fort, designed to defend against both European rivals and local forces (16:19).

A notable moment includes Anger's vibrant lifestyle, described with elegance and extravagance: "At meals he has his trumpets usher in his courses and soft music at the table" (20:45). This portrayal underscores the blend of business acumen and personal flair that defined his legacy.

John Nicholson: The Imperial Psychopath

The discussion shifts to John Nicholson, a figure epitomizing the more brutal aspects of the empire.

Anita Anand describes Nicholson as "the incarnation of violence" (07:27), emphasizing his ruthless response during the 1857 uprising. His actions during the rebellion showcased extreme measures:

• Atrocities: Nicholson led counterattacks with extraordinary violence, leading to what he termed as the "devil's wind" that claimed countless lives (07:52).
• Legacy: Despite his brutal reputation, Nicholson is remembered as an imperial hero in certain circles, with statues commemorating his role, such as one in Dungannon, County Tyrone (09:14).

Professor Olmeyer provides a critical perspective, noting that Nicholson's legacy is controversial. While hailed as a hero in loyalist circles, his actions are comparable to atrocities committed by oppressors in other contexts:

• Psychopathic Leadership: His severe punishments, including mutilation and extreme torture, reveal a deeply ingrained brutality influenced by historical violence in Ireland (23:11).
• Cultural Impact: Nicholson's legacy persists, with his grave in Surat featuring elaborate Indo-Islamic architecture, symbolizing the complex intersections of culture and power in the empire (21:38).

A poignant quote from Nicholson himself illustrates his ruthless ideology: "If I had them in my power today, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience" (37:44).

Lord Dufferin: The Viceroy and Diplomat

The final key figure discussed is Lord Dufferin, an Irish diplomat whose role as Viceroy of India epitomized the administrative and cultural dimensions of the empire.

Professor Olmeyer outlines Dufferin's extensive diplomatic career and his tenure as Viceroy, where he oversaw eight Indian provinces and extended British influence into Burma (46:20). His contributions include:

• Infrastructure Development: Dufferin's administration saw the introduction of electricity in Shimla and the establishment of the Vice Regal Lodge.
• Cultural Perspective: He viewed Indian affairs through an Irish lens, drawing parallels between Irish and Indian nationalism. His experiences during the Irish famine influenced his governance approach, fostering a blend of empathy and control (46:20).
• Educational Influence: Institutions like Trinity College in Dublin were pivotal in training Irish professionals who would serve in the empire, reinforcing the interconnectedness of Irish and British imperial ambitions (48:58).

Anita Anand critiques the romanticization of figures like Dufferin, arguing that their contributions cannot overlook the exploitation and atrocities committed during their administration: "There’s a lot of exploitation, looting and pillage, killing and death" (51:44).

Impact and Legacy of the Irish in the Empire

Throughout the episode, Dalrymple and Anand explore the dual roles the Irish played—as both enforcers of imperial power and as individuals seeking upward mobility amidst economic desperation. The Irish involvement in the empire was marked by significant achievements in administration and trade but was equally tainted by participation in brutal colonial practices.

Notable Quotes:

• Anita Anand: "Ireland is basically the blueprint, the roadmap, the laboratory for what the English will then go and do on a far bigger scale" (02:06).
• John Nicholson: "If I had them in my power today, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience" (37:44).
• Alexander Fraser (c. 1820): "At least half are Scottish, a couple of Englishmen, the rest Irish." (49:39).

These quotes encapsulate the complex interplay between cultural identity, economic ambition, and the often violent enforcement of imperial dominance.

Conclusion

Episode 235 of Empire provides a comprehensive exploration of the Irish influence on the British Empire through the lives of Gerald Anger, John Nicholson, and Lord Dufferin. Through engaging dialogue and expert analysis from Professor Jane Olmeyer, the podcast sheds light on the multifaceted roles the Irish played—from pioneering merchants and ruthless military leaders to influential administrators. The episode underscores the enduring legacy of the Irish in shaping imperial history, while also critiquing the romanticized narratives that often obscure the darker aspects of colonialism.

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Timestamps of Notable Sections and Quotes

• Introduction of Irish Role: 02:06
• Gerald Anger's Lifestyle: 20:45
• John Nicholson's Atrocities: 07:27, 37:44
• Lord Dufferin's Diplomacy: 46:20
• Critique of Romanticization: 51:44
• Alexander Fraser's Observation: 49:39

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This detailed summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from Episode 235 of Empire, offering a comprehensive understanding for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Anita Anand]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire [e-mail].

[William Dalrymple]

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[Unknown]

Will that be cash or credit?

[William Dalrymple]

Credit.

[Unknown]

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[William Dalrymple]

Get the Angel Reef Special at McDonald's.

[Anita Anand]

Now let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun of course. And don't forget the fries and a drink. Sound good? I participate in restaurants for a limited time Empire listeners. I am very excited to tell you that our sold out London live show Booze and Brews is going on a UK tour and tickets are on sale. Now we are going to tell the story of all your favorite drinks and how they are linked to Empire from Indian Pale Ale to G and T.

[William Dalrymple]

Look, I know the clink of a drink. It's not a sound we're unfamiliar with, but it is the appearance of these drinks in history in the stories that inform them. So we want to take a little bit of a closer look at all of that.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, we've got all sorts of strange stories for you from early East India company men who were so afraid of drinking the water in India that they drank alcohol for breakfast. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

[William Dalrymple]

In fact, yes, I know all of them. Let's not be discriminatory here. It was quite pervasive of all it was an equal meal opportunity. Don't worry if you don't drink. We're also going to be looking at the extraordinary history of tea. And I'm going to tell you what. If you think the British love tea now, you should have seen the 18th and 19th centuries. They imported so much tea from China that taxes on it earn the same amount of money for the government as all tax on land, property and income.

[Anita Anand]

And in fact, that's what they had to start the opium trade, wasn't it, and fight the opium wars. But that is another story.

[William Dalrymple]

It is, but I feel like we're telling too much. But look, we're just bursting. You can tell we're bursting with stories.

[Anita Anand]

And that's not the only thing that's going to be bursting on our show, because I've got the story of one of my ancestors who exploded out of a barrel of rum.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes, I know. It is actually my favourite Dalrymple story. You know, I get sick of him talking about Dalrymples. This one blows up, though, so I'm quite happy. We're gonna be at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on the 30th of May. We're going to be at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham on the 1st of June, the Barbican in York on the 2nd of June. And we finish off at the Beacon in Bristol on the 3rd of June.

