Henry Yule

Sir Henry Yule (1820–1889), about 1880; Painting by Theodore Blake Wirgman

Sir Henry Yule (born May 1, 1820 in Inveresk , near Edinburgh , Scotland , † December 30, 1889 in London ) was a Scottish engineer , geographer , railway planner and orientalist .

Life

Family, youth, siblings

Yule was born as the third son of Major William Yule (1764-1839), a connoisseur and collector of Persian and Arabic scripts, deputy resident at the courts of Oudh and Delhi (there under the resident David Ochterlony ). After his return from military service in the Bengal Army in India (1806) he published the Apothegms of Ali ( sayings of Ali , the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed ), in Arabic , in an old Persian and his own English translation (1832). He was also a vehement opponent of slavery until it was banned in 1834. The three sons followed his example and all went to India. These were (except for Henry)

• George Udny Yule (1813–1886), who joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1832, pacified the Santals as commissioner of the Bhagalpur region after their uprising of 1855–56, then chief commissioner of Oudh . Married in 1862, then resident in Hyderabad and in 1867 appointed to the Council of the Governor General. After 30 years in India, he returned to England for the first time (together with his brother Henry) in 1859 and, after retiring in 1869, settled in London near his brother Henry.
• Robert Yule (1817-1857), fell as a cavalryman during the Indian Uprising .

Her uncle, the father's younger brother, Udney Yule, was a resident of Java under Governor Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), the founder of Singapore (1819).

School, training, service in India

After the early death of his mother, Henry Yule received his school education a. a. in Edinburgh before he moved to University College London to study law in 1836 ; as he preferred the career in the military, however, he attended the military college of the British East India Company in Addiscombe in 1837 and from 1839 the engineering school of the Royal Engineers in Chatham . With his classmates he quickly assumed a leading role because of his strong character, his classical education, his broad knowledge, innate humor, a sense of camaraderie and a sense of justice. In addition, there was an excellent memory and musical skills such as drawing technique and an acting talent. In 1840 Yule joined the Bengal Engineers as an officer , where he was soon deployed in the northeast of the country in the Khasi Hills in what is now the Indian state of Meghalaya , in order to find out how to transport the coal there; his reports of iron exploitation and the matrilineal society there were published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1842 and 1844 .

In 1843 Yule married his cousin Annie, who initially accompanied him to India, but soon had to return to England because of her poor health. He spent the next few years in northwest India renovating the irrigation system ( canal construction ) set up by the Mughal rulers . He had previously participated in regional military campaigns under Robert Napier (1810–1890), he was also actively involved in the First (1845–46) and Second Sikh Wars (1848–49), sometimes only in bridge construction. As chief engineer, he later oversaw the expansion of the Ganges Canal from Roorkee , which was to irrigate the Mesopotamian ( Doab ) between the upper reaches of the Ganges and the Yamuna .

The next three years (1849-52) he returned to Edinburgh to his wife and bought a house there; In 1852 the daughter Amy Frances was born. During this time Yule was a lecturer at the Scottish Navy and Military Academy in Edinburgh and wrote about fortifications, the role of the British fleet in the East African slave trade and Tibet .

After his return to Bengal in 1853, Yule wrote reports about his exploration of Arakan , the impassable stretch of coast between Bengal and what is now Myanmar , the former Burma where he almost died, and about the fortifications of Singapore . In his capacity as Under-Secretary of the Department of Public Works (since 1858 as Secretary), Yule now primarily had to take care of the development of the railway network, whereby he made the decision - even in retrospect, wrong - for reasons of cost met the meter-gauge network , which in retrospect turned out to be costly to operate, complex to maintain and to this day an agonizing obstacle to traffic due to the rapid growth in traffic, exports and transported weights.

As secretary to Colonel Arthur Purves Phayre , he accompanied him on a political mission to Ava in 1855 , which he described in 1858 in his self-illustrated Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava . The cheerful, informal atmosphere in Burma appealed to him more than the tedious bureaucratic everyday life in the capital Calcutta. The work brought him public recognition for the first time.

Yule was in close, even friendly contact with Governor General Lord Dalhousie (1812-1860) and Governor General (later Viceroy) Lord Canning (1812-1862), the events of the Indian Uprising of 1857-58 and the associated influx of numerous, with He was alienated from the Indian conditions of unfamiliar soldiers, whom he was responsible for, and under great time pressure, had to accommodate (e.g. in Allahabad ) as well as the tensions between the officers of the Queen and the officer corps of the Company ( Company Army ) more and more of his work, so that he resigned from service in 1862 with the rank of Colonel . After the early death of his two patrons and advocates, Lord Dalhousie and Lord Canning, with no prospect of a career in England, Yule withdrew into private life. For his services, however, he was awarded the rank of Companion of the Bath Order ( CB ) in 1863 .

