Robert Montgomery Martin
| Robert Montgomery Martin | |
|---|---|
| Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong | |
|
In office January 1844 – July 1845 |
|
| Preceded by | Charles Edward Stuart |
| Succeeded by | William Mercer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Circa 1801 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 6 September 1868 Sutton, Surrey, England |
| Occupation | Author, civil servant |
Robert Montgomery Martin (c. 1801 – 6 September 1868), commonly referred to as "Montgomery Martin", was an Anglo-Irish author and civil servant. He served as Colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1845. He was a founding member of the Statistical Society of London (1834), the Colonial Society (1837), and the East India Association (1867).
Robert Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a Protestant family, the son of John Martin and Mary Hawkins; and trained as a doctor.
About 1820 he went out to Ceylon, under the patronage of Sir Hardinge Giffard, a friend of his father. Travelling onwards to the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived in June 1823; he joined the expedition of HMS Leven and HMS Barracouta under William Fitzwilliam Owen, bound for Delagoa Bay. Martin was temporarily appointed assistant surgeon, serving also as botanist and naturalist on the south-east coast of Africa, Madagascar, and Indian Ocean islands.
On 10 November 1824 Martin left the expedition at Mombassa, and by way of Mauritius made his way back to the Cape. Later he set sail for New South Wales returning to India around the end of 1828, living there for a year, before sailing back to England in 1830.
Martin became a writer; according to his own account in 1840 he had for ten years been studying of colonial questions, and published fifty thousand volumes on India and the colonies. In 1838 he was assigned an office in Downing Street, and in the course of a year brought out his work on the Statistics of the Colonies, compiled from official sources, but without official support. In 1840 he founded and for two years edited the Colonial Magazine.
On 5 December 1837 he presented a petition to the House of Commons for an amended colonial administrative department, and in 1839, as a member of the court of the East India Company, he was active in promoting the appointment of the commission which sat in 1840 on the East Indian trade. Martin was a prominent witness.
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