A History of the Sikhs, from the Origin of the Nation to the Battles of the Sutlej.: Second Edition. With the Author's Last Corrections and Additions.

London: John Murray, , 1853. Winning Sikhism an assured place in the history of mankind First published 1849, this second edition incorporates the author's final revisions. A work described by Khurana as the "high-water mark" of British historiography on the Sikhs, which "won for Sikhism an assured place in the history of mankind" (pp. 135-6). Although a critical and popular success, the book precipitated the premature end to a highly successful military career. Cunningham (1812-1851) passed through Addiscombe and Chatham attracting high praise at both establishments, passing out of the former with the prize for mathematics, the sword for good conduct, and the first nominations for the Bengal Engineers. On reaching India he was appointed to the staff of General Macleod, then chief engineer in the Bengal presidency. In 1837 he became assistant to Sir Claud Wade, political agent on the Sikh frontier, a position he continued to hold under Wade's successors, G. Russell Clark and Colonel Richmond. During his time in the area he developed a profound knowledge of the manners and customs of the Sikh people which placed him in great demand at the time of the outbreak of the First Sikh War. He served on the staff of Napier, Gough and finally Sir Harry Smith, seeing action at Buddawal and Aliwal. When Smith joined the main army he was attached to the staff of Sir Henry Hardinge, to whom he acted as an additional aide-de-camp at the battle of Sobraon. For his services he was promoted to captain by brevet in December 1845, and at the conclusion of the war appointed by Hardinge to the lucrative position of political agent to Bhopal. In the comparative leisure afforded by this posting he had time to write the present history which assured his name as a historian, but led to his fall from grace with his superiors. His assertion that Lal Singh and Tej Singh had been bribed during the First Sikh War was challenged by Hardinge and Sir Henry Lawrence, and in 1850 Cunningham was removed from his agency and returned to regimental duty. Within a year he had died at Umballa aged only 39. The present edition contains an introductory advertisement by his brother Peter, who saw the edition through the press, which contains what could be seen as a fitting epitaph for the author; "The author fell victim to the truth related in this book. He wrote History in advance of his time, and suffered for it; but posterity will, I feel assured, do justice to his memory". Provenance: Harrow prize bookplate to the front pastedown made out to George Edward Briscoe Eyre in July 1859. Eyre (1840-1922), Harrow and Balliol, Oxford, continued in the print business of Eyre and Spottiswoode, co-founded by his grandfather Charles in 1766, and inherited by his father, also George. He was a magistrate for Hampshire and Wiltshire and the First Elective Verderer of the New Forest, during the First World War actively resisting the accession of land by the Army for short-term projects. In 1913-14 he edited A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, from 1640-1708 A.D for the Roxburghe Club. Octavo (214 x 133 mm). Contemporary strong reddish brown diced calf, gilt lettered direct on spine, low flat bands with triple dashed roll, repeated lunette roll in the top and bottom compartments, the other three with crossed arrow centre tool, stylised foliate corner-pieces, similar arrow tools at the corners of the boards within a double-fillet panel with dog rose tools at the corners, geometric edge-roll, turn-ins with scrolled foliate roll in blind, French curl marbled endpapers, edges gilt, dark reddish brown page-marker. Folding map frontispiece, coloured in outline, similar map showing political divisions of the Punjab, folding genealogical table. Very light shelf-wear, light soiling on the boards, the spine just a touch sunned, the map with short split on a fold, neatly repaired with archival tissue verso,and lightly browned with slightly offset to the title page, but otherwise an excellent copy that both opens and present well. Gianeshwar Khurana, British Historiography on the Sikh Power in the Punjab, 1985, in particular chapter 9, "The Culmination".