Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence

Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence (born June 28, 1806, Matura, Ceylon [now Matara, Sri Lanka]—died July 4, 1857, Lucknow, India) was an English soldier and administrator who helped to consolidate British rule in the Punjab region.

After joining the Bengal artillery in 1823, Lawrence served at the capture of Arakan in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26). He studied the Urdu, Hindi, and Persian languages and in 1833 joined the survey department of the North-Western Provinces. Placed in charge of Firozpur, in the Punjab (1839), he acquired a substantial knowledge of Sikh politics. After holding several other posts, he in 1846 was appointed agent, and later resident, at Lahore (now in Pakistan). He reduced the Sikh army, suppressed mutinies in the Kangra region and in Kashmir, and deposed the wazīr (Muslim executive officer) Lal Singh.

After the Treaty of Bhairowal (1846), Lawrence, as resident and head of the Council of Regency, had unlimited administrative powers over the Punjab region. “Looking back on our Regency career,” he wrote years later, “my chief regrets are that we did so much.” Particularly lauded in Britain was his preparation of a legal code—“a very simple code of laws, founded on the Sikh customs,” he explained—that gave him the power to forbid suttee (self-immolation by widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres), infanticide, and forced labor. Knighted in 1848 while on home leave, he returned to India when the Second Sikh War (1848–49) broke out. The British won the war and annexed Punjab, and Lawrence was made president of its board of administration. He was in charge of political affairs while his younger brother, John, supervised finance. Policy conflicts with his brother as well as Lord Dalhousie, the governor-general of India, led Lawrence to seek a transfer, and in 1852 he was assigned to Rajputana.

In 1857 Lawrence was summoned to Ayodhya (Oudh), where annexation, land reforms, and a spreading rebellion among Indian troops were creating disorder. He effectively delayed the rebellion at Lucknow and prepared the defense of the governmental headquarters there, known as the British Residency, against a a six-month siege. He was mortally wounded during the siege, on July 2. At his death, two days later, he did not know that the British government had nominated him provisional governor-general.