PBA Galleries

Autograph Letter Signed ("Contenceau") as acting Governor General of French India.  2pp. In French. To Lord [George] Macartney, Governor of British India.

About to leave for Suez, Contenceau sends Macartney a letter that the then-infamous) Warren Hastings had written to his predecessor, a French nobleman who had died on the island of Ceylon, and offers to forward communications for Macartney. A rare diplomatic document of early Indian colonial history.
 

“French India” was merely 200 square miles of territory on the southeastern coast of the sub-continent where Warren Hastings – then being impeached in Parliament and tried for corruption - had consolidated British colonial power, forcing Contenceau to negotiate trade rights with the dominant British. Lord Macartney, who was actually Governor of Madras and only briefly nominal first Governor of the entire British colony, later became famous in his own right as the first British ambassador to China.