Colonel George Bruce MallesonCSI (8 May 1825 – 1 March 1898) was an
English officer in
India and the author of several works on British Indian colonial history.
Biography
Malleson was born in
Wimbledon, son of John Malleson. Educated at Wimbledon and
Winchester, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal Native infantry in 1842, and served through the
second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young
maharaja of
Mysore,
Chamarajendra Wodeyar from 1869 to 1877. He retired with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C.S.I. in the
1872 Birthday Honours.[1][2]
He was a prolific writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous "
Red Pamphlet", published at
Calcutta in 1857, when the
Sepoy Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the History of the Indian Mutiny 1857-8 (6 vols., 1878–1880), which was begun but left
unfinished by
Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are History of the French in India (2nd ed., 1893) and The Decisive Battles of India (3rd ed., 1888).[3][2]
The Indian Mutiny of 1857. 1891. Full text online at archive.org. Malleson's own condensed version of the six-volume history.
Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire. Pub. 1896. Full text online at ibiblio.org (In HTML form, complete, chapter-by-chapter, with all illustrations and footnotes)