Sir Frederick Currie, 1st Baronet (3 February 1799 – 11 September 1875) was a British diplomat, who had a career in the British East India Company and the Indian Civil Service. His posts included Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, Member of the Supreme Council of India, Resident at Lahore and Chairman of the East India Company.Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, section Currie.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004: H. M. Stephens, "Currie, Sir Frederick, first baronet (1799–1875)", rev. Katherine Prior.
He acted as an agent for the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, during the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-6 and was rewarded with a baronetcy in 1847 for his assistance in negotiating the Treaties of Lahore and Bhyrowal.
Family background Currie was born on 3 February 1799 in Bloomsbury, Central London, the third of eight children of the brewer and banker Mark Currie of Upper Gatton, Surrey, and Elizabeth CurrieTate Gallery, portrait by George Romney of Mrs Mark Currie 1789 née Close. The politician William Currie of East Horsley was his uncle and the diplomat Philip Currie, 1st Baron Currie, his first cousin, once removed. The Curries belonged to an old Scottish family descended directly from the Curries of Duns, Berwickshire, in the late 16th century and, via a cadet, from the Corrie/Currie family of Annandale, Dumfriesshire, in the 12th century.Bernard S Cohn, The British in Benares, p. 433.The Scottish Nation, Currie
Two younger brothers, Edward and Albert Peter, were also in the Bengal Civil Service and his elder brother Mark John Currie was a founder settler/administrator of Western Australia and Vice-Admiral, Royal Navy.
Career Early days He was at school at Charterhouse until at the age of 16 he entered the East India Company College at Haileybury.India Office Library, Personal Records
He arrived in Bengal in 1820 and after a number of minor judicial and revenue posts in the Gorakhpur district he became in 1835 Commissioner of the Benares Division.Advanced Centre Punjab In 1840 he was selected to be a judge at Allahabad.register of the Honourable East India Company's civil servants of the Bengal establishment from 1790 to 1842."Obituary- The Late Sir Frederick Currie", The Times, Thursday, 16 September 1875, p. 5; Issue 28422; col E.
He was appointed Foreign Secretary to the Government of India in 1844 and in that post negotiated the 1846 treaties of Lahore, Amritsar and Bhyroval with the Sikhs at the end of the First Anglo-Sikh War.
The First Anglo-Sikh War and the Treaties of Lahore and Bhyroval
During the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh the British were discouraged from attacking the Sikh Empire of the Punjab by the Maharaja's diplomatic skills, popularity and 35,000 strong united Sikh Khalsa Army. In the years following his death in 1839, assassinations, weak government and warring factionsAll About Sikhs Causes of the Anglo-Sikh war provided the British with an argument and opportunity to invade. In 1842 a new Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, began preparations for war and in 1844 his successor, Sir Henry Hardinge, a veteran of the Peninsular War under Sir Arthur Wellesley, accelerated these preparations.All About Sikhs The first Anglo-Sikh war
As foreign secretary, Currie fell in with the designs of Ellenborough and Hardinge and supported the actions against the Sikhs in 1845 of the British Representative to the Punjab, Major George Broadfoot. The resultant provocative acts on both sides led to military escalation and on 13 December 1845 Hardinge issued a proclamation declaring war on the Sikhs. During the war Currie accompanied Hardinge, who despite his seniority as Governor-General volunteered to act as second-in-command under Sir Hugh Gough, another veteran of the Peninsular war.
The war was short. The first battle, at Mudki on 18 December, was brief and indecisive. The Battle of Ferozeshah three days later was nearly a disastrous defeat for the British, and Hardinge instructed Currie to destroy the state papers in the event of a defeat, to prevent them falling into the hands of the Sikhs. However Tej Singh, commanding the Sikh army, did not press home his advantage when the British were at his mercy. After this there was a temporary reduction of hostilities while the British waited for reinforcements. The last battle of the campaign took place at Sabhraon on 10 February 1846. The Sikhs were decisively defeated. Gough, paying tribute to their gallantry, wrote to Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister, "...I could have wept to have witnessed the fearful slaughter of so devoted a body of men".
Hardinge entered the Sikh capital Lahore on 20 February and Currie, assisted on military matters by Brevet-Major Henry Lawrence, arranged the terms of surrender. Currie led the negotiations, but did not determine the content of either of the two treaties which formed the Treaty of Lahore, signed by Hardinge on 9 and 11 March 1846. However his diplomatic skills so impressed Hardinge that he urged the home authorities to reward Currie with a baronetcy, a request which was granted in January 1847. The terms of the Treaty were punitive. Sikh territory was reduced to a fraction of its former size, losing Jammu, Kashmir, Hazara,Article 4 of the Treaty of Lahore the territory to the south of the river Sutlej and the forts and territory in the Jalandhar Doab between the rivers Sutlej and Beas.
