Arthur Upton Fanshawe

Sir Arthur Upton Fanshawe, KCIE, CSI, CVO (1848-1931) was a British civil servant in India during the British Raj. He served primarily in the Indian Post Office.

Arthur Upton Fanshawe
Sir Arthur Upton Fanshawe in 1898
Born	(1848-12-18)18 December 1848
Died	1931, aged 82
Nationality	British

Life and career

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][8]