Writing activities after leaving the Indian service

After stays in Switzerland , Tuscany and Savoy , Yule, for the sake of his wife and daughter with heart disease, settled for the next eleven years in the warmer climate of Palermo in Sicily , where he devoted himself to the medieval history and geography of South and Central Asia . There he also experienced the last war with Austria, the violent suppression of the monastic orders and the outbreak of cholera in 1867, which was brought in by troops. In 1863 he published the report of the Dominican monk Jordanus Catalanus de Severac (1290-1336), the first bishop of Quilon on the Indian Malabar coast , in 1866 Cathay and the Way Thither (1866), a collection of early travel reports, and in 1871 the book Book of Marco Polo , for which he undertook numerous archival trips to Venice, Paris, Florence and London as well as conducted extensive correspondence and for which he received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society .

Outdoor activities (sports, nature, gardening, horse riding) were not suitable for Yule given his extensive literary and historical interests, but he was considered a good swimmer, sociable and hospitable.

The argument with HM Stanley

After the death of his wife in 1875, Yule returned to England and became a member of the India Council ( lifelong by parliamentary resolution), where he campaigned several times (in vain) for the interests of the locals. In 1877 Yule remarried, his second wife, Mary Wilhelma, who was twenty years his junior, died in 1881. As Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society (1887-89), he vehemently opposed the brutal views and methods of the Africa explorer, journalist and author Henry in 1878 Morton Stanley (1841–1904) had revealed as an agent of the Belgian King Leopold on his travels in the Congo and thus prevented a formal greeting from the society - a reaction that Yule was entitled to the presidency of in the heated colonial atmosphere of the time Society cost.

Scientific activities and honors

In 1883 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and was accepted as an honorary member ( Honorary Fellow ) in the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

In collaboration with the Sanskritist and lawyer Arthur C. Burnell (1840–1882), Yule published a reference work for Anglo-Indian terms and designations that is still indispensable today, the Hobson-Jobson  : A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive , a work that probably brought him the most widespread circulation and is still reprinted unchanged in the second, expanded and supplemented edition of 1903 (with the assistance of William Crooke ).

For the Hakluyt Society founded in 1846 , of which he was president from 1877-89, Yule published the three-volume diary of the India trader and English governor of Bengal, William Hedges (1632-1701), as his last major work 1887-89 provides deep insights into the inner and everyday life of the company and includes, among other things, the adventurous biography of Thomas "Diamond" Pitt (1653–1727), the grandfather of William Pitt , who challenged and helped with the monopoly of the English East India Company as an interloper (free trader) the acquisition of the Regent Diamond laid the foundation for the family fortune of the Pitt family.

In 1886 Yule was Royal Commissioner at the Indian and Colonial Exhibition and in 1889 was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India ( KCSI ). As an advisor on oriental affairs, he was involved in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary .

Others

• Yule, like his brother Robert and five generations of his family, suffered in a maternal line from "color blindness" ( red-green visual impairment ), which inspired the discoverer of this color deficiency, John Dalton , to investigate him.
• Yule could be very hot, violently quick-tempered, and impatient, followed by periods of deep dejection ( depression ) and complete silence. Later he succeeded more and more in disciplining himself and becoming more balanced - partly through tricks like paying into an "anger fund".
• Due to its resemblance to Garibaldi (1807-1882), Yule was occasionally confused in Italy with the Italian freedom hero.
• Yule was fluent in German and translated Schiller's battle with the dragon into English

Biography, writings

The posthumously published third edition of his Marco Polo (1903) is preceded by a detailed memoir by his daughter Amy Frances (S.XXVII-LXXIV); This is followed by an almost complete list of his writings (S.LXXV-LXXVII).

Major works

• The book of Ser Marco Polo etc. (1871; 3rd A. 1903)
• Henry Yule (Colonel) & Henri Cordier : Cathay and the Way Thither; Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China. New Edition, Revised Throughout in the Light of Recent Discoveries. Second edition. Hakluyt Society. Second series. Vols. XXXVIII, XXXIII, XXXVII and XLI. London: The Hakluyt Society, 4 volumes, 1913-1916.
  • Volume I: xxiii, (1), 318, (2), xxxvi pages + frontis + 2 folding maps.
  • Volume II: xii, (2) 367 pages + frontis + 5 in-text illustrations + 3 maps on one folding sheet in pocket at end.
  • Volume III: xv, (1), 359 pages + 3 in-text illustrations.
  • Volume IV: xii, (2), 269 pages + folding map in pocket at end of Volume IV.

