Лорд Лансдаун: Үндістанның вице-королі және саяси өмірі

Viceroy of India from 1888 to 1895

Henry Charles Keith Petty Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, (14 January 18453 June 1927), was a British statesman who served successively as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In 1917, during the First World War, he wrote the "Lansdowne Letter", advocating in vain a compromise peace. A millionaire, he had the distinction of having held senior positions in Liberal and Conservative Party governments. His maternal grandfather, Count Charles de Flahaut, was an important French general to Napoleon Bonaparte, and a member of his family. He fought along his side during many battles and later occupied the functions of Ambassador and Senator of the Empire. Through his mother Emily, Lansdowne was half nephew of Emperor Napoleon III, a step grandson of Queen Hortense Bonaparte, and a great grandson of Prince Talleyrand, the Emperor's foreign minister. His maternal great grandfather, George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith, was also the Admiral who prevented Napoleon's escape from France after the Battle of Waterloo, and who received and supervised his final surrender to St. Helena in 1815. Lord Lansdowne was a member of the Fitzmaurice/Petty Fitzmaurice family, a cadet branch of the House of FitzGerald of Ireland. He held the courtesy title Viscount Clanmaurice from birth to 1863 and then the courtesy title Earl of Kerry until he succeeded as Marquess of Lansdowne in 1866. Upon his mother's death in 1895, he succeeded her as the 9th Lord Nairne in the Peerage of Scotland. He was estimated to be the sixteenth richest peer in the United Kingdom, and the fourth largest landowner. At one of his inherited properties, Derreen House (Lauragh, County Kerry, in the present day Republic of Ireland), Lord Lansdowne started to develop a great garden from 1871 onwards. For most of the rest of his life, he spent three months of the year at Derreen. Lord Lansdowne entered the House of Lords as a member of the Liberal Party in 1866. He served in William Ewart Gladstone's government as a Lord of the Treasury from 1869 to 1872 and as Under Secretary of State for War from 1872 to 1874. He was appointed Under Secretary of State for India in 1880 and, having gained experience in overseas administration, was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1883, replacing John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, the son in law of Queen Victoria. His great grandfather, Lord Shelburne, had previously founded the Boodle's Club, which had as members Adam Smith, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and Ian Fleming, among others, and is now the second oldest club in the world. In 1897, he also became a founding trustee of the National Gallery of British Art, with the Earl of Carlisle of Castle Howard, Lord Brownlow of Belton House, Alfred de Rothschild of Halton House, Sir Charles Tennant of Glen House, John Postle Heseltine of Walhampton House, and Sir John Murray Scott.

Lord Lansdowne was Governor General during turbulent times in Canada. His Protestant Irish connections made him unpopular with the Catholic Irish element. He was appointed GCMG in January 1884. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald's government was in its second term and facing allegations of scandal over the building of the railway (the Pacific Scandal), and the economy was once again sliding into recession. The North West Rebellion of 1885 and the controversy caused by its leader, Louis Riel, posed a serious threat to the equilibrium of Canadian politics. His experiences in Western Canada gave Lansdowne a great love of the Canadian outdoors and the physical beauty of Canada. He was an avid fisherman and was intensely interested in winter sports. His love of the wilderness and the Canadian countryside led him to purchase a second residence (first Cascapedia House, built in 1880, later renamed Lorne Cottage, and then New Dereen Camp, built in 1884) on the Cascapédia River in the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec. The same area was previously used by the past Viceroy of Canada, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, and his wife, Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. and GCIE The office, which he held from 1888 to 1894,

Upon his return, as a Liberal Unionist, he aligned with the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury appointed Lansdowne to the post of Secretary of State for War in June 1895. The unpreparedness of the British Army during the Second Boer War brought calls for Lansdowne's impeachment in 1899. His biographer, P. B. Waite, considers that he was unjustly criticised for British military failures, but ever the good minister, he took full responsibility and said nothing. According to G. W. Monger's summary of the Cabinet debates in 1900 to 1902:Chamberlain advocated ending Britain's isolation by concluding an alliance with Germany; Salisbury resisted change. With the new crisis in China caused by the Boxer rising and Landsdowne's appointment to the Foreign Office in 1900, those who advocated a change won the upper hand. Landsdowne in turn attempted to reach an agreement with Germany and a settlement with Russia but failed. In the end Britain concluded an alliance with Japan. The decision of 1901 was momentous; British policy had been guided by events, but Lansdowne had no real understanding of these events. The change of policy had been forced on him and was a confession of Britain's weakness.

On 15 June 1903, he made a speech in the House of Lords defending fiscal retaliation against countries with high tariffs and governments subsidising products for sale in Britain (known as 'bounty fed products', also called dumping). Retaliation was to be done by threatening to impose tariffs in response against that country's goods. His Liberal Unionists had split from the Liberals, who promoted Free Trade, and the speech was a landmark in the group's slide towards protectionism. Landsdowne argued that threatening retaliatory tariffs was similar to getting respect in a room of armed men by showing a big revolver (his exact words were "a rather larger revolver than everybody else's"). The "Big Revolver" became a catchphrase of the day and was often used in speeches and cartoons.

In 1903, Lord Lansdowne became the leader of Unionists (Conservative and Liberal Unionist peers) in the House of Lords. In 1915, Lansdowne joined the wartime coalition cabinet of H. H. Asquith as a Minister without Portfolio but was not given a post in the Lloyd George government formed the following year, despite Conservative pre eminence in that government. In 1917, having discussed the idea with colleagues for some time with no response, he published the controversial "Lansdowne Letter", which called for a statement of postwar intentions from the Entente Powers, and an end to the war on the basis of a return to the status quo ante. He was criticised as acting contrary to cabinet policy.

Lord Lansdowne died at Clonmel, Ireland on 3 June 1927 at the age of 82. His widow died in 1932, and their tombs are in the churchyard at Derry Hill, near their Bowood estate in Wiltshire.

Henry Petty FitzMaurice married Lady Maud Evelyn Hamilton, a daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn and his wife Lady Lady Louisa Jane Russell, daughter of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford in 1869. The couple had four children: married firstly Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford and secondly Osborne Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans.