Elihu Yale (1649- 1721) was a President of the East
India Company settlement in Fort St. George, at Madras and a benefactor
of the Collegiate School in the Colony of Connecticut, which in 1718 was
renamed Yale College in his honor
For 20 years Yale served the East
India Company. In 1684
he became the first president of Fort St. George, the company's post at Madras
(now Chennai), India. Yale was instrumental in the development of the
Government General Hospital, housed at Fort St. George
Yale
amassed a fortune while working for the company, largely
through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India
Company's directive. By 1692, Elihu Yale's repeated flouting of East India
Company regulations and growing
embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the
post of governor
As president of Fort St. George, Yale purchased
territory for private purposes with East India Company funds, including a fort
at Tevnapatam (now Cuddalore). Yale imposed high taxes for the maintenance of
the colonial garrison and town, resulting in an unpopular regime and several
revolts by Indians, brutally quelled by garrison soldiers. Yale was also
notorious for arresting and trying Indians on his own private authority, including
the hanging of a stable boy who had absconded with a Company horse.
Charges
of corruption were brought against Elihu Yale in the
last years of his Presidency. He was eventually removed in 1692 and replaced
with Nathaniel Higginson as the President of Madras.
Yale died on 8 July 1721 in London, England,
but was buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St. Giles in Wrexham,
Wales
In
1718, Cotton Mather contacted Yale and asked for his help.
Mather represented a small institution of learning that had been founded in
1701 in New Haven, Connecticut, as the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which
needed money for a new building. Yale sent Mather 417 books, a portrait of King
George I, and nine bales of goods. These last were sold by the school for
£800pound sterling, a substantial sum in the early 18th century. In
gratitude, officials named the new building Yale; eventually the entire
institution became Yale College.
On 5 April 1999, Yale University recognized the
350th anniversary of Yale's birthday. An
article that year in American Heritage
magazine rated Elihu Yale the "most
overrated philanthropist" in American history, arguing that the college
that became Yale University was
successful largely because of the generosity of a man named Jeremiah Dummer,
but that the trustees of the school did not want it known by the name
"Dummer College"