[Anita Anand]

So we will be doing our shtick full of amazing and surprising historical insights, answers to your fantastic questions. And we sold out very quickly last year, so don't wait around for your tickets.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes, I cannot stress this enough. We are always reeling by how quickly the tickets go. Within a day in some cases. So tickets are on sale now. Don't hesitate. Just go to empirepoduk.com empirepoduk.com to get yours. Make sure you don't miss out, because you know we'll miss you if you're not there.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, get your tickets now and see you in the summer.

[William Dalrymple]

Fare you well. Poor Erin's Isle I now must leave you for a while the rents and taxes are so high I can no longer stay From Dublin's quay I sailed away and landed here but yesterday Me shoes and breeches and shirts Are now in all that's in my kit I've dropped in to tell you now the sights I've seen Before I go where is the nation or the land that reared such men as Paddy's land? Where's the man more noble than he they call poor Irish Pat? We fought for England's Queen and beat her foes wherever seen We've taken the town of Delhi if you please come tell me that we pursued the Indian chief the Nen Assad the cursed thief who skivered babies and mothers and left them in their gore but why should we be so oppressed in the land of St. Patrick's Blessed. Hello, by the way, welcome to Empire.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Hello.

[Anita Anand]

With me.

[William Dalrymple]

So I've got carried away. Hello, welcome to Empire with me, Anita.

[Anita Anand]

Anand and me, William.

[William Dalrymple]

I just got. I just got very excited to read this. Yeah. Again, it's Professor Jane Olmeyer, author of Making Empire Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World. And I've been banging on about this too, Jane, for a while, that I found this ballad hugely popular in America. And it's all about sort of Irish emigres having to flee after the famine.

[Anita Anand]

Landing up in America, this land of weeping effigies and this sort of stuff.

[William Dalrymple]

And it goes on. It's quite large. But the thing that struck me, and it's from, I think the circa 1906, is where this particular sheet music was that was published in Philadelphia, but even by then it was quite a popular ballad. Paul Patmos emigrate in America, in New York in particular, and Philadelphia. And the reference to. And I just thought, my God, this is exactly what Jane was talking about. The reference to. We did imperialism for you. You did imperialism to us. When does it end? I thought was exactly what we were kind of touching on in our early episode.

[Anita Anand]

And, Jane, you've written this extreme extraordinary book, Making Empire, which makes the case at some length and very convincingly to me, I have to say that Ireland is basically the blueprint, the road map, the laboratory. Laboratory for what the English will then go and do on a. On a far bigger scale, on a far more enriching expedition. But the methods and the ideas and in many cases the actual people are formed by the Irish experience. But then also this very complicated and interesting thing that the Irish, like the Scots, who love both to be the kind of the brave hearts against the English, are completely complicit in some of the very, very worst atrocities.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. As the ballad says, you know, from mutiny onwards, we fought for you. Why are you being like this? So, first of all, what are we talking about in this episode? Because we've not even heard your voice. We've just gone on and on and on, not heard a peep. We don't normally do that at all when she, poor woman, getting to speak. So what are we talking about today?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

We're going to talk about three really interesting figures of Ireland. One is a man called Gerald Anger, who's the founding father of Bombay. He is living in India in the 1660s and 1670s. And that's really when Ireland's first serious engagement with India begins, obviously through the East India Company, Then we're going to fast forward and talk about John Nicholson, that imperial psychopath of yours.

[Anita Anand]

I had lots of fun with him in the last Moocoop because he's kind of the. The most. Well, as one of his contemporaries said, he's the very incarnation of violence. And in this moment, when the British are reeling from the massacres, they see it of their innocent women and children on the 11th of May, 1857. And then in Kampur and so on, it is Nicholson who really leads the counterattack and does so with the most.

[William Dalrymple]

Astonishing violence, unleashes what they then term the devil's wind, which reaps so many lives. So Nicholson we're going to talk about. And who's the third?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And then we're going to talk an incredible diplomat, a man called Lord Dufferin. And Lord Dufferin is of Scottish planter stock and his family home is in Clandyboy, which is in County Down.

[Anita Anand]

And you and I are friends of the family.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

We are friends of the family, indeed. And that house is really a shrine to Lord Dufferin.

[Anita Anand]

And when I had a show on East India Company paintings in London, a lot of it was borrowed from Lindy Dufferin, who's our mutual friend.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Are you dedicated your book to. Indeed, yes. Sadly, the late. Much loved.

[Anita Anand]

Sadly, the late.

[William Dalrymple]

I know the name Dufferin because. And actually it's associated with good things. Lady Dufferin's hospitals. I mean, I've read a lot about her hospitals through to 1920s and 30s. They still exist.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

I'm so glad you mentioned Harriet Dufferin, because what she does for women's health in India is truly important. And of course, the fact that so many of those Dufferin hospitals still survive, but Dufferin's name is still on roads in India. And of course, then in Belfast, there's a big statue of Dufferin outside Belfast City hall, as indeed we have of Nicholson in Dungannon. Yeah. And Lisbon, without any context. I visited the one in Lisbon recently. There's no context of what he did in India.

[Anita Anand]

And if I'm not wrong, one of the statues of Nicholson was taken from India and taken back to Northern Ireland.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

It was. And that's actually in his old school, which is in Dungannon, which is in County Tyrone, and that's where that one is.

[Anita Anand]

But the one to Indianize. And not, frankly, that anyone remembers this story here really anymore, but certainly in terms of Indian history, this is slightly like putting up a statue of Goebbels or Himmler or something. This is a guy who is really genuinely responsible for some of the most blood curdling atrocities ever committed by British imperialists anywhere in the world.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Oh, completely. But he's also then a great Victorian hero. You know the line of the Punjab.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, yeah.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

You know, the hero of Delhi.

[Anita Anand]

So literally a biography called the Hero of Delhi.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Oh, is there? Yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

So look, if I weren't holding a microphone, I would be rubbing my hands with interest because this sounds like really fascinating stuff and it also sounds like that bridge between being the oppressed to becoming the oppressor. Certainly by the time we get to people like Nicholson, there's no doubt about that. So can we first of all though start with what the world is like and why these men are suddenly leaving Ireland? Because they had enough on their plates, you know, they had Ulster, they were setting down their roots. At what point do they start sort of looking outside the realms of their.

