Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Irvine, William
IRVINE, WILLIAM (1840–1911), Mogul historian, born at Aberdeen on 4 July 1840, was only son of William Irvine, an Aberdeen advocate, by his wife Margaret Garden. On the death of his father when he was a child, his mother, of Aberdeen family but a Londoner by birth, brought him to London. He owed most of his education to his mother and grandmother. Leaving a private school before he was fifteen, he served a short apprenticeship to business, and after spending some years as a clerk in the admiralty passed for the Indian Civil Service. He landed in Calcutta late in 1863, and being posted to the North-Western Provinces (now the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh) served there as a magistrate and collector until he retired in 1889. In India Irvine was chiefly known as an authority on the provincial laws of rent and revenue. In 1868, while yet an assistant, he published his 'Rent Digest,' a digest of the rent law of the province, and he was employed for eight years in revising the rent and revenue settlement records of the Ghazipur district, an arduous undertaking. He left India in 1889 with the reputation of an excellent officer, hard working, judicious, and accurate.
While in India Irvine devoted his leisure to Indian history. In 1879 he produced a history of the Afghan Nawabs of Fatehgarh or Farukhabad (Journ. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, 1879). On retiring to England he began a history of the decline of the Mogul empire from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 to the capture of Delhi by Lord Lake in 1803. The work was based on a wide study of the authorities, chiefly native, and was planned on a very large scale. Various chapters appeared in the 'Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal' between 1896 and 1908, and Irvine accumulated materials down to 1761; but the history itself was not carried later than the accession of Mahomed Shah in 1719. Numerous papers on cognate subjects appeared in the 'Journals' of the Royal Asiatic Society of London and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the 'Asiatic Quarterly Review,' and the 'Indian Antiquary'; and in 1903 Irvine published a large work on the Mogul army, entitled 'The Army of the Indian Moghuls: its organisation and administration.' He also contributed in 1908 the chapter on Mogul history to the new 'Gazetteer of India.' His last publication of importance was a life of Aurangzeb in the 'Indian Antiquary' for 1911; a résumé appeared the same year in the 'Encyclopédie d'Islam.'
Meanwhile in 1893 Irvine's attention was drawn to the Venetian traveller, Niccolao Manucci, who spent fifty years in India, and was, after Bernier, the chief contemporary European authority for the history of India during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707). Manucci's work was only known in a garbled French version. After a search of eight years Irvine discovered not only a Berlin codex which gives a part of the text but a Venice MS. which supplied the whole. Manucci had dictated his work in Latin, French, Itahan, or Portuguese according as the nationality or knowledge of his chance amanuenses might require. Irvine not only translated but edited it with such a fulness of knowledge and illustration that on its publication by the government of India in 1907 it at once took rank as a classic. Irvine's fame rests mainly on this work.
Irvine was unrivalled in his intimate knowledge of the whole course of Mogul history, and was much consulted by other scholars. In 1908 the Asiatic Society of Bengal made him an honorary member. He was a vice-president and member of the council of the Royal Asiatic Society; he served also on the council of the Central Asian and various other learned societies. He died at his house in Castelnau, Barnes, after a long illness on 3 Nov. 1911, and is buried in the Old Barnes cemetery. In 1872 he married Teresa Anne, youngest daughter of Major Evans, and grandniece of Sir George de Lacy Evans [q. v.]. She died in 1901, and is buried in the same grave with her husband. Irvine left one son, Henry, an electrical engineer in the West Indies, and a daughter.
[Buckland, Dict. of Indian Biog.; The Times, 7 Nov. 1911; Calcutta Englishman, and Journal Roy. Asiat. Soc, Jan. 1912, with list of Irvine's minor writings; personal knowledge.]