The British statesman James Andrew Broun Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie (1812-1860), served as governor general of India from 1848 to 1856. He is noted for his vigorous, often ruthless, expansion and westernization of British India.

James Ramsay, the third and youngest son of the 9th Earl of Dalhousie, was born in the ancestral Dalhousie castle in Midlothian, Scotland, on April 22, 1812. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1833 and married in 1836. He was elected to Parliament in 1837. As his brothers had both died, he succeeded to the title upon his father's death in 1838 and entered the House of Lords. Dalhousie served as vice president of the Board of Trade in 1843 and as president in 1845 and early 1846. The following year he accepted the governor generalship of India.

Within 3 months of Dalhousie's assuming office in January 1848, the Punjab was aflame with renewed fighting between the British and the Sikhs. This hard-fought second...