Sir James McCrone Douie

Educated at the University of Edinburgh, he joined the Indian Civil Service in the late 1870s and spent most of his career in the Punjab. Over the years he held a series of important administrative posts and eventually served briefly as Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab.

Alongside his government work, he became known as a careful writer on northern India. His books include studies of the Punjab and biographies connected with Sikh and regional history, written in a factual, observant style shaped by long experience in the province.

He was born on March 8, 1854, and died on March 18, 1935. Today he is mainly remembered as both a colonial official and an author whose work offers a window into how British administrators understood Punjab in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.