Colin Mackenzie

Born in 1754, Colin Mackenzie became famous as an engineer, surveyor and cartographer. In 1815 he was appointed the first Surveyor General of India, a post he held till his death in 1821. He embarked on collecting local histories and surveying historic sites in order to better understand India’s past and make governance of the colony easier. He says that “It struggled long under the miseries of bad management .... before the South came under the benign influence of the British Government”. By studying Vijayanagara, Mackenzie believed that the East India Company could gain “much useful information on many of these institutions, laws and customs whose influence still prevails among the various tribes of natives forming the general mass of the population to this day”.

Questions:

(i)    Why did Colin Mackenzie become famous?

(ii)    Why did he embark upon collecting local histories and surveying historic sites?

(iii)    How did Mackenzie collect more information about Hampi?

(iv)    Explain how it enabled the scholars to study about Hampi.