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Henry Mayers Hyndman
‐
Prominent socialist and writer
Place of birth
Place of death
London
About
H. M. Hyndman was a prominent English socialist. He began his career working as a journalist, including on the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1881, using the London radical clubs as a model, Hyndman established the Democratic Federation, which was renamed the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1884. Hyndman was also the editor of Justice. He was a vocal supporter of Indian nationalism and independence from the British.
Hyndman became friends with Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1870s, after reading Naoroji’s Poverty of India. They collaborated in anti-famine agitation during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year. Naoroji helped Hyndman in his own work on Indian famine. Despite their friendship, Naoroji often found Hyndman’s politics too radical and extreme, preferring a more moderate nationalist path.
Shyamaji Krishnavarma, a nationalist in favour of more radical methods, was acquainted with Hyndman. He invited Hyndman to open India House in Highgate in July 1905. Through the India House organization, Hyndman met individuals such as Madame Cama and B. G. Tilak. After the murder of Curzon Wyllie by Madan Lal Dhingra, Hyndman wrote in Justice that he had long warned that terrorism would result from the British policy of ‘despotism’ in India.
Opening of India House, Highgate, July 1905 (see Indian Sociologist 1.8, August 1905)
Madame Cama, Shyamaji Krishnavarma, George Lansbury, Dadabhai Naoroji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Indian Policy and English Justice (London: Yates & Alexander, 1874)
The Bankruptcy of India (London: S. Sonnenschein, Lowerey & Company, 1886)
The Records of an Adventurous Life (New York: Macmillan Company, 1911)
Further Reminiscences (London: Macmillan & Co., 1912)
The Awakening of Asia (London: Cassell & Company, 1919)
Boehmer, Elleke, Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Masani, R. P., Dadabhai Naoroji: The Grand Old Man of India (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1939)
Schneer, Jonathan, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)
Tsuzuki, Chushichi and Pelling, Henry, H. M. Hyndman and British Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961)
Tsuzuki, Chushichi, ‘Hyndman, Henry Mayers (1842–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2006) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34088]
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
Correspondence, Manuscript Collection, British Library, St Pancras
‘Seditious pamphlets and publications of H M Hyndman’, L/PJ/6/817, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Correspondence, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London
Correspondence, Maxse Papers, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester
Image credit
Henry Mayers Hyndman by George Charles Beresford, dry-plate glass negative, 1919, NPG x6522
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