[Anita Anand]

Own country and, and just remind us in a sense where we've left early 17th century Ireland. What, what is the world that these guys are leaving and why are they going to. To India?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, Cromwell has obviously wreaked havoc on Ireland. We've seen the expropriation of 8 million Irish acres and a revolution in land holding. And really that Protestant ascendanc is very much the name of the game in an Irish context. But it's more than that. We now have a form of economic imperialism. The whole Irish economy is there to serve empire with the Navigation Acts.

[Anita Anand]

Just explain what the Navigation Acts are.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

The Navigation Acts are legislation passed by the Westminster Parliament that says Ireland has to export everything via London. In other words, London controls the Irish economy. But it's more than that. It creates a subservient economy. And what we find in this period is that Ireland really all about provisioning empire. And that comes out of the Navigation Act.

[Anita Anand]

All that lovely Irish butter and all this lovely Irish salt beef.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Salt pork. Yeah. Ireland feeds the Caribbean. But it's also very important for the ships going to Asia because they'll often on the way. Well, they stop on the way back often because they need water or supplies, but some also will stop on the way out. And some of the timbers, there's actually ships for East India Company built in County Cork, so there is a connection there as well. But going back, Ireland at this point obviously is offering lots of opportunities because of the massive transfer of land. But younger sons or those seeking adventure want to be part of. If you want these westward and eastward enterprises and this brings us to Gerald Ainger, who was born probably in the 1630s and he's a younger son. His grandfather has been a legal imperialist, one of these men on the make who did very well during the plantation. His other grandfather was the Archbishop of Dublin. So he goes to London and now we're talking during the 1650s and he has an entree into the East India Company, one of the most important figures in the East India Company, basically takes him under his wing and he then is signed up as a factor or an agent. And then in 1661, by which point Charles II is now back on the throne, got rid of Oliver Gromwell, off Ainger goes, spends brief time in Goa, then straight up to Surat, where he rises through the ranks very, very quickly at the English factory in Surrey.

[Anita Anand]

Explain what the factory is. The factory is not kind of a.

[William Dalrymple]

Smokestack manufacturing industry center.

[Anita Anand]

It's like an Oxbridge college full of English factors.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Factors and, and basically a huge warehouse where they store goods that they then ship back to London.

[William Dalrymple]

William, you know, and, and you've talked about this before and you've written about it really well, but this is a really interesting pivot point in Indian history and what they're actually trading. So it used to be spices and then they get sort of booted out by the Dutch from Indonesia, the most lucrative market. But it actually does them a huge favour because they pivot to something that's going to matter to anger.

[Anita Anand]

So the earliest indie company is not about India at all. It's the company of London merchants trading with the east indies, which in 16th century speak actually means Indonesia. And it's only after they have a squabble with the Dutch that suddenly they pivot away from spices and Indonesia towards textiles and India. And this is the point at which India is gearing up to become the world dominant force in the textile market. Both fancy, fancy textiles like things are called kalamkaris that are painted hangings that you might find in a Venetian palace hanging from a four post to bed, down to very, very simple things like peace, cotton goods, which just means long, long rolls of cotton, which is the cheapest and the best in the world.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

But it also used to buy enslaved people. So a lot of that coarse cotton is actually used in the slave trade as a currency. As a currency. And anger moves in at exactly this moment and the calico craze is attributed to him. So it's really thanks to the time that he's spending in Surat that we see what is known then as this calico craze.

[Anita Anand]

And calico is not some sort of fancy arts and crafts thing like it sounds. It actually means the most expensive super luxury textile which the East India Company quickly dominates the market for and sells to Europe. So when you go now to Versailles or go to some palace in Venice, it is East India Company textiles that now hang from four poster beds.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, it does sound like it's sort of like the bitcoin of its time. It's sort of internationally used, doesn't recognize any borders, and it's so integral in the slave trade as well as wealth creation in Britain. Angel, where does he sort of position himself because he's working for the company? He answers to who and or how or sort of how much autonomy does he have to do whatever he wants?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, by 1660 he's the president of the factory in Surat. But he also then becomes the second governor of this new colony, Bombay, that has come to the crown when Charles II has married Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess.

[Anita Anand]

And there's a very comical moment when this document arrives in London from the Portuguese and somehow the map has got detached. So all there is is this marriage contract saying we offer you, I think Tangiers and Bumby spelled in the document B U M B Y E. And there's a big debate in Whitehall about exactly where Bombay is. And they assume it must be somewhere in South America. Brazil. Brazil, of course, it's the best harbor in the whole west coast of India. And it'll become a major, major naval asset for the English in the next two centuries.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And anger realizes its potential instantly. But it's not just about trade. And you know, he lays the foundation for trade. There's first thing he has to do is secure Bombay. So he builds these incredible forts. And William, you'll have seen Worley Fort, which is Anger's fort as you drive in from the airport.

[Anita Anand]

That's actually him.

[William Dalrymple]

Oh, that's just to describe what it looks like. I mean we know it's one of.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

These star shaped tres italienne new style fortifications. Absolutely formidable, a bit like Mombasa, very formidable. Or Aguada near Goa.

[Anita Anand]

Built specifically against artillery, the new style.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Of warfare, and built more against fellow Europeans. He wants to keep the wretched Dutch out as well as obviously see the Mughals.

[Anita Anand]

And this is a period when the Dutch just going down in India and the English are rising up. But it's not, I mean we know that now looking back, but it's not.

[William Dalrymple]

A settled event, not a settled thing.

[Anita Anand]

And there's also at the same time, a lot of Dutch hanging out, particularly on the east coast at places like Machli Patnam, Masulipatam, Cochin, Cochin. And at any moment, you know, the Dutch could be defeating the English in India as they have done in Indonesia in actually, they now go into decline. And anger is the force that is sort of driving the English conquest of the trade of India.

[William Dalrymple]

Right. I mean, on the one hand, he seems like a really militarily sound bloke, but he's a bit of a dandy and he likes the party as well. I mean, just give us this other side.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

No, no, no, no, let's. Can I just say it's not just that he's very smart in terms of the fortifications. This man sets out to plant and colonize Bombay the way his grandparents have colonized Ireland. So in other words, we see this language of colonization plantation in his correspondence. And he sets up the legal system.

[Anita Anand]

In Bombay, including, if I'm not wrong, witch trials.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

I'm not sure about that. You keep on saying that.

[Anita Anand]

It's in Phil Stearnsville.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Yeah, we'll have to check that. But what he does is he lays the foundations basically of the English legal system in Bombay. And if you go to the High Court today, they credit anger as the founding father of the legal system, not just in Bombay, in India, because of course, it's later copied in Madras and Calcutta. But the other thing that he does that so important is he attracts diamond merchants up from Goa, he brings in textile workers, and then he does a lot of drainage. So improvement is very much his mantra. So he really lays the economic foundations. Brings in Parsis. It's he who gives the Malabar Hill Tower of Silence to Parsis, to the Parsis.

[William Dalrymple]

For them, to encourage them down from.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Surat, it's all about religious toleration. Why? Because that's good for business. And Anger may be a committed Protestant, but he's absolutely committed to having this diverse cosmopolitan community and that actually attracts people in. He's also looking for new products. So he's out there saying, you know, can anyone find any opium, any bang we can send back to England? In addition to doing all this for the company, he has five of his own ships. So he's doing an awful lot in terms of private trading. So this man is an extraordinary business person. And in a single voyage, a French priest comes to visit in Bombay and he says, you know, angel in terrible mood because one of his ships has been taken and it had cargo worth 45,000pounds on it.

[Anita Anand]

I could understand why he might be a bit pissed off.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, it's an absolute fortune. So you're dealing with somebody who is making a vast amount of money very, very quickly, but someone who is also putting in place, if you want the economic infrastructure. And we talked about dairy, you know, this is the Indian equivalent of the dairy plantation.

[William Dalrymple]

They've done it. And you're exactly your example of the laboratories repeated. He must have felt like he was on top of the world and untouchable.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And of course, it takes 18 months for communications to go back and forth between London and Mumbai or Bombay as it is then. So he's tremendously allowed to use his own initiative. The company does complain, though.

[Anita Anand]

We should say that at this point, a lot of the company servants are living in a very hybrid lifestyle. Exactly in 1642, there are two East India Company men who convert to Islam and run off in the Agra factory and join the Mughals. And this is exactly the same period as Angers in Bombay. And we have this description in your book of him. At meals he has his trumpets usher in his courses and soft music at the table. If he moves out of his chamber, the silver staves await him and downstairs the guards receive him. If he goes abroad, the bandarines and moors under two standards march before him. He goes sometimes in his coach drawn by large white oxen, sometimes on horseback, and at other times palanquins carried by colors and mussulman porters, always having a sombrero of state carried over him. Now, the sombrero of state means an umbrella, which is what? A mogul general?

[William Dalrymple]

It's a parasol of governor.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

So that somebody back in Ireland did say, he's got notions. He's got notions.

[William Dalrymple]

Listen, that's exactly what I meant by sort of being a dandy. I mean, he's kind of feels like he's a man on the verge of being out of control. And you said the East India Company didn't like it. He's setting himself as a de facto mogul. But he's meant to be working for them.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And that's what they say.

[William Dalrymple]

Is that what they get up their name?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

They say, profit, not pleasure, is what we're about. And of course, angel writes back saying, oh, I've only ever done what you told me to do. I just like fallout. And they're about to fire him and he resigns, but he actually dies of some dysenteric disease and he's actually buried in Surat. So next time you're at the English graveyard in Surat. He's got the most extraordinary grave. It's this Indo Islamic two story structure with this exquisite blue and white tiles in this sort of little roof. It's extraordinary.

[Anita Anand]

And this is one of these things that we forget is that the English at this time and the Dutch on this coast, they have their mogul gardens where they have often their dancing girls. And this is an acceptable form of concubinage. And we have descriptions of the dancing girls being brought in and all these gentlemen disappearing off into the mango groves. And then we also have these tombs at the end of their lives when they're basically buried in sort of baroque Mughal tombs. And both the Dutch and the English have these and they're very elaborate and their sketch. This is one very nice little link. The English and the Dutch graveyards are sketched by another young Englishman who's in Surat exactly at this time called John Vanborough. And he then goes back shortly afterwards and designs the domes of Castle Howard.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Oh, how interesting. But the other thing that I find so fascinating, I'm not too sure about the Dancing Girls in Anger. I'm never. He's a very zealous, committed Protestant, so.

[Anita Anand]

He never stopped anyone.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, that's true. But you know, what I'm very interested in is the way he has this tremendous interest in indigenous peoples. So he collects Parsee's Aroastrian tracts which he has copied and then sent back to the British Library and to Edward Hyde who's actually the librarian at the Bodleian. But the other thing he does, he brings a printing press to Bombay to print Brahmini texts.

[William Dalrymple]

Oh wow. It's really interesting.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

So he's extraordinary, learned, he's a scholar as well as being a party man.

[William Dalrymple]

But this is not what we would associate with somebody who is, is sort of rapacious about making money. That idea of racial superiority hasn't yet entered. That comes later.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He has a deep respect for the people around him and I think he has the languages as well and that's one reason why he's so successful. But he's always worried about gifts and presents. So a lot of the correspondence is about that and then sending gifts home because companies says for God's sake, don't send any more tigers back because they eat everything.

[Anita Anand]

It's very important to, to remember that at this point in the 1640s, 1650s, the English not in a position to be that snooty. The Mughals have got the money, the Muslims.

[William Dalrymple]

This is Thomas Rowe worrying about what he's going to give and while there.

[Anita Anand]

Is unease and the sense that these are foreigners and they have different customs, there's also the sense that these guys are a million times richer, of course, than anyone will ever be in Britain.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

But the Mughals don't like angel because he prints his own coinage and he has a lot of dealings with Shivaji. He actually sends one of his.

[William Dalrymple]

So Shivaji being the great Maratha, the Maratha leader who actually harries and pushes back against the Mughal, indeed burns Surat at this time.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Anger is the one who leads the attacks against him. In 1670, Shivaji's coronation. One of Anger's men is there up on Rajka. And you've got this wonderful account again in the archive of the East India Company in London, London, of Shivaji's coronation.

[Anita Anand]

We should say that this is a crucial moment in. In a sense, in the history of Hindu nationalism, in that Shivaji is very consciously at the time, pushing back against Muslim rule. And he brings two different sets of Brahmins onto the hilltop. There are the. The local Brahmins who are there to propitiate the local nature spirits of. Of Maharashtra and the. And. And the local gods. And he brings Brahmins from Varanasi who in a sense, sort of talk to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and the great cosmic gods. And this is today, not unfairly looked on as a major break in Indian history. When you have the beginning of Hindus taking back their own land. That's certainly how it's interpreted in India today.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And angel has very good dealings with both Shivaji and also with the Mughals, even though he irritates them when he issues his own. His own coinage. But just one other thing that I have to say about him, he remains very loyal to Ireland. His siblings are there and he's making an absolute fortune.

[Anita Anand]

Would he have described himself as Irish?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He describes himself as English, but his colleagues in the East India Company call him Irish.

[Anita Anand]

Interesting.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

It's really interesting. This man is born and bred in Ireland.

[William Dalrymple]

Do they look down on him more?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

They're jealous of him. But you do get other examples of Irish men who do well in East India Company and they are looked down on because of their Irish.

[William Dalrymple]

I've seen them. I've seen sort of like letters written about. I'm a paraphrasing barely better than the natives. He's Irish. These kind of descriptions of Irish people working.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

No, you do, you do, but anger, not so much. And what happens is, throughout the 1670s, Ainger is sending gifts back to Dublin, including things like mangoes. I cannot tell you how exotic a mango would have been in a 17th century Dublin. But he also sends his fortune back to Dublin and that allows his brother, who's the Earl of Longford, to develop a whole new suburb. Dublin's first suburb which is off Dame Street. It's called Ainger street after Gerald Anger. It's the poshest suburb in Dublin and all of that is built on the back of Indian money that's remitted. Basically. Ainger is Ireland's first nabob and he's.

[Anita Anand]

Made a fortune in India. Are his cousins who've stayed in Dublin and are involved in the plantations making any money or not nearly as much?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Not nearly as much and actually his money turbocharges their activity.

[William Dalrymple]

It's time to take a break and join us after the break. These are such interesting people and living in such interesting times. We will bring you another Irishman and we'll see how much done good in India. Join us then.

[Anita Anand]

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[Anita Anand]

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[Anita Anand]

Welcome back. So we're now heading into the 19th century and tell me Jane, how much more has Ireland filled the ranks of the East India Company army and the East India Company civil service?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

So Ireland is hugely important for both. Williams so 2/3 of both the armies of the East India Company and the Raj are made up of Irish Catholic squadrons.

[Anita Anand]

Looking ahead, by the 1880s, this is the Barrack Room ballads that Kipling is writing.

[William Dalrymple]

Why are they joining up in such great cannon fodder?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

But also, I think you have to remember just how poor Ireland is. And it's very interesting. Indian visitors go to Ireland and they say, you know, the Irish peasants are poorer than the Bengali peasants. So you do have these, you know, these people are not signed up to empire. They need the king shilling.

[William Dalrymple]

What kind of condition are they living in when they get to India? I mean, are they suddenly fed and looked after in a way that they wouldn't have been if they'd stayed at home?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, many of them, of course, die either on the journey out or two monsoons of the life of a man. Many of them die in India, but they are taken care of. They're part of that imperial machine.

[Anita Anand]

So as well as the squaddees and the cannon fodder at the bottom of the imperial system system, you've also got Anglo Irish at the very top. And of course, the two most famous are Lord Wellesley, who is the man who actually masterminds three quarters of the East India Company's conquest of India, defeats both the Marathas and Tipu Sultan, and drags Hyderabad into the English system. And then his younger brother, who is Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, for.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Whom his Irishness is an embarrassment for.

[Anita Anand]

Both of them, I think.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

No, no, completely. Yeah, completely.

[Anita Anand]

So tell us about that. That's how these guys are brought up in Ireland. But they don't want to be Irish.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

But that's par for the course. The Protestants of Ireland see themselves as English. It's the English who don't want to see them as English and call them Irish.

[Anita Anand]

And Even in the 18th century, if you were sitting in Downing street and distributing honours, if you were wanting to pass off people with a kind of second degree honor, you'd give them an Irish period. And that's what Clive gets. So Clive. Clive gets given an Irish page, then gets his own back by changing the name of his Irish estate to Plassey and calling himself Clive of Plassey. And it's not actually referring to Plassey as in the battlefield, it's Plassey as in. Where is it?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

It's in Limerick. It's actually the University of Limerick is based on. On Clive's estates.

[William Dalrymple]

Can I talk about the Wales days a bit more? Because I'm really fascinated by the way. Would they. Would they have like had Irish accents? Would they. I mean, how identifiably. Or if you were sort of a high Irish Protestant and you want to be. Would you sort of, you know, rinsed.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Your recordings of these people? It's so hard to say.

[Anita Anand]

I would have thought. It's extremely unlikely because they went to Eton.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

And they were very boringly proud of being Etonians. So they keep referring to it in their letters.

[William Dalrymple]

They might have done. But if their childhood was in Ireland, you don't just shrug it off. And it is always the marker that sets you apart.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And remember, many of these men would have been raised by Irish nurses, including some wet nurses. They might have been bilingual when you get into the 19th century. Less so. But they certainly would have been surrounded by Irish Irish speakers.

[Anita Anand]

And when Lord Wellesley, who has conquered most of India, is the single most successful, he conquers more land in India than Napoleon conquers in Europe.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

When you put it like that, that's extraordinary.

[Anita Anand]

And then he comes home and he's offered what he calls his gilt Irish potato, which is an Irish peerage. So again, he's pissed off because he hasn't got what he sees as a proper peerage.

[William Dalrymple]

Does he ever actually write about it? I wish they would stop giving me Irish things and calling me Irish. I mean, how do we know that he's.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He finds it's an immune embarrassment for him.

[Anita Anand]

His whole life, Lord Wellesley is. Is about pomp and display and. And he has this anxiety about not being quite grand enough because actually the Wellesleys are not a premier ducal family or anything.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, they were a little bit grand because he was born in what is now the Marion Hotel in Dublin, which is one of the poshest hotels in Dublin. So let's not, you know.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, yeah. But he has this chip on his shoulder and.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Definitely.

[Anita Anand]

And the reason he ends up getting sacked by the East India Company is because he builds himself, Kedleston, in the middle of Calcutta without consulting what he regards the cheese makers of Leadenhall street, he calls them. And he doesn't want to be kind of answering to these merchants.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. The headquarters, in case anyone's wondering, Leadenhall street, the headquarters of the East India Company.

[Anita Anand]

And he builds himself, you know, he chooses. Oh, he looks through Vitruvius Britannicus, which is this sort of book full of architectural plans. He says, oh, I like that one. So he chooses Kedleston, which is the grandest house.

[William Dalrymple]

Curzon's house, isn't it?

[Anita Anand]

Curzon is born. Is born in Kedleston.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

But Lord Wellesley models Government House in Calcutta just out of. Out of a Book of Plans, and chooses Kedleston. So when Curzon, a century later, he.

[William Dalrymple]

Was a most ridiculous, pompous man.

[Anita Anand]

Who was the most pompous man?

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Most superior person. My name is Lord Nathaniel Kirsten.

[William Dalrymple]

I am a most superior person. Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

And when he arrives in Kelsey, it's.

[William Dalrymple]

Like he's come home because this is weird. Looks like my house.

[Anita Anand]

Anyway, so Lord Wellesley, at the end of this, having been sacked, comes home and he's only given an Irish peerage, again, like Clive, and he feels stubbed and he goes into depression.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. But let's get on to a man who you could spit teeth talking about, actually, and we probably will. John Nicholson, now, born in Dublin, 1822. What kind of background? He's also Protestant.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He's very much of that Ulster Scottish planter background. So. And many of these. These people are actually. Because we'll talk about. I don't. The Lawrence brothers come from these sort of Ulster. They're planter stock. And he, you know, his father dies young and he comes into the company as a very young man, but he's got a military genius that he really excels in India.

[Anita Anand]

I'll read a quote from the time he had a stern sense of duty and learned to expunge the word mercy from his vocabulary. He was a man cast in a giant mode, with a massive chest and powerful limbs and an expression ardent and commanding, with a dash of roughness, features of stern beauty, a long black beard and a deep, sonorous voice. There was something of immense strength, talent and resolution in his whole frame and manner and the power of ruling men on high occasions which no one could escape noticing.

[William Dalrymple]

But to our eyes, he's a bit murdery.

[Anita Anand]

Well, he's a kind of imperial psychopath.

[William Dalrymple]

In the first order.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

A sadistic.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, I mean, just reveling in the court. I mean, his way in was the Bengal infantry of the Eastern Company. So he's come in at a very lowly level and worked his way up, tell us what that would have been like. But he survived, you know, sort of dysentery and everything else, and proved himself worthy and then come up the ranks.

[Anita Anand]

And then there's this life changing moment when he's coming out of Afghanistan in the 1842 war, which is one of the great defeats of the British in India. And the British have gone in and sent this punitive expedition into Afghanistan to cut down the trees, burn the fields, destroy Kabul and then retreat. And on his way out, his brother, who's with him, is killed by the Afghans and they cut off his genitalia and stick it in his mouth. And Nicholson, an hour later, comes around the bend, finds his brother there looking like this, dead, mutilated, and it leaves him with this sort of psychopathic hatred, particularly of Afghans, but also India. Yeah, and Muslims in particular.

[William Dalrymple]

Can I share a very odd story about Nicholson? So he does inspire a Hindu sect by accident. The Nicholas Nikolse S E Y N S who thought of him as an incarnation of Vishnu. Now that's quite a high honour. He didn't really return the favour. I mean, do you know, do you know this story?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, I've heard it, but I mean, I find that extraordinary, utterly extraordinary.

[William Dalrymple]

So this is what happens. So the Nikolsayns, and it's really a little bit weird about how they come to being, but they are inspired by Nicholson, the man, and they think, okay, there are incarnations of Vishnu, he must be one of them. He tolerates them, he thinks it's fine as long as they shut up. And they never say anything in his presence. And there's a little quote about it. They prostrated themselves or began chanting. If they did begin chanting, they were taken away and whipped.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Cat, O9 tails.

[William Dalrymple]

I know, three dozen lashes of the cat O9 tails. Yeah, crazy.

[Anita Anand]

And Then when he rises up the ranks and becomes a governor in the northwest frontier in the. In the period before the outbreak of the great uprising of 1857, he personally decapitates a local robber chieftain, then keeps the man as psychopathic.

[William Dalrymple]

This is a man who should be in a jacket that does up at the back.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Yeah, I mean, it really is.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

So then when the 1857 uprising breaks out and the British regard this as sort of treachery, rather than seeing themselves as occupiers who are being thrown out through honest resistance, they are obsessed by the murder of their women and children, and they decide that there will be no mercy. And the person who is most murderous is Nicholson. And he. In the week, week of the outbreak of the mutiny and the news that women and children have been killed in Delhi, and Meerut says, I propose a bill for the flaying alive, impalement or burning of the murderers of the British women and children of Delhi. The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such an atrocity is maddening. I cannot, if I can help it, see fiends of that stamp let off with a simple hanging. As regards torturing the murders of women and children, if it be right. Otherwise, I do not think we should shrink from it simply because it is a native country custom. We are told in the Bible, that stripes should be meted out according to faults. And if hanging is sufficient punishment for such wretches, it is too severe for ordinary mutineers. If I had them in my power today, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience.

[William Dalrymple]

Jane, what did people back at home make of Nicholson?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Well, of course, he's regarded as a great imperial hero and. Oh, not now, but at the time. Today his statues are up. Well, his statue is up in Lisbon. And I visited it recently. Anita and I went into the library and I said, you know, there's no explanation of who John Nicholson is and what he did in India. And they said, no, no, you know, he was a good man of Lisbon. And you're saying, well, actually, that's not the story, but I think he's still in certain loyalist unionist circles, regarded as an imperial hero. And the fact that the statue of him that was outside the Kashmir gate at the Red Fort is now in his old school in Dungannon and still stands there.

[William Dalrymple]

And so students walk past it all.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

The time, all the time in the Republic, Ireland. Those sorts of statues obviously were all blown up or knocked down post independence Northern Ireland. Still has them, including these of Nicholson.

[William Dalrymple]

And this might sound like a really stupid question, and forgive me if it is, but, you know, we talked about the Wellesleys, and we talked about, you know, angel and others who don't want to be seen as Irish because, you know, that's somehow a rung below, you know. But was Ireland proud of Nicholson? Like, you know, were they saying communities.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

In Ireland would have been proud of.

[Anita Anand]

Nicholson, that community at the time? Because today it's certain communities. It's. It's the Protestants, not the Catholics in the 19th century.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Not Catholics. I'm sorry, not. Well, no, I shouldn't say. Definitely not. Because those who sign up for empire in some fight under his power, then, you know, that's. He's regarded as a hero.

[Anita Anand]

So that's the valid sense.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, absolutely. So, you know, this is. This is a slipstream of betterment and preferment for whether you're a Catholic or a Protestant, if you're poor. So someone like Nicholas Nicholson is the best Irishman if he's doing it.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Can I also just say Nicholson has grown up with stories about the 1641 rebellion and then of things like the Siege of Derry. Now, the 1641 rebellion is particularly important in this context because it was at that moment we see gratuitous violence committed by Catholic people against Protestant settlers, and that's obviously then retaliated. So what we find is the events in Ireland in the 1640s are actually being compared to what's going on here. And that Nicholson would have been educated on a dummy of that, including genital mutilation and extreme sexual violence. So Nicholson will have learned about that growing up in Ireland.

[Anita Anand]

When the Afghans mutilate his brother, that's.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Exactly what have happened in Ireland.

[William Dalrymple]

He's seen it. He's got it in his muscle memory.

[Anita Anand]

Would have done it to who? Both sides.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Both sides do it. But most accounts we have are of Catholics doing it against Protestants.

[Anita Anand]

So he would regard it as something that savages do. Exactly. Civilized people like him.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Exactly. So I think that's also feeding into his response.

[Anita Anand]

A couple more Nicholson stories before we leave him. There is this famous story that he's leading. What's called the Flying Column, which is going to relieve Delhi, is revolted against the East India Company. An expeditionary force is sitting on the ridge, and they're being attacked every day, and Nicholson is going to relieve them. And he marches down from the Punjab with all these northwest frontier Pashtuns who've been promised the right to loot Delhi at the End of all this. And Nicholson is also in charge of the intelligence. And one night, the officers are sitting in the mess and their dinner doesn't come. And the dinner doesn't come, and there's another delay, and the dinner doesn't come. Come. And then Nicholson strides in and famously said, I'm sorry, gentlemen, to have been keeping you waiting. I've been hanging your cooks. And the story is, according to Nicholson, that he'd been tipped off that the cooks were going to put aconite in the soup of the office.

[William Dalrymple]

What's aconite?

[Anita Anand]

Aconite's poison.

[William Dalrymple]

Right.

[Anita Anand]

And that he'd fed it to a monkey. The monkey had writhed and died almost immediately. So he then strung up all the cooks, regimental cooks, on a tree. And the officers then were taken to see Nicholson's designs. And this very much appeals to the spirit of the time. And the British love this. They see he's smart and clever and.

[William Dalrymple]

He'S one step ahead, but also one step ahead of the murderous sort of natives who were out to get them.

[Anita Anand]

Even then you have other people. And this is. This is another Irishman, Edward Amani, who comes across Nicholson. He's heard all these stories about this sort of superhuman hero. Hero and ebony, absolutely fascinating figure because he's the only survivor of his family, and his sisters are among those who were killed in Kanpur. So he comes to Delhi seeking revenge, and he's all set to sort of join in this bloodbath. And then he actually meets Nicholson and he says he shows himself off in reality to be a great brute. For instance, he thrashed a cook boy for getting in his way in the line of march. He has a regular man, very muscular, to perform this duty for him. The boy complained he was brought up again and died from the effects of the second thrashing.

[William Dalrymple]

Even though that desire for revenge is there, he can recognize a nutter.

[Anita Anand]

He could recognize that even among. That he's crossed every sort of boundary.

[William Dalrymple]

He's killing a child.

[Anita Anand]

He's famously shot in the assault on Delhi. Right.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

And. And his. Even from his. For a writer, he's a fantastic character for a book because when he's shot down in Delhi and is dying slowly, I think he gets a bullet through the liver, so it's not a quick death. And he's sort of bleeding out in his stretcher, and he hears that General Wilson, who's in charge of this Alto Delhi, is thinking of retreating, and he tells his parents, take me to Wilson's tent and I'll shoot him if he orders the retreat. This is a man. He's in his last hours, and he's still. And then, famously, as he's dying, he's got his pistol beside his tent, and if anyone talk too loudly, he just shoots through the tent at them. So he's a kind of crazy, crazy imperial.

[William Dalrymple]

It's also thanks to him, we know about Nicholson sort of allowing great groups of men to have their hands tied behind their backs, taken into sort of, you know, a secluded place. And then Sikh soldiers told to go run at them with bayonets, cut their hands off, you know, hurt them, and cut them in his many ways as possible and leave them to die in agony. And he's appalled.

[Anita Anand]

And obviously, in modern history, we have parallels of places where also women and children have been attacked and terrible atrocities are to this day carried out as revenge. And people, like in Nicholson's time dehumanize the victim.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Absolutely. And do you know something, William? I visited his grave in the English graveyard, just very close to where he fell at the Kashmir gate.

[Anita Anand]

And.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

And what I was struck by was how well tended the grave is, but also then how it's surrounded by other Irish graves which aren't so well tended, of butlers, Curwens, o'gradies, o'mahonys. And it really brings home the fact that in addition to these officers, mostly of Ulster background, you have these ordinary Irish Catholics who are there for very different reasons.

[William Dalrymple]

Good point, well made. So let's have a little bit of a palate cleanser. I'm hoping Lord Dufferin is not too particularly awful. I mean, I'm gonna. I'm gonna feel all right talking about him.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He doesn't slaughter anyone.

[William Dalrymple]

He doesn't. You know, he burns the palace.

[Anita Anand]

He burns the palace of Mandalay in Burma. Yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

His forces do. So tell us who he is, where he's born. What's his origin story?

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

So Lord Dufferin is basically of Ulster Scottish provenance as well, from those planter families. He's born in Ireland, and he's one of these boys that's educated, of course, in England. He. He's Anglo, Irish, and he becomes a professional diplomat. So Dufferin has a whole series of really interesting diplomatic postings. He goes up into Iceland and writes these sort of travelogue of his voyages into the Antarctic. He's then sent to Syria, spends time in the Middle East. He's in Russia, he's in Istanbul. He becomes a great favorite of Queen Victoria. What he really wants, though, is to be Viceroy of India. And he finally gets it in the 18th, Dufferin is the chief bottle washer in India. But what's so interesting to me, because at this point there are eight Indian provinces and seven of the eight are ruled by men of Ireland with Dufferin as Viceroy. And he's Dufferin of not just India, but also Burma, because as William has said, he's the man who annexes northern Burma. But when we think of the Vice Regal Lodge in Shimla, that actually was Dufferin's and it's the first time you have electricity being used and Lady Dufferin in her diary records the lights being switched on in Shimla and that sense of excitement. The other thing that I just find so interesting about Dufferin is he looks at India through the prism of Ireland. So everything he sees happening in India, whether it's famine, because he himself has experienced and visited Skibbereen during the great famine of 1856 or home rule, and we see then the rise of both Indian and Irish nationalism. And Dufferin sees everything through the lens of Ireland.

[William Dalrymple]

Does he sort of fear that this is going to get out of control in India, even though he knows it was controlled in Ireland? That's his fear.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

He is deeply concerned about that. He is really worried that India is going to go the way of Ireland and you're going to have a home rule movement that is going to cause as much trouble in India as it.

[William Dalrymple]

Is causing back in Ireland, to me is kind of the start of something that then really does carry on, particularly in Punjab, which is my, my area of expertise, which is a relay race of Irishmen in the top civil service jobs, you know, sort of lieutenant governors, you have Louis Dane and then you have, you know, Michael O'Dwyer and others. And they do all come from this sort of mostly Protestant, but Irish Catholics as well, who will. And we'll talk about that more in the future. But it, it seems like a professional. They're not soldiers, they haven't come up through military might, but they are, are like Dufferin, you know, quite sort of bookish kind of sorts.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Say at this point, a third of people doing the exams for the East India Company are Irish. And at this point we're also seeing Irish Catholics coming through, those middle class Irish Catholics. My own university, Trinity, has actually developed a curriculum in engineering, another one in tropical medicine. The whole university is geared about training these men then to go out to India. And at this point Ireland would be 20% of the population of Britain and Ireland. So you're dealing with a disproportionately large number of Irish bureaucrats, doctors, engineers, people think of Scotland, but actually the Irish are there. The Irish, very significant numbers.

[Anita Anand]

There's a wonderful quote by Alexander Fraser in about 1820 in the Delhi Residency, and he says there are about 20 of us around the table of an evening at the residency dinners. He said at least half are Scottish, a couple of Englishmen, the rest Irish. And so it's the Scots of the Irish share. And particularly in the more remote provinces, you know, the English tend to stay in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, where there are cricket clubs and this sort of thing. And it's often the Scots and the Irish who take the jobs up country in the wilder areas.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Yeah, but the wonderful thing about Dufferin is that his archive is extant. So we have all of his papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. And then in his home in Clandy Boy. We have a lot of the material culture, but also his library. He was a great friend of Kipling, a great friend of Tennyson, and all of this has been carefully kept throughout the ages.

[Anita Anand]

I think you're romanticizing him a wee bit, Jay, because at the same time, there are terrible atrocities in the conquest of Burma, and famously at the same time that. The same time that Bar Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, gets sent to exile in Burma in Rangoon, where he dies and is buried near the shrine Radagon Pagoda, the last king of Burma and Mandalay is sent to India, where he dies up in the uplands of Bombay.

[William Dalrymple]

We're coming to an end, but I've got a side a little bit with Jane. It won't surprise you today, because that may well be the case, but I know for those who came afterwards, all the way up Beyond World War I, they look back at that Dufferin time mucking around with Kipling and, you know, having all these lovely sort of soirees, and it was a civilized time where you could be British and impose your or your Englishness in India. And they look at Duff ruffling my.

[Anita Anand]

I'm ruffling my.

[William Dalrymple]

I'm talking about those who come in the civil service afterwards when it does, you know, become sort of a Raj concern. They thought, talk about Dufferin and go, that was. That was a lovely time. We need to get back to being.

[Anita Anand]

An imperialist and running and running other people's countries.

[William Dalrymple]

Golden age for them, for the likes of Michael O'Dwyer and others, Dufferin is the model everyone else needs to end up.

[Professor Jane Olmeyer]

Oh, well, then I'm immediately worried. Worried.

[Anita Anand]

So you should be.

[William Dalrymple]

How do we end this? So what's next.

[Anita Anand]

We're going to have one of Anita and I's rare disagreements here. I think you're romanticizing this period, but and I think there's a lot of exploitation, looting and pillage, killing and death.

[William Dalrymple]

That is 100 the case. But if you are on the, you know, looting and pillaging side, this is a golden age, man.

[Anita Anand]

We can agree on that.

[William Dalrymple]

Parties are great. They bring pianos over and have lawn sundowners. I mean, this is the start of all of that. Till the next time you meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand and goodbye.

[Anita Anand]

From me, William Dalrymple.

[Alistair Campbell]

Hi there. Alistair Campbell. Here from the Rest is Politics alongside my co host Rory Stewart. We've been covering on an almost daily basis the incredible developments of the top table of global politics between Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy, Starmer, Macron, Merz, all those fighting to disturb or create a new world order. As part of the show this week, Roy and I broke down the possible outcomes now on the table in the Ukraine conflict. Here's a clip.

[Unknown]

Let's say we've got three choices. We've got Ukraine tries to fight on alone without any of the US Kit, Europe deploys, but it deploys without US Backing. Or a third situation, which sounds great on paper, which is US Security guarantees, but as we've just said, Trump is very unlikely to give them. He will completely humiliate the Europeans while pretending that he might give them. And his guarantees aren't worth the paper they're written on. You need to be serious about the fact that that third option, the security guarantee, is very unlikely to happen and start thinking more seriously about what happens in option one and two.

[Alistair Campbell]

So to get our thoughts on what might be happening in the end game that could shape Europe and the Western world forever, just search the rest is Politics wherever you get your podcasts.

[Al Murray]

Hi there. I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanger.

[James Holland]

And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.

[Al Murray]

And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way around, isn't it Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from Reality, Reality.

[James Holland]

Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line. Full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.

[Al Murray]

And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

Anyway, so who is Overstock Van Fuhrer? Joachim Piper.

[Al Murray]

What I see is jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than that.

[James Holland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career really because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family. Let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah, he took a little bit time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division.

[Al Murray]

Yep.

[James Holland]

Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean there's not many people that age are. No be Stern Van Fuhrer, which is sort of. Colonel.

[Unknown]

Yes, I.

[Al Murray]

You see, what must it have been like if you're in, if, if Himler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted.

[Anita Anand]

To you as an officer.

[Al Murray]

Officer, do you think? Well, he only got that job because of, because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always. He's always having to prove himself, surely, because he's, he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in. Having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove. Right, that's what I'm saying.

[James Holland]

Yeah. And he's, he's, he's from a sort of middle class background as well.

[Al Murray]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has died in of Teet EB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN cop Verbanda and died in A never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Right. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern front for being kind of very inspiring. Fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisan. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second class, first class Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk briefly in Northern Italy actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August. And he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not command during Operation Lutetch. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1940. Really, really. Odd.

[Al Murray]

I mean, but isn't that interesting though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? Is Himmler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they. Where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point and their losing, you know, and because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier. There's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.

[James Holland]

Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.

[Al Murray]

Well, yes, of course, but.

[James Holland]

But you know what SS soldier said of him. Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[James Holland]

You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly manic and energy. Yeah, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a. He's a driver, you know, all those things.

[Al Murray]

He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the fuhrer he's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he? As a. As an SS officer. Yeah, which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes. But basically.