John Jacob (East India Company officer)

John Jacob
Brigadier General John Jacob, engraving by Thomas Lewis Atkinson, 1859
Born	(1812-01-11)11 January 1812 Woolavington, Somerset, England
Died	6 December 1858(1858-12-06) (aged 46) Jacobabad, modern Pakistan
Buried	Jacobabad, modern Pakistan
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	East India Company
Years of service	1828-1858
Rank	Brigadier-General
Commands held	36th Jacob's Horse
Battles/wars	First Anglo-Afghan War Anglo-Persian War

Brigadier-General John Jacob CB (11 January 1812 – 6 December 1858) was an officer of the British East India Company who served in colonial India for the major portion of his career. He is known for the cavalry regiment called 36th Jacob's Horse, and for founding the town of Jacobabad, where he planned and supervised the transformation of thousands of acres of desert into arable land, in just twenty years. The scale of progress and prosperity his works brought to the region can be very well appreciated by comparing it with the contiguous areas in today’s Baluchistan which were not under his administrative jurisdiction.

He was born at Woolavington, in the county of Somerset, England, where his father the Reverend Stephen Long Jacob was incumbent. His mother was Susanna, daughter of the Reverend James Bond of Ashford, Kent, England. He was schooled by his father until he obtained his cadetship to Addiscombe Military Seminary. A number of the young cadets there who were his contemporaries, included such famous officers as Eldred Pottinger, Robert Cornelis Napier, Henry Mortimer Durand, Vincent Eyre and others. He was commissioned into the Bombay Artillery (Bombay Army) on his 16th birthday, and subsequently sailed for India in January 1828, never to set foot in England again.

After seven years employed with his regiment, he was then employed as subordinate to the collector of Gujarat. In 1838 he was ordered to Sind with the Bombay column, to join the army of the Indus at the outbreak of the First Anglo-Afghan War.