James Browne

Major-General Sir James Browne (16 September 1839 – 13 June 1896), known as "Buster Browne", was a British military engineer and administrator in British India. Early life Browne was born in France, the son of Dr Robert Browne, a physician of Falkirk, Scotland. His father had practised medicine in Calcutta in the 1820s and 1830s, and there met his wife, who was the daughter of his patient, a Dutch merchant whose own English wife had recently died. He was educated in France and Germany and at Cheltenham College. He entered the East India Company's Military College at Addiscombe in February 1856, and received a commission in the Bengal Engineers on 11 December 1857. He arrived in India in December 1859. Career He served in the expedition against the Mahsud Waziris in 1860, being mentioned in dispatches, and in 1863 in the Ambela Campaign, when he was three times mentioned. During the Ambela Campaign he was frequently employed as an interpreter, having become the first officer to pass examinations in Pashtoo.