• Content:
  • Dedication and Preface; Preface to Second Edition; Table of Contents: Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse of China and the Western Nations Previous to the Discovery of the Sea-Route by the Cape; Cathay and the Way Thither:
  • I. The Travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone (1316-1330);
  • II. Letters and Reports of Missionary Friars from Cathay and India (1292-1338);
  • III. Cathay Under the Mongols: Extracted from Rashiduddin's History (circa 1300-1307);
  • IV. Pegolotti 's Notices of the Land Routes to Cathay, etc. (circa 1330-1340);
  • V. John de Marignolli 's Recollections of Eastern Travel (1338-1353);
  • VI. Ibn Batuta 's Travels in Bengal and China (circa 1347);
  • VII. The Journey of Benedict Goes from Agra to Cathay (1602-1607); Notes; Index.

Quotes

• "I have not to praise a work which has been for a long time the vade-mecum of all those engaged in the study of the Far East in Ancient and Middle Ages. All agree in considering it as the indispensable guide of all those interested in the historical geography not only of China, not only of Central Asia, but also of Asia at large. At the time of its appearance, it included well nigh all that was then known regarding the history of the East, notwithstanding the title showing the modesty of the learned editor. "- From the foreword by Henry Cordier to the second edition (1915)
• "Tyranny and cruelty aroused his anger and indignation, and so he vehemently protested the methods of an HM Stanley. The next thing that aroused his resentment, aside from cruelty, was an author's failure to keep an index of his work." - Markham, The Royal Geographical Society (1881), p. 461, quoted and translated from Driver, Yule in ODNB
• "Also in the literatures of France, Italy, Germany and other countries the powerful driving influence of the Yule method, which combines scientific thoroughness with graceful form, is noticeable"; Baron von Richthofen. In: Negotiations of the Society for Geography in Berlin xvii (1890), cited above. after Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , S.lxii.
• About Henry Yule's Marco Polo Edition: "The comments of this multilingual English expert on India and travel literature are still useful in polo research; they remain fascinating readings for laymen and professionals alike." Elise Guignard: Marco Polo. Il Milione. The wonders of the world . Zurich: Manesse 1983. Afterword, p. 444.

Other works

• (with Arthur C. Burnell; William Crooke (Ed.)) Hobson-Jobson (1886)
• Fortification for the use of officers and students (2nd ed., Edinb. 1854 f.)
• Narrative of the mission sent by the government of India to the court of Ava in 1855 (London 1858)
• (Translation from Latin :) [Jordanus]: Mirabilia descripta. The wonders of the East etc. (London 1863)
• Geography and history of the regions on the Oxus (London 1872)

literature

• Felix Driver: Yule, Sir Henry . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Vol. 60 (2004), pp. 976-978.
• Amy Frances Yule: Memoir . In: Henry Yule. Henri Cordier (ed.): The book of Ser Marco Polo etc. 3rd ed. 1903. Vol. 1, pp. Xxvii-lxxii.

Web links

• The Travels of Marco Polo (Henry Yule)
• Henry Yule at Thoemmes Continuum
• Digital versions of the Cathay and the way thither by Sir Henry Yule are available from the Toyo Bunko Rare Books Archive of the Digital Silk Roads Project
• Meyers Konversationslexikon (Yule)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the date, origin and whereabouts of the picture, see Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , p. Xxiii, footnote 23
2. ^ Amy Frances Yule, Memoir in "Marco Polo", Vol. 1, pp. Xxviii
3. ^ Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , pp. Xxxii
4. ↑ Journal of the Asiatic Society Bengal (JASB) Vol. Xi (1842), Part ii, pp. 853-857; Vol. Xiii (1844), Part ii, pp. 612-631.
5. ^ Fortification for the Officers of the Army and Students of Military History 1851, unauthorized French translation 1858; Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , S.xxxix
6. ↑ The Scottish element of the population was so strongly represented in Singapore, according to Yule, that he "as a geography teacher would be tempted to call Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Singapore the four capitals of Scotland"; Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , S.xliii
7. ↑ Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , p. Xliv, p. L
8. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 265.
9. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 27, 2020 . 
10. ↑ Red wine-colored trousers were the result of this visual impairment: "His tailor said: 'Not quite our usual taste, sir.' ... 'Nonsense, my trousers are silver-gray!' "In the end, Yule was persuaded and renounced the unusual choice of colors; Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , S.xlix f. and footnote 46
11. ↑ From the payments into this fund, which he himself fed a fixed amount after every fit of anger (in this case because the local workers were not punctual when building the canals), he erected a sundial in Roorkee to remind those concerned of the value of time; Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , pp. Xxxvii
12. ↑ Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , pp. Iviii
13. ^ Amy Frances Yule, Memoir , pp. Xxviii