James Meston, 1st Baron Meston

James Scorgie Meston, 1st Baron Meston (born June 12, 1865 in Kintore near Aberdeen , † October 7, 1943 in Maidenhead ) was a British politician ( Liberal Party ) and civil servant. Among other things, he was President of the Liberal Party.

Life and activity

Meston was the second son of James Meston and his wife Jane, b. Scorgie. In his childhood he attended the Grammar School of Aberdeen and then studied at the university there and at Balliol College, Oxford University . In 1883 he passed the entrance examination into the British administrative service in the colony of India.

In 1885 Meston was sent to the north-west provinces of India as a civil servant, where he remained with brief interruptions until 1919, that is thirty-four years. There he served from 1897 to 1899 as director of land records and then from 1899 to 1903 as finance secretary of the provincial government there. From 1905 to 1906 Meston was a consultant in the British Cape Colony and Transvaal administrations .

From 1906 to 1912 Meston served as Secretary of the Treasury Department of the British Government in India. In 1912 he took over the post of Deputy Governor (Lieutenant-Governor) of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, which he held until 1918. In 1917 he was given leave of absence to represent India in the Imperial War Cabinet, the British war cabinet during the First World War. In the last year of the war, he became Treasury Secretary of the British Viceroy's Executive Council in India. In 1919 he returned to Great Britain. In the same year he was raised to hereditary nobility as Baron Meston , of Agra in the Indian Empire and Dunottar in the County of Kincardine, and thus became a member of the House of Lords .

After the war, Meston was together with Lionel Curtis the chief political architect of the Institute of International Affairs and served as the first chairman of the administrative board of this institution from 1920 to 1926.

From 1932 to 1934 Meston served as President of the Royal Statistical Society . From 1936 until his death in 1943, Meston also served as President of the Liberal Party, d. H. as chairman of the party organization of this party.

He was also a member of the supervisory board of various companies.

family

In 1891 Meston married Jeanie McDonald († 1946), with whom he had two sons, the older of whom died as a child. The younger son, Dougall, inherited his title of nobility.

Fonts

• Nationhood for India , Oxford University Press, London 1931.

literature

• John F. Riddick: Who was who in British India , 1998, p. 252.