Lord Canning

Charles John Canning, 1st Earl Canning, was Governor-General of India during the rising of 1857 and the first Viceroy when rule passed from the East India Company to the Crown. He was born on 14 December 1812 and took charge in Calcutta at the end of February 1856, seven years after the annexation of the Punjab.

Key moments

• 28 February 1856: became Governor-General, succeeding Lord Dalhousie, who had proclaimed the annexation of the Punjab on 29 March 1849.
• 1857: he backed John Lawrence's efforts to send Punjab troops to help retake Delhi. When Lawrence proposed giving up the territory beyond the Indus, Canning rejected the idea (Dictionary of National Biography). That same year he appointed Henry Marion Durand as his agent in Central India.
• 31 July 1857: his Clemency Resolution separated mutinied regiments from disbanded soldiers who had committed no violence. It earned him the nickname “Clemency” Canning and criticism from some Englishmen in India.
• 1 November 1858: became the first Viceroy of India when the Crown took over. A Queen's Proclamation to the princes, chiefs and people of India was issued under the same date.
• After the policy of annexation was dropped, he issued sanads to ruling chiefs confirming their right to adopt heirs, to secure their loyalty.
• His years in office saw the founding of the universities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, and the drafting of the Indian Penal Code in 1860, which came into force in 1862.
• 17 June 1862: died in London, a few months after leaving India. He had been made a Knight of the Garter about a month earlier.

What he is remembered for. In British India he is remembered for the clemency order and for presiding over the transfer of India to the Crown. In the history of the Punjab he is the Governor-General under whom the province, annexed in 1849, sent its troops to retake Delhi, and who rejected Lawrence's proposal to give up the territory beyond the Indus.