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Francis Buchanan-Hamilton

November 11, 2023

Francis Buchanan FRSE FRS FLS (15 February 1762 – 15 June 1829), later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, was a Scottish surgeon, surveyor and botanist who made significant contributions as a geographer and zoologist while living in India. He did not assume the name of Hamilton until three years after his retirement from India.[1]

Francis Buchanan-Hamilton

FRSE FRS FLS
Born
Francis Buchanan

(1762-02-15)15 February 1762
Callander, Perthshire
Died15 June 1829(1829-06-15) (aged 67)
Other namesFrancis Hamilton, formerly Buchanan; Francis Hamilton; Buchanan-Hamilton; Francis Hamilton Buchanan; Francis Buchanan Hamilton
EducationUniversity of Edinburgh
Known forAn account of the fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Society of London
Scientific career
InstitutionsCalcutta botanical garden, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
Author abbrev. (botany)Buch.-Ham.
Author abbrev. (zoology)Hamilton, Hamilton-Buchanan

The standard botanical author abbreviation Buch.-Ham. is applied to plants and animals he described, though today the form "Hamilton, 1822" is more usually seen in ichthyology and is preferred by Fishbase.

Early life edit

Francis Buchanan was born at Bardowie, Callander, Perthshire where Elizabeth, his mother, lived on the estate of Branziet; his father Thomas, a physician, came in Spittal and claimed the chiefdom of the name of Buchanan and owned the Leny estate. Francis Buchanan matriculated in 1774 and received an MA in 1779.[2] As he had three older brothers, he had to earn a living from a profession, so Buchanan studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating MD in 1783. His thesis was on febris intermittens (malaria). He then served on Merchant Navy ships to Asia, and served in the Bengal Medical Service from 1794 to 1815. He also studied botany under John Hope in Edinburgh. Hope was among the first to teach the Linnean system of botanical nomenclature, although he knew of several others having been trained under Antoine Laurent de Jussieu.[3]

Career in India edit

Buchanan's early career was on board ships plying between England and Asia. The first few years were spent as surgeon aboard the Duke of Montrose sailing between Bombay and China under Captain Alexander Gray and later Captain Joseph Dorin. He then served on the Phoenix along the Coromandel Coast again under Captain Gray. In 1794, he served on the Rose, sailing from Portsmouth to Calcutta, and reaching Calcutta in September, he joined the Medical Service of the Bengal Presidency. He was also a superintendent of the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India.[4] Buchanan's training was ideal as a surgeon naturalist for a political mission to the Kingdom of Ava in Burma under Captain Symes (as replacement for the previously appointed surgeon Peter Cochrane). The Ava mission set sail on the Sea Horse and passed the Andaman Islands, Pegu, and Ava before returning to Calcutta.[3]

 
Map illustrating Buchanan-Hamilton's journey through southern India

In 1799, after the defeat of Tipu Sultan and the fall of Mysore, he was asked to survey South India, resulting in A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (1807). He also wrote An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (1819).

He conducted two surveys, the first of Mysore in 1800 and the second of Bengal in 1807–14. From 1803 to 1804, he was surgeon to the governor general of India Lord Wellesley in Calcutta, where he also organized a zoo that was to become the Calcutta Alipore Zoo. In 1804, he was in charge of the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India founded by Wellesley at Barrackpore.

From 1807 to 1814, under the instructions of the government of Bengal, he made a comprehensive survey of the areas within the jurisdiction of the British East India Company. He was asked to report on topography, history, antiquities, the condition of the inhabitants, religion, natural productions (particularly fisheries, forests, mines, and quarries), agriculture (covering vegetables, implements, manure, floods, domestic animals, fences, farms, and landed property, fine and common arts, and commerce (exports and imports, weights and measures, and conveyance of goods). His conclusions are reported in a series of treatises that are retained in major United Kingdom libraries; many have been reissued in modern editions. They include an important work on Indian fish species, entitled An account of the fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches (1822), which describes over 100 species not formerly recognised scientifically.

He also collected and described many new plants in the region, and collected a series of watercolours of Indian and Nepalese plants and animals, probably painted by Indian artists, which are now in the library of the Linnean Society of London

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May, 1806,[5] and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in January 1817.

