Robert Orme (25 December 1728 – 13 January 1801) was a British historian of India. Son of a British East India Company physician and surgeon, he entered the service of the Company in Bengal in 1743. He was regarded as an authority on India. He was appointed as a Member of the Council at Fort St. George, Madras, between 1754 and 1758. In that capacity he was instrumental in the sending of a young Robert Clive as the head of a punitive expedition in 1757 to Calcutta, after the Black Hole incident of 1756. He returned to England in 1760, and was appointed as historiographer to the British East India Company in 1769. Orme wrote A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745 (1763–78). He also published Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, the Morattoes and English Concerns in Indostan from the year 1659 (1782). Life Born on Christmas Day 1728 at Anjengo, Travancore State, India, he was the second son of Alexander Orme, a physician and surgeon in the service of the East India Company. His mother's maiden name was Hill. He was sent when about two years old to the house of his aunt, Mrs. Robert Adams, in Cavendish Square, London. From about 1734 to 1741 he was educated at Harrow School under Dr James Cox, and was then placed for a year in the office of the accountant-general of the Royal African Company. In 1742 Orme went to Calcutta, where his elder brother William was a Writer in the East India Company. Orme engaged himself in the mercantile house of Jackson & Wedderburn at Calcutta, and made a voyage to Surat. On returning to Calcutta in 1743 he was himself appointed a Writer in the East India Company's service. He acquired a reputation for knowledge of Indian customs, and in 1752 was asked to state his opinion on the regulation of the police in Calcutta. In 1753 he visited England, and during his absence in 1754 was appointed by the court of directors a member of the council at Madras. Returning to India, he arrived at Madras on 14 September 1754. He took an active part in the deliberations of the council respecting the military operations in the Carnatic, 1754–8, and recommended the appointment of Clive to command the expedition against Suráj-ud-Dowlah. Orme was for some years close to Clive, but