Address by the Principal Native Gentlemen and other Inhabitants of Bombay

Sir Charles Forbes, Address by the Principal Native Gentlemen and Other Inhabitants of Bombay to Sir Charles Forbes, Baronet, on the Occasion of Erecting a Statue of Him at Bombay. Presented April VI, MDCCCXL, London: James Madden & Co., successors to Parbury & Co., Leadenhall Street, 1840

36 pages, with the formal address, list of subscribers and resolutions relating to the statue; title within ornamental border; contemporary dark green morocco-grained cloth, elaborately blocked in blind and gilt to an Islamic-inspired design; the covers with a broad blind-tooled border of scrolling foliage enclosing a central medallion gilt with interlaced arabesques and foliate motifs within a quatrefoil frame, all within triple gilt fillets at the edges; spine plain but finely covered in matching green cloth; new endpapers.
12.20 x 9.25 in (31 x 23.5 cm)

BOMBAY’S TRIBUTE TO A COLONIAL STATESMAN: THE 1840 ADDRESS TO SIR CHARLES FORBES

This scarce ceremonial pamphlet records the address presented by the “principal native gentlemen and other inhabitants of Bombay” to Sir Charles Forbes, 1st Baronet (1774–1849), commemorating the erection of his statue in April 1840. Forbes, a Scottish-born merchant, parliamentarian and long-time director of the East India Company, was renowned for his close ties with Bombay’s mercantile community, particularly Parsi and Hindu elites. His advocacy for commerce, education and civic reform earned him lasting gratitude from the city’s native gentry, who resolved to commission a public statue in his honour.

The pamphlet not only contains the ceremonial address but also lists the names of leading Indian signatories and patrons, making it a valuable document for the study of Bombay’s cross-cultural civic life in the early nineteenth century. Such publications embody the dialogue of loyalty and recognition between colonial administrators and indigenous elites, where acts of monumentalisation were deployed to signal civic pride, mercantile solidarity and allegiance to imperial authority.

The statue referred to in this address was executed by the sculptor Henry Weekes, R.A. (1807–1877), a pupil of Francis Chantrey, and unveiled in Bombay in 1858. It was originally placed at the Esplanade and later relocated to the precincts of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, where it still stands today. The commissioning of the statue by Bombay’s native community marked an early instance of Indian mercantile elites using the language of civic monumentalisation—traditionally reserved for governors and military leaders—to honour a commercial patron.

This pamphlet therefore survives as both a literary and material record of civic culture, bridging printed address, monumental sculpture, and the political economy of colonial Bombay. Together, it illuminates the mutual dependencies of merchant capital and imperial governance, making it an important artefact for historians of Bombay, colonial art, and Indo-British civic relations.

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