Later life edit

He succeeded William Roxburgh to become the superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814, but had to return to Britain in 1815 due to his ill health. In an interesting incident, the notes that he took of Hope's botany lectures in 1780 were lent to his shipmate Alexander Boswell during a voyage in 1785. Boswell lost the notes in Satyamangalam in Mysore and the notes went into the hands of Tipu Sultan, who had them rebound. In 1800, they were found in Tippu's library by a major who returned them to Buchanan.[6]

Buchanan left India in 1815, and in the same year inherited his mother's estate and in consequence took her surname of Hamilton, referring to himself as "Francis Hamilton, formerly Buchanan" or simply "Francis Hamilton". However, he is variously referred to by others as "Buchanan-Hamilton", "Francis Hamilton Buchanan", or "Francis Buchanan Hamilton".[citation needed]

From 1814 until 1829 he was the official Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh succeeding William Roxburgh.

Taxon named in his honor edit

Reptiles edit

 
An illustration of Geoclemys hamiltonii (black pond turtle) by Thomas Hardwicke
  • Francis Buchanan-Hamilton is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South Asian turtle, Geoclemys hamiltoni.[7]

Fish edit

Abbreviation edit

The standard author abbreviation Buch.-Ham. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[14]

Taxon described by him edit

See also edit

  • Claudius Buchanan Rev. Claudius Buchanan was also frequently referred as Dr. Buchanan in missionary journals.

References edit

  1. ^ V.H. Jackson, preface in "Journal of Francis Buchanan", Delhi, 1989.
  2. ^ (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  3. ^ a b Watson, Mark F.; Noltie, Henry J. (2016). "Career, collections, reports and publications of Dr Francis Buchanan (later Hamilton), 1762–1829: Natural history studies in Nepal, Burma (Myanmar), Bangladesh and India. Part 1". Annals of Science. 73 (4): 392–424. doi:10.1080/00033790.2016.1195446. PMID 27399603. S2CID 22631605.
  4. ^ Hora, S.L. (1926). "On the Manuscript Drawings of Fish in the Library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal". Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 22: 93–96.
  5. ^ "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 20 December 2010.[permanent dead link]
  6. ^ Ehrlich, Joshua (3 May 2020). "Plunder and Prestige: Tipu Sultan's Library and the Making of British India". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 43 (3): 478–492. doi:10.1080/00856401.2020.1739863. ISSN 0085-6401. S2CID 219447375.
  7. ^ Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Hamilton", p. 114).
  8. ^ Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). . The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Archived from the original on 27 July 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  9. ^ Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). "Order GOBIIFORMES: Family OXUDERCIDAE (p-z)". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  10. ^ Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). "Order CYPRINIFORMES: Family LEUCISCIDAE: Subfamilies LAVINIINAE, PLAGOPTERINAE and POGONICHTHYINAEs". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  11. ^ Conway, K.W., Dittmer, D.E., Jezisek, L.E. & Ng, H.H. (2013): On Psilorhynchus sucatio and P. nudithoracicus, with the description of a new species of Psilorhynchus from northeastern India (Ostariophysi: Psilorhynchidae). Zootaxa, 3686 (2): 201–243.
  12. ^ Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). . The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  13. ^ a b Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). "Order MUGILIFORMES". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  14. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Buch.-Ham.

Further reading edit

  • Vicziany, Marika (1986). "Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in Early Nineteenth-Century India: The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762-1829)". Modern Asian Studies. 20 (4): 625–660. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00013676. JSTOR 312628.
  • Buchanan, Francis (1807). A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies / Black, Parry & Kingsbury. – in three volumes, publishers noted as booksellers to the Asiatic Society and the East India Company, respectively.
    • Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3
  • Noltie, H.J. (1999) Indian botanical drawings 1793–1868. ISBN 1-872291-23-6

External links edit

November 11, 2023
francis, buchanan, hamilton, francis, buchanan, frse, february, 1762, june, 1829, later, known, francis, hamilton, often, referred, scottish, surgeon, surveyor, botanist, made, significant, contributions, geographer, zoologist, while, living, india, assume, na. Francis Buchanan FRSE FRS FLS 15 February 1762 15 June 1829 later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan Hamilton was a Scottish surgeon surveyor and botanist who made significant contributions as a geographer and zoologist while living in India He did not assume the name of Hamilton until three years after his retirement from India 1 Francis Buchanan HamiltonFRSE FRS FLSBornFrancis Buchanan 1762 02 15 15 February 1762Callander PerthshireDied15 June 1829 1829 06 15 aged 67 Other namesFrancis Hamilton formerly Buchanan Francis Hamilton Buchanan Hamilton Francis Hamilton Buchanan Francis Buchanan HamiltonEducationUniversity of EdinburghKnown forAn account of the fishes found in the river Ganges and its branchesAwardsFellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow of the Royal Society of LondonScientific careerInstitutionsCalcutta botanical garden Royal Botanic Garden EdinburghAuthor abbrev botany Buch Ham Author abbrev zoology Hamilton Hamilton BuchananThe standard botanical author abbreviation Buch Ham is applied to plants and animals he described though today the form Hamilton 1822 is more usually seen in ichthyology and is preferred by Fishbase Contents 1 Early life 2 Career in India 3 Later life 4 Taxon named in his honor 4 1 Reptiles 4 2 Fish 5 Abbreviation 6 Taxon described by him 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksEarly life editFrancis Buchanan was born at Bardowie Callander Perthshire where Elizabeth his mother lived on the estate of Branziet his father Thomas a physician came in Spittal and claimed the chiefdom of the name of Buchanan and owned the Leny estate Francis Buchanan matriculated in 1774 and received an MA in 1779 2 As he had three older brothers he had to earn a living from a profession so Buchanan studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MD in 1783 His thesis was on febris intermittens malaria He then served on Merchant Navy ships to Asia and served in the Bengal Medical Service from 1794 to 1815 He also studied botany under John Hope in Edinburgh Hope was among the first to teach the Linnean system of botanical nomenclature although he knew of several others having been trained under Antoine Laurent de Jussieu 3 Career in India editBuchanan s early career was on board ships plying between England and Asia The first few years were spent as surgeon aboard the Duke of Montrose sailing between Bombay and China under Captain Alexander Gray and later Captain Joseph Dorin He then served on the Phoenix along the Coromandel Coast again under Captain Gray In 1794 he served on the Rose sailing from Portsmouth to Calcutta and reaching Calcutta in September he joined the Medical Service of the Bengal Presidency He was also a superintendent of the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India 4 Buchanan s training was ideal as a surgeon naturalist for a political mission to the Kingdom of Ava in Burma under Captain Symes as replacement for the previously appointed surgeon Peter Cochrane The Ava mission set sail on the Sea Horse and passed the Andaman Islands Pegu and Ava before returning to Calcutta 3 nbsp Map illustrating Buchanan Hamilton s journey through southern IndiaIn 1799 after the defeat of Tipu Sultan and the fall of Mysore he was asked to survey South India resulting in A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore Canara and Malabar 1807 He also wrote An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal 1819 He conducted two surveys the first of Mysore in 1800 and the second of Bengal in 1807 14 From 1803 to 1804 he was surgeon to the governor general of India Lord Wellesley in Calcutta where he also organized a zoo that was to become the Calcutta Alipore Zoo In 1804 he was in charge of the Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India founded by Wellesley at Barrackpore From 1807 to 1814 under the instructions of the government of Bengal he made a comprehensive survey of the areas within the jurisdiction of the British East India Company He was asked to report on topography history antiquities the condition of the inhabitants religion natural productions particularly fisheries forests mines and quarries agriculture covering vegetables implements manure floods domestic animals fences farms and landed property fine and common arts and commerce exports and imports weights and measures and conveyance of goods His conclusions are reported in a series of treatises that are retained in major United Kingdom libraries many have been reissued in modern editions They include an important work on Indian fish species entitled An account of the fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches 1822 which describes over 100 species not formerly recognised scientifically He also collected and described many new plants in the region and collected a series of watercolours of Indian and Nepalese plants and animals probably painted by Indian artists which are now in the library of the Linnean Society of London 1 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1806 5 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in January 1817 Later life editHe succeeded William Roxburgh to become the superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814 but had to return to Britain in 1815 due to his ill health In an interesting incident the notes that he took of Hope s botany lectures in 1780 were lent to his shipmate Alexander Boswell during a voyage in 1785 Boswell lost the notes in Satyamangalam in Mysore and the notes went into the hands of Tipu Sultan who had them rebound In 1800 they were found in Tippu s library by a major who returned them to Buchanan 6 Buchanan left India in 1815 and in the same year inherited his mother s estate and in consequence took her surname of Hamilton referring to himself as Francis Hamilton formerly Buchanan or simply Francis Hamilton However he is variously referred to by others as Buchanan Hamilton Francis Hamilton Buchanan or Francis Buchanan Hamilton citation needed From 1814 until 1829 he was the official Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh succeeding William Roxburgh Taxon named in his honor editReptiles edit nbsp An illustration of Geoclemys hamiltonii black pond turtle by Thomas HardwickeFrancis Buchanan Hamilton is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South Asian turtle Geoclemys hamiltoni 7 Fish edit The fish Thryssa hamiltonii is one of the many fish named after Hamilton 8 The Burmese gobyeel Taenioides buchanani Day 1873 is named after him 9 Notropis buchanani Meek 1896 10 Psilorhynchus hamiltoni Conway Dittmer Jezisek amp H H Ng 2013 11 12 The mullet Crenimugil buchanani Bleeker 1853 13 The mullet Sicamugil hamiltonii Day 1870 13 Abbreviation editThe standard author abbreviation Buch Ham is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name 14 Taxon described by him editSee Category Taxa named by Francis Buchanan HamiltonSee also editClaudius Buchanan Rev Claudius Buchanan was also frequently referred as Dr Buchanan in missionary journals References edit V H Jackson preface in Journal of Francis Buchanan Delhi 1989 Biographical index of former fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783 2002 PDF The Royal Society of Edinburgh July 2006 ISBN 0 902 198 84 X Archived from the original PDF on 24 January 2013 Retrieved 5 September 2016 a b Watson Mark F Noltie Henry J 2016 Career collections reports and publications of Dr Francis Buchanan later Hamilton 1762 1829 Natural history studies in Nepal Burma Myanmar Bangladesh and India Part 1 Annals of Science 73 4 392 424 doi 10 1080 00033790 2016 1195446 PMID 27399603 S2CID 22631605 Hora S L 1926 On the Manuscript Drawings of Fish in the Library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 22 93 96 Library and Archive Catalogue Royal Society Retrieved 20 December 2010 permanent dead link Ehrlich Joshua 3 May 2020 Plunder and Prestige Tipu Sultan s Library and the Making of British India South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies 43 3 478 492 doi 10 1080 00856401 2020 1739863 ISSN 0085 6401 S2CID 219447375 Beolens Bo Watkins Michael Grayson Michael 2011 The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press xiii 296 pp ISBN 978 1 4214 0135 5 Hamilton p 114 Christopher Scharpf amp Kenneth J Lazara 22 September 2018 Order CLUPEIFORMES Family DENTICIPITIDAE PRISTIGASTERIDAE ENGRAULIDAE and CHIROCENTRIDAE The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J Lazara Archived from the original on 27 July 2021 Retrieved 17 November 2018 Christopher Scharpf amp Kenneth J Lazara 22 September 2018 Order GOBIIFORMES Family OXUDERCIDAE p z The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J Lazara Retrieved 8 March 2022 Christopher Scharpf amp Kenneth J Lazara 22 September 2018 Order CYPRINIFORMES Family LEUCISCIDAE Subfamilies LAVINIINAE PLAGOPTERINAE and POGONICHTHYINAEs The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J Lazara Retrieved 8 March 2022 Conway K W Dittmer D E Jezisek L E amp Ng H H 2013 On Psilorhynchus sucatio and P nudithoracicus with the description of a new species of Psilorhynchus from northeastern India Ostariophysi Psilorhynchidae Zootaxa 3686 2 201 243 Christopher Scharpf amp Kenneth J Lazara 22 September 2018 Order SILURIFORMES Families RITIDAE AILIIDAE HORABAGRIDAE and BAGRIDAE The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J Lazara Archived from the original on 12 June 2018 Retrieved 8 March 2022 a b Christopher Scharpf amp Kenneth J Lazara 22 September 2018 Order MUGILIFORMES The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J Lazara Retrieved 8 March 2022 International Plant Names Index Buch Ham Further reading editVicziany Marika 1986 Imperialism Botany and Statistics in Early Nineteenth Century India The Surveys of Francis Buchanan 1762 1829 Modern Asian Studies 20 4 625 660 doi 10 1017 S0026749X00013676 JSTOR 312628 Buchanan Francis 1807 A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore Canara and Malabar London T Cadell amp W Davies Black Parry amp Kingsbury in three volumes publishers noted as booksellers to the Asiatic Society and the East India Company respectively Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Noltie H J 1999 Indian botanical drawings 1793 1868 ISBN 1 872291 23 6External links editWorks by Francis Hamilton at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Francis Buchanan Hamilton at Internet Archive Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Francis Buchanan Hamilton amp oldid 1179850862, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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