author

Robert Grant Watson

d. 1892

A British diplomat, soldier, and historian, he wrote expansive works on Persia and colonial South America shaped by firsthand experience abroad. His career also touched a striking humanitarian moment in 1872, when he helped expose the abuse of Chinese laborers aboard the María Luz in Yokohama.

2 Audiobooks

Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1 of 2

Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 1 of 2

by Robert Grant Watson

Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 2 of 2

Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 2 of 2

by Robert Grant Watson

About the author

Born around 1834 and dying in 1892, Robert Grant Watson is remembered as a British diplomat and a former soldier in the British Indian Army. He also wrote history, combining official experience with a practical observer’s eye.

His best-known book is A History of Persia (1866), written after service at the British legation in Persia. Later, in the preface to Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period (1884), he explained that his appointment in 1866 as second secretary to Her Majesty’s legation in the Argentine Republic and Paraguay led him to study South America closely; he spent time in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and traveled in places including Patagonia and Paraguay.

Watson’s diplomatic work appears in another notable episode as well. During the 1872 María Luz incident in Yokohama, contemporary accounts identify acting British consul Robert Grant Watson as the official who inspected the Peruvian ship and helped bring attention to the brutal treatment of Chinese indentured laborers on board. That mix of service, travel, and historical writing gives his books an unusually grounded feel.