Arthur Upton Fanshawe | |
Birth Date: | 18 December 1848 |
Death Date: | 1931, aged 82 |
Nationality: | British |
Sir Arthur Upton Fanshawe, (1848-1931) was a British civil servant in India during the British Raj. He served primarily in the Indian Post Office.
Fanshawe was born in Essex on 18 December 1848,[1] the son of Rev. John Faithfull Fanshawe and elder brother of Herbert Charles Fanshawe, and was educated at Repton School. He passed the Civil Service entrance exam in 1869.[2] He took a post with the Bengal Civil Service in 1871, and was appointed to the position of postmaster for Bombay in 1882.[3] After a stint serving in the Finance and Commerce Department, in 1889 he became the Governor of the Indian Post Office,[4] a position he held until 1906.
In 1893, Queen Victoria announced the creation of a Royal Commission on Opium to regulate the British opium trade in the Far East. Fanshawe, a supporter of the opium trade, was nominated to the Commission by the Indian Government.[3] The Commission's report found that opium use in Asia was not a major problem in Asia[5] and its conclusions effectively removed the opium question from the British public agenda for another 15 years.[6]
Fanshawe was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in the 1903 Durbar Honours.[7]