Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy (12 September 1812 – 17 January 1878) was an English historian and jurist.

Life

The son of a land agent, he was born in Bexley,

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, and educated at

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

(where he won the

Newcastle Scholarship The Newcastle Scholarship is an annual prize awarded at Eton College in England for the highest performance in a series of special written examinations taken over the course of a week. It was instituted and first awarded in 1829 and is the colle ...

in 1831) and

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

. He was called to the Bar in 1837 and appointed assistant judge at the Westminster sessions court. In 1840, he began teaching history at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

and wrote a number of historical books including '' The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World'' (1851). Creasy was knighted in 1860 and spent the next decade and a half in Ceylon as Chief Justice of Ceylon (1860 to 1875). He then returned in poor health to England and died in London on 17 January 1878. While in Ceylon, he served as president of the

Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) is based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is one of the oldest learned societies in Sri Lanka with a history of over 160 years. It was established on 7 February 1845, paralleling the Royal Asiatic Society ...

from 1861 to 1864. In July, 1864 Creasy founded the Colombo Rowing Club.

Works

Creasy's best known contribution to literature is his '' Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World'' (1851). The reason that Creasy gives for the significance of many of the fifteen battles is that they denied Eastern peoples access to European soil. Other battles are seen as "decisive" because they shaped the development of Britain, which was the world's leading power at the time of writing. Other works are: * ''Biographies of Eminent Etonians'' (1850) (several editions) * ''Historical and Critical Account of the Several Invasions of England'' (1852); * ''History of the Ottoman Turks, from the Beginning of Their Empire to the Present Time'' (1854) * ''The Rise and Progress of the English Constitution'' (1855) (17th ed. 1886) * ''History of England from the Earliest to the Present Time'' (5 vols.), 1869–70 * ''Imperial and Colonial Institutions of the Britannic Empire, Including Indian Institutions'' (1872)archive.org
/ref> ''Old Love and the New'' (1870) was a novel. With John Sheehan and Robert Gordon Latham, Creasy took part in contributing to '' