[George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston]. English statesman, eldest son of the 4th baron Scarsdale, rector of Kedleston, Derbyshire; born on the 11th of January 1859, and educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford he was president of the Union, and after a brilliant university career was elected a fellow of All Souls College in 1883. He became assistant private secretary to Lord Salisbury in 1885, and in 1886 entered parliament as member for the Southport division of S.W. Lancashire. He was appointed under secretary for India in 1891–1892 and for foreign affairs in 1895–1898. In the meantime he had travelled in Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan, the Pamirs, Siam, Indo-China and Korea, and published several books describing central and eastern Asia and the political problems connected with those regions. In 1895 he married Mary Victoria Leiter (d. 1906), daughter of a Chicago millionaire. In January 1899 he was appointed governor-general of India, where his extensive knowledge of Asiatic affairs showed itself in the inception of a strong foreign policy, while he took in hand the reform of every department of Indian administration. He was created an Irish peer on his appointment, the creation taking this form, it was understood, in order that he might remain free during his father’s lifetime to re-enter the House of Commons. Reaching India shortly after the suppression of the frontier risings of 1897–98, he paid special attention to the independent tribes of the northwest frontier, inaugurated a new province called the North West Frontier Province, and carried out a policy of conciliation mingled with firmness of control. The only trouble on this frontier during the period of his administration was the Mahsud Waziri campaign of 1901. Being mistrustful of Russian methods he exerted himself to encourage British trade in Persia, paying a visit to the Persian Gulf in 1903; while on the northeast frontier he anticipated a possible Russian advance by the Tibet Mission of 1903, which rendered necessary the employment of military force for the protection of the British envoys. The mission, which had the ostensible support of China as suzerain of Tibet, penetrated to Lhasa, where a treaty was signed in September 1904. In pursuance of his reforming policy Lord Curzon appointed a number of commissions to inquire into Indian education, irrigation, police and other branches of administration, on whose reports legislation was based during his second term of office as viceroy. With a view to improving British relations with the native chiefs and raising the character of their rule, he established the Imperial Cadet corps, settled the question of Berar with the nizam of Hyderabad, reduced the salt tax, and gave relief to the smaller income-tax payers. Lord Curzon exhibited much interest in the art and antiquities of India, and during his viceroyalty took steps for the preservation and restoration of many important monuments and buildings of historic interest. In January 1903 he presided at the durbar held at Delhi in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII. It was attended by all the leading native princes and by large numbers of visitors from Europe and America; and the magnificence of the spectacle surpassed anything that had previously been witnessed even in the gorgeous ceremonial of the East. On the expiration of his first term of office, Lord Curzon was reappointed governor-general. His second term of office was marked by the passing of several acts founded on the recommendations of his previous commissions, and by the partition of Bengal (1905), which roused bitter opposition amongst the natives of that province. A difference of opinion with the commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener, regarding the position of the military member of council in India, led to a controversy in which Lord Curzon failed to obtain support from the home government. He resigned (1904) and returned to England. In 1904 he was appointed lord warden of the Cinque Ports; in the same year he was given the honorary degree of D.C.L. by Oxford University, and in 1908 he was elected chancellor of the university. In the latter year he was elected a representative peer for Ireland, and thus relinquished any idea of returning to the House of Commons. In 1909–1910 he took an active part in defending the House of Lords against the Liberals. Lord Curzon’s publications include Russia in Central Asia (1889); Persia and the Persian Question (1892); Problems of the Far East (1894; new ed., 1896).
See Caldwell Lipsett, Lord Curzon in India, 1898–1903 (1906); and C. J. O’Donnell, The Failure of Lord Curzon (1903).
Lord Curzon received an earldom (along with the viscountcy of Scarsdale and the barony of Ravensdale) as one of the coronation honours in 1911. He was conspicuous in that year first by his strong denunciation of the Parliament bill and the whole Liberal attack on the Lords, and then by the leading share which he took, in the final stage, in persuading the bulk of the Unionist peers to abstain from voting in the crucial division and so to permit the bill to pass rather than have their House swamped by hundreds of creations ad hoc. During the vehement party conflicts of the next two or three years before the World War he established his position as the chief lieutenant of Lord Lansdowne in the Lords. But much of his time and attention during the period of opposition were given to the affairs of Oxford University, of which he had become chancellor; and he promoted the cause of reform there by personal effort and by publishing a detailed memorandum on the subject. With other Unionist leaders he joined Mr. Asquith’s Coalition Cabinet in the summer of 1915, as Lord Privy Seal; and in that capacity he introduced the bill constituting the new Ministry of Munitions under Mr. Lloyd George, and took charge in the Lords of the Munitions of War bill which was to furnish that Ministry with its weapons. In these and other ways he gave proof of a determination to prosecute the war with zeal and energy. He accepted the presidency of the Air Board in May 1916, and in July became a permanent member of the War Committee of the Cabinet. When Mr. Lloyd George formed his Ministry in December, he was accorded a still more prominent position. Lord Lansdowne and Lord Crewe—the two leaders of parties in the Lords—both retired, and Lord Curzon became the leader of the House with the office of President of the Council. He was chosen also to be one of the four ministers (the others being the Prime Minister, Lord Milner, and Mr. Henderson) who constituted the War Cabinet, and were charged with the permanent daily conduct of the war. After the Paris Conference he took over the Foreign Office from Mr. Balfour, retaining his leadership in the Lords. As leader, though not able to claim the sympathetic touch and close familiarity with their lordships’ idiosyncrasies possessed by some of his predecessors, he exhibited remarkable intellectual powers and oratorical capacity, and gradually established his ascendancy in the House. In the Foreign Office he found a specially congenial sphere, as he had throughout his life made a study of the external relations of the country, and had travelled extensively. But foreign affairs in the years immediately following the war were still dominated by the Prime Minister, and by the Supreme Council.
Lord Curzon’s first wife, by whom he had three daughters, died in 1906, and in 1917 he married, as his second wife, Grace Elvina, widow of Alfred Duggan, of Buenos Aires, and daughter of J. Munroe Hinds, U.S. minister in Brazil. He succeeded to the barony of Scarsdale on his father’s death in 1916, and became a K.G. in the same year. He was created a marquess on the King’s birthday in 1921.
