Edward Bosc Sladen


Sir Edward Bosc Sladen was a British army officer who worked in India. He served as the organiser of provisional government in Upper Burma and oversaw the surrender of King Thibaw.

Early life

Edward was born in Madras, British India on 20 November 1831. He was a son of Dr. Ramsey Sladen, an East India Company employee and his second wife, Emma Bosc.
He attended Oswestry School in Shropsire.

Career

He joined the East India Company on 14April 1849. He was posted in the 1st Madras fusiliers as a second lieutenant in September 1850. After seeing action in the Second Anglo-Burmese War at Pegu in December 1852 and again in January 1853, he became an assistant commissioner in Tenasserim and was severely wounded in 1856-57 while fighting insurgent Karens and Shans in the Yunzalin District. He then moved back to mainland India and joined in the recapture of Lucknow from Indian soldiers in March 1858. He also took part in the Oudh campaign with Sir James Hope Grant and Sir Alfred Hastings Horsford.
In 1866, he went to Mandalay as agent of the chief commissioner, and in August of that year had a narrow escape from a body of insurgents who had murdered three of the royal princes. During the disturbances that ensued he embarked nearly all the Europeans and other Christians at the Burmese capital on board a river steamer and brought them safely to Rangoon, for which he received the thanks of the governor-general. The insurrection having been put down, he returned to Mandalay. In May 1867, he exerted his influence with the king to prevent the execution of three young princes, two of whom owed their lives to his intercession, the other having been beheaded before a reprieve arrived. Shortly afterwards he obtained the king's assent to a new treaty of commerce and extradition which was ratified by the governor-general on 26 November 1867.
From 1876 to 1885, Sladen was commissioner of the Arakan division and in the latter year he accompanied the force sent against King Thibaw, as chief political officer. In this capacity, on the arrival of the British troops at Mandalay, on 28 December 1885, he entered the royal palace, and received the king's submission. In a speech on 17 February 1886, the governor-general, Lord Dufferin, made special mention of ‘Colonel Sladen, to whose courage and knowledge of the people we are so much indebted for the surrender of the king’.

Mission to China

He then joined the Indian staff corps after the Madras fusiliers became a queen's regiment. In 1866 he was made chief commissioner in Mandalay. In one incident he saved the Europeans in the region from insurgents. In 1868 he headed a political mission to the Chinese frontier. This expedition started on 13January from Mandalay through Bhamo to Moulmein and then to Yunnan and returned only in September. Information collected on the route was published as the Official Narrative of the Expedition to China via Bhamo. He wrote on the geography of the region in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1868, during a visit to Tengyue in modern-day Yunnan Province, China, Sladen procured a woodblock printed edition of the Chinese history of the town, which was brought back to England and deposited at the British Museum, along with a number of artefacts from SW China and Burma.

Personal life

In 1861, Sladen married Sophia Catherine Harrison, daughter of Richard Pryce Harrison, a Bengal civil servant, and
Harriette Harrison. They had a son and a daughter:
Sophia died in 1865 and, in 1880, Sladen married Katherine Jane Carew, daughter of Robert Russell Carew of Hertfordshire. They had a son:
He was knighted on 26November 1886, and retired on 14April 1887, dying in London three years later in London on 4 January 1890.

Descendants

Through his daughter Marion, he was a grandfather of Lionel Fielden, who was educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford before becoming a successful producer at the BBC. He was founder and controller of Broadcasting in India and was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi and John Reith, 1st Baron Reith. He owned Villa Massei, a 16th-century hunting lodge and 60 acres estate in Massa Macinaia, near the ancient walled city of Lucca, Italy.
Through his son Gerald, he was a grandfather to Ruth Violet Sladen, who married Oliver Kintzing Wallop, Viscount Lymington, and was the mother of Quentin Wallop, 10th Earl of Portsmouth.

Published works