DIXON, Charles George.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Sketch of Mairwara; Scarce first and only edition of this important account of the Ajmer-Merwara region of south-western Rajasthan and the extensive irrigation system established there. Abbey notes that "according to the English Catalogue, the work was privately printed, and Smith, Elder may therefore only have published it on Dixon's behalf"; contemporary booksellers' catalogues note that it was privately printed for the East India Company.The author (d. 1857) was a lieutenant-colonel in the Bengal Artillery and as superintendent of Ajmer-Merwara (part of North-Western Provinces) oversaw the creation of the irrigation system outlined in this book, which is illustrated with a series of attractive tinted lithograph views, largely the work of William Gauci, after lieutenants F. J. Burgess and C. Herbert; Gauci, of Maltese extraction, came from a family of distinguished lithographers working in London. The map is by another Bengal Artillery officer, Lieutenant D. C. Vanrenen.The region was described in the Rajputana Gazeteer (1879), with unsurprising hauteur, as "a difficult, hilly tract, inhabited by an independent and plundering race, who cared not for agriculture, and who supplied their wants at the expense of the surrounding territories". The beginnings of tighter British rule in the region began in 1819, when a force was despatched to deal with depredations by elements of local people, the Mairs or Mers; villages were razed to the ground and a series of strong police-posts

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