Arrange the following British officers in a chronological order of their Governor-Generalship in India:
(A) Lord Canning
(B) Lord Wellesley
(C) Lord Cornwallis
(D) Warren Hastings
(E) Lord Dalhousie
Choose the correct answer from the options given below :
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → (D), (C), (B), (E), (A)
(D) Warren Hastings — 1773-1785, the earliest of the five (see the Note).
(C) Lord Cornwallis — Charles Cornwallis was the Governor General of Bengal when the Permanent Settlement was introduced there in 1793.
(B) Lord Wellesley — he devised the Subsidiary Alliance in 1798 as Governor-General.
(E) Lord Dalhousie — as Governor General he described Awadh in 1851 as “a cherry that will drop into our mouth one day”; Awadh was annexed in 1856.
(A) Lord Canning — he was Governor General during the revolt of 1857, when his plea for leniency to the sepoys was mocked in the British press.
Note: Warren Hastings is not in NCERT (2026-27). He was the first Governor-General, from 1773 to 1785, which places him before the other four; explained here for the benefit of the students. The other four are dated by the book, and their order (C), (B), (E), (A) is found only in Option (2).
NCERT (2026-27): “1.3 Why zamindars defaulted on payments … Fig. 9.3 Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805), painted by Thomas Gainsborough, 1785 He was the commander of the British forces during the American War of Independence and the Governor General of Bengal when the Permanent Settlement was introduced there in 1793. Subsidiary Alliance … Subsidiary Alliance was a system devised by Lord Wellesley in 1798.… 2.1 ‘A cherry that will drop into our mouth one day’ … In 1851 Governor General Lord Dalhousie described the kingdom of Awadh as ‘a cherry that will drop into our mouth one day’. Five years later, in 1856, the kingdom was formally annexed to the British Empire.… 5.5 No time for clemency … At a time when the clamour was for vengeance, pleas for moderation were ridiculed. When Governor General Canning declared that a gesture of leniency and a show of mercy would help in winning back the loyalty of the sepoys, he was mocked in the British press.…” |