John Goldingham FRS: Astronomer, Architect and Scentist in Madras

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Goldingham with his two Assistants

The advent of the East India Company and uts military and political domination over India has been the subject of a recent book by William Dreflect detail the inteigues, violence and pillage that accompanied the rise of the Empire, there is another story waiting to be told. The story of men, mostly from Scotland who entered the Company service and spent a good part of their lives in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, historical research and Antiquaran pursuits. The name of Col Colin MacKenzie comes immediately to mind when we reflect on the formative decades of Company rule in India. For very Robert Clive there was a Mark Wilks, a William Roxburgh a Colin MacKenzie and therefore the historical context of early Company ule must also encompass the work of these men who were in many ways the products of the Scottish Enlightenment.

John Goldingham a Fellow of the Royal Society came to India in the early years of the nineteenth century when the great geodesic project like the measurement of the Meridian Arc, the Trignomentrical Survey and terrestrial mapping of India was underway. A practical problem all these projects faced was the determination of the Longitude which could be used to caliberate all their maps and calculations. Navigation on the high seas also depended on the determination of the Longitude as that wouldenable safe sailing. The loss of 4 battle ships near the Isle of Scicylly near the coast of Cornwall and the loss of 2000 sean men made the English Government intervene and John Harrison in1748 succedded in making the Chronemeter that enabled ships to carry the local time with them while sailing.The Longitude is the angular distance between the Equator (latidute) and the Prime Medidian which was the Observatory at Greenwich. Until Harrison invented his very sophisticated Chronometer sailors were at the mercy of the sky, the stars and extremely poor astronomical instruments like the sexton and the qyadrant.Harrison's instument was a robust chronemeter that allowed the Longitude to be determined by the difference between local time(on the sailing ship) and the time in a fixed meridian. Thyco Brahe (1546-1601) and Johhanes Kepler (1571-1630) kept detailed observations os the stellar objcets and these tables were used as aids in navigation. However, navigation by the help of the stars was both risky and with the southern hemisphere becoming the new frontier of exploration with the several voyages of James Cook a reliable method was needed. In India, this meant determination of a meridian that could be used as a base for accurate reliable mapping.

John Goldingham succeeded Michaek Topping as the Astronomer of the East India Company and he undertook extensive work at Topping's Observatory at Nugambakkam on the banks of the Cooum. Being a trined Astronomer, John Goldingham decided to use the Ecpises of Jupiter in order to determnie the Longitude of Madras. He had at his disposal the excellent series of astronomical data collected over several decades by William Petrie between 1787 to 1782. He also had the data of Michael Topping and his own. He presented his method in a lenghty paper in which he discussed the eclipses of Jupiter as a possible determinat of the Longitude on Earth.His findings were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society vol 112 (1822). He cross checked his finding by comparing the result with Lunar Eclipses in which the use of Kepler's table becomes the base for calculation. Goldingham was able to estblish the Medidian for Madras' His Indian assistants perhaps depicted in the illustration above were Srinivasachary and Tiruvenkatachary.

Banquetting Hall designed by Goldhinham before it became ugly

John Goldingham was an Astronomer and he was the first Principal of the Madras School of Survey that grew into the famous Guindy Engineering College' Edward Clive as Love points out in Vlume III of his Vestiges of Old Madras was keen on establishing a distinct Depatment of Civil Engineering separate from the Military and John Goldingham was appointed the Architect to design the Garden House of the Madras Governor and a Public Hall which stands today as the Banquetting Hall after a series of "rennovations" which have altered the character and concept of the architect. Goldingham's drwaing have been presevered in Netehlands and thes structures were meant to proclaim the invincibility of the Company after its victories over the usurper ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.Lord Clive who was the Governor from 1798 to1803 sanctioned 58,000 pagodas and the Architect was paid a 15% commission giving him a permenant stake in cost escalation. Finally Goldingham was dismissed and the project completed.

After this work Goldhimham returned to England where he died in 1849. Havell suggests that Goldingham was the first architect to use Indian elements in his building a trnd tken forwatd by the likes of Chilsom.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

William Roxburgh

The Scottsh Enlightenment had a profound impact on India and historians have failed to study the impact of the intellectual movement that emerged as a consequence of the Act of Union, 1707. I have been studying a number of Scots who worked in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Mark Wilks, Colin Mackenzie, and am now beginning a more detailed study of William Roxburgh. My work on Col Mark Wilks has been cited in the latest English Historical Review and have worked earlier on Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India. I now hope to write a longer work on the Scottish Nation in India and its contribution to the understanding of India, it History, Literature and the Natural World. Obviously an Intllectual History of the sort we propose sits uncomfortably with the modern notions of post colonial study which negates the very idea that the past is accessible to human knowledge and is open to truthful and rational investigation. With these words let me move on to the study of William Roxburgh.

Government House Madras, Chennai

Perhaps the most honoured botanist of his day and was second only to Sir Joseph Banks. William Roxburgh was educated at the University of Edinburgh which was the instirutional centre of the Scottish Enlightenment' Born in 1751 Roxburgh died in 1815 and came from a family that had close ties with Henry Dundas who was the Chairman of the Board of Control of the East India Company and an influential politician in Georgian England. roxburgh stdied under John Hope who initiated the young William into the world of botanical study. Botany was still in its infancy, though the Royal Gardens of Kensington and Kew had been established it was under Sir Joseph Banks that these botanical gardens became centers of an ever widening web of botanical exchange, ropagation of plants and collection of seeds for further reseach and study. Indeed the very establishment of the Botanical Garden at Kew was itself a Scottish foundation as it owed its origin to John Stuart, the Earl of Bute in the 1760s. With the intervention of hs patrons in the Company establihsment, William Roxburgh got a position as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Headquarters of the East India Company. Arriving in Madras after rounding the Cape of Good Hope in May 1776. The job of the Assistant Surgeo seems to have been extremely light as roxburgh found the time to indulge his passion for collecting botanical specimens.

Botanical nvestigation was rather chaotic in the early eighteenth century, a situation that was destined to change due to the theoretical and empirical work of the great Swedish naturalist Charles Linnaeus. The plants were studied on the bais of their external charecteristics rather than the inherent sexual and reproductive functions which were performed in numerous ways by plants. Linneaus introduced the taxonomic method by which the charecteristic features of plants were studied according to its Taxonomic feature, generic features and thereby the species was identified. The morphology of plants and their parts were studied in a scientific manner and Herberia were manitained for ready reference.

In Madras now renamed Chennai, Roxburgh mt Dr Koenig a pupil of Dr Charles Linneaus. Koenig was associated with the Danish settlemnt of Tranquebar, a notorious slaving station on the coromandel coast run by the Dutch East India Company and of course Protestant missionaries like Ziegenbang did not find anything offensive ethically or morally in the odious trae of indegenous people as slaves. Both Roxburgh and Koenig went of Plant collection expeditions all over the Coromandel region collecting specimens. The East India Company was particularly interested i economically beneficial plants like Teak, Indigo and of course Spices. We do not know what happened to this early collection. When Koenig died he left his papes to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. In 1781 Roxburgh was transferred to Samalkota, near the estuary of the River Godavari and the wild life reserve Forest of Coringa and it was here that a mounumental tragedy struck.

( to be continued in Part II)