Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (8 November 1831 – 24 November 1891), was a British statesman, Conservative politician and poet who used the pseudonym Owen Meredith. During his tenure as Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He served as British Ambassador to France from 1887 to 1891.
His tenure as Viceroy was controversial for its ruthlessness in both domestic and foreign affairs, especially for his handling of the Great Famine of 1876–1878 and the Second Anglo-Afghan War. His son Victor Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd Earl of Lytton, who was born in India, later served as Governor of Bengal and briefly as acting Viceroy. The senior earl was also the father-in-law of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed New Delhi.
Lytton was a protégé of Benjamin Disraeli in domestic affairs, and of Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, who was his predecessor as Ambassador to France, in foreign affairs. His tenure as Ambassador to Paris was successful, and Lytton was afforded the rare tribute – especially for an Englishman – of a French state funeral in Paris.
Lytton was the son of the novelists Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Rosina Doyle Wheeler (who was the daughter of the early women's rights advocate Anna Wheeler). His uncle was Sir Henry Bulwer. His childhood was spoiled by the altercations of his parents, who separated acrimoniously when he was a boy. However, Lytton received the patronage of John Forster – an influential friend of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens – who was generally considered to be the first professional biographer of 19th century England.
Lytton's mother, who lost access to her children, satirised his father in her 1839 novel Cheveley, or the Man of Honour. His father subsequently had his mother placed under restraint, as a consequence of an assertion of her insanity, which provoked public outcry and her liberation a few weeks later. His mother chronicled this episode in her memoirs.
After being taught at home for a while, he was educated in schools in Twickenham and Brighton and thence Harrow, and at the University of Bonn.
Lytton entered the Diplomatic Service in 1849, when aged 18, when he was appointed as attaché to his uncle, Sir Henry Bulwer, who was Minister at Washington, DC. It was at this time he met Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. He began his salaried diplomatic career in 1852 as an attaché to Florence, and subsequently served in Paris, in 1854, and in The Hague, in 1856 . In 1858, he served in St Petersburg, Constantinople, and Vienna. In 1860, he was appointed British consul-general at Belgrade.
In 1862, Lytton was promoted to Second Secretary in Vienna, but his success in Belgrade made Lord Russell appoint him, in 1863, as Secretary of the Legation at Copenhagen, during his tenure as which he twice acted as Chargé d'Affaires in the Schleswig-Holstein conflict. In 1864, Lytton was transferred to the Greek court to advise the young Danish Prince. In 1865, he served in Lisbon, where he concluded a major commercial treaty with Portugal, and subsequently in Madrid. He subsequently became Secretary to the Embassy at Vienna and, in 1872, to Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, who was Ambassador to Paris. By 1874, Lytton was appointed British Minister Plenipotentiary at Lisbon where he remained until being appointed Governor General and Viceroy of India in 1876.
After turning down an appointment as governor of Madras, Lytton's appointment as Viceroy of India was announced in 1876. As he was a man of letters instead of a politician, the appointment caused "general astonishment", but the appointment owed something to Disraeli's appreciation of Lytton's literary sensibilities.
On his journey to India, he met up in Egypt with the Prince of Wales, who was returning from his own Indian tour, by prior arrangement. He arrived in India and on 12 April 1876 was installed as viceroy.
The first great occasion of Lytton's viceroyalty was the Delhi Durbar on 1 January 1877, known as the "Proclamation Durbar", to mark Queen Victoria's acceptance of the title of Empress of India. The durbar was attended 68,000 people and 15,000 British and Indian troops: it marked symbolically the beginnings of Britain's alliance with the Indian princes, who pledged their alliance to the new Empress.
Lord Lytton presided over the proceedings in the robes of the Grand Master of the Order of the Star of India. He read a speech, in which he announced the creation of the Order of the Indian Empire.
The Durbar was out of touch to the Indians. Lakhs of rupees were spent on the event but nothing was done for Indians who were in the grip of a famine.
He was created a GCB in late 1877, at the end of his first year in office.
The most significant domestic crisis of Lytton's viceroyalty was the Great Famine of 1876–1878, which began shortly after he took office and caused several million deaths. Estimates vary considerably, with modern studies generally placing the death toll between approximately 5.5 million and 9 million.
Although drought and crop failures triggered the famine, historians have argued that the policies adopted by Lytton's administration substantially increased its severity. Lytton opposed government measures intended to reduce grain prices and supported a policy of non-interference in private trade. His administration also sought to minimise expenditure on famine relief, while continuing to collect revenue and pursuing wider fiscal objectives.
Sir Richard Temple was sent to supervise relief expenditure and introduced strict eligibility requirements, compulsory labour and a reduced subsistence allowance known as the "Temple wage" or "Temple ration". The ration provided approximately one pound of grain per day to adult labourers performing strenuous work and was criticised as insufficient to prevent severe malnutrition and disease.
Economic historian Lalit Mohan Gujral argued that Lytton wanted the famine to be administered as economically as possible in order to maintain a budget surplus and enable the reduction of import duties on British cotton goods. Other historians have similarly identified the colonial government's commitment to laissez-faire economics, free trade and fiscal restraint as important factors that worsened mortality.