Name Percival Spear Role Historian | Died 1982 | |
Books India: A Modern History, Delhi, Its Monuments and History | ||
Percival Spear: Historian and Indophile
Thomas George Percival Spear (1901–1982) was an English historian who spent much of his life living and teaching in India. An accomplished historian of modern Indian social history, he taught at both Cambridge University and St. Stephen's College with great distinction.
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In 1943 he became deputy secretary to the government of India in the department of information and broadcasting. He also served for a time in 1944 as government whip in the Federal Assembly, the precursor to independent India's Parliament. He was awarded the OBE in 1946. He also spent some of his life rowing in the Cambridge rowing team.
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In his book Master of Bengal: Clive and his India, Percival Spear wrote, "The dominion of Bengal was not desired in itself, but only as a safeguard] for peaceful commercial operations ... Rule by legal fiction and by deputy was both safer and cheaper in the conditions of the time."