Robert Orme

Who was Robert Orme?

Robert Orme was a British historian of India. Son of a British East India Company physician and surgeon, he entered the service of the Company in Bengal in 1743. He returned to England in 1753, and was regarded as an authority on India.

He was appointed as a Member of the Council at Fort St. George, Madras, between 1754 and 1758. In that capacity he was instrumental in the sending of a young Robert Clive as the head of a punitive expedition in 1757 to Calcutta, after the alleged Black Hole incident of 1756. He returned to England in 1760, and was appointed as historiographer to the British East India Company in 1769.

Orme wrote History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745. He also published Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, the Morattoes and English Concerns in Indostan from 1659.