THE LYTTONS: UPHOLDING THE EMPIRE
The community of Lytton in British Columbia is named after the English novelist and British statesman Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton. Lytton served as the British Secretary of State for the colonies from 1858 to 1859, during which time he introduced the bill in the British legislature that created the colony of British Columbia, securing the British presence at the Pacific Ocean. His insistence that the colony should be governed and administered by the British Crown, rather than by the Hudson’s Bay Company, paralleled the British government’s decision in 1858 to take over the governance of India from the East India Company.
His son Edward Robert BulwerLytton, 1st earl of Lytton, was the viceroy of India from 1876 to 1880. His viceregal tenure was marked by a devastating famine in Madras, caused partly by crop failure but also by the excessive exporting of crops to England under Lytton’s stewardship. In an effort to suppress Indian nationalist sentiment, which was gaining momentum due to British oppression, Lytton in 1878 passed the Vernacular Press Act, which censored newspapers published in Indian vernacular languages. He presided over the first Delhi Durbar of 1877, a magnificent event attended by royalty, British officials, and Indian maharajas and nawabs, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s assumption of the title of Empress of India.
The first earl’s son, Victor Alexander George Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd earl of Lytton, was born in India and served as the governor of Bengal from 1922 to 1927 and acting viceroy of India in 1925. He governed during a time when the nation was reeling under national movements and public protests, led by Mahatma Gandhi, and revolutionary activities directed toward overthrowing the British government. Lytton suppressed these activities and detained the revolutionaries so as to quell the anti-British uprising.