In consideration of the help Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu had given the British during the war and in restoring amicable relations after the war, he was to be recognised, under Article 12 of the 9 March Treaty, as independent sovereign "in such territories and districts in the hills as may be made over to the said Rajah Golab Sing by separate agreement between himself and the British Government". On 16 March, this separate agreement was signed by Currie and Lawrence, forming the Treaty of Amritsar, in which Kashmir was sold by the British Government to Gulab Singh for 7,500,000 rupees (75 lakhs Nanak Shahi). In acknowledgement of the supremacy of the British Government Gulab Singh agreed to make an annual present to the British of "one horse, twelve perfect shawl goats of approved breed (six male and six female), and three pairs of Cashmere shawls".Treaty of Amritsar Articles of the Treaty.
The terms of the Lahore Treaty did not remove the Sikh Government of the reduced territory or change its composition. The vizier Lal Singh and the majority of the members of the Lahore Durbar remained in office. Duleep Singh Bahadur,Sikh Cyber Museum Duleep Singh Source: Encyclopaedia of Sikhism - Harbans Singh the seven-year-old son of Ranjit Singh, remained as Maharaja and his mother, Maharani Jind Kaur Sahiba, was to remain as regent. The Maharani had not committed Sati on Ranjit Singh's funeral pyre with his four principal wives, as she needed to look after the (then) 10-month-old Duleep. At the request of the Durbar the Treaty had specified that the British were to retain a force in Lahore until no longer than the end of the year "for the purpose of protecting the person of the Maharaja and the inhabitants of the City during the reorganisation of the Sikh army". However, when the time came for the British to leave, the Durbar pressed them to remain and on 16 December 1846 Currie assisted by Lawrence, by this time a lieutenant colonel, signed the Treaty of Bhyroval,All About Sikhs Treaty of Bhyroval under the terms of which the British consented to remain until the Maharaja reached the age of 16. A condition of the agreement was that the Regent should be replaced by a resident British officer. The Maharani was awarded a pension of 150,000 rupees and replaced by Lawrence as Resident, who "shall have full authority to direct and control all matters in every Department of the State". In the words of a contemporaryJohn Clark Marshman, editor of the periodical Friend of India. "An officer of the company's artillery became, in effect, the successor of Ranjit Singh".
The Period as Resident at Lahore and the events leading to the Second Anglo-Sikh War
In 1847 Currie was appointed to the Supreme Council of India. However, he was soon to be appointed to a different post. Henry Lawrence was granted sick leave in 1848 and travelled back to England with Hardinge, who had come to the end of his term of office as Governor-General. Hardinge was replaced on 12 January by the Earl of Dalhousie, a former President of the Board of Trade in Sir Robert Peel's cabinet and, on 6 March, Currie replaced Lawrence as Resident at Lahore.
During the first few months of 1848 the Punjab had been disturbed by only a few incidents. Hardinge, when leaving, had predicted that peace in India would remain unbroken for the next seven years. The periodical The Friend of India reported "the last obstacle to the complete, and apparently the final, pacification of India has been removed". The London Morning Herald considered that "India is in the full enjoyment of a peace which, humanly speaking, there seems nothing to disturb".L. J. Trotter, The Life of John Nicholson, Soldier and Administrator, Murray, 1898.
It was the calm in the eye of the storm. Beneath the surface there was turmoil in both camps. Many of the Sikh commanders were seething at what they saw as the treachery of their general Tej Singh during the war and the subsequent settlement.Professor J. S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab. Before he left, Lawrence had exiled Lal Singh, for urging Kashmir governor Shaikh Imamuddin not to turn over that country to Gulab Singh, and had replaced him as vizier by Tej Singh. When Maharaja Duleep Singh refused to invest Tej Singh as prime minister, Lawrence had imprisoned the Regent, Maharani Jind Kaur, and this treatment of the widow of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was a further source of anger and unrest.
In the British camp, John Lawrence, who had been expected to receive the Resident appointment during his brother's leave of absence, was critical of Currie, pointing out that the latter lacked military knowledge and experience of the feuds and alliances of the numerous Sikh, Muslim and Hindu factions. Lawrence, who at that time was Commissioner of the Jullundur District (he later became Viceroy and Governor-General of India), was charismatic and independent, traits he shared with several other officers connected with the Lahore Residency, including Captain (later Brigadier-General) John Nicholson, Commissioner of the Sind Sagar District, Captain James Abbott (later General Sir James Abbott), Deputy Commissioner of Hazara and Lieutenant Herbert Edwardes of the 1st Bengal Fusiliers (later Major-General Sir Herbert Edwardes), Assistant at Bannu to the Resident. These would have been a challenging bunch to manage even if circumstances had given Currie time to settle into his new post before the situation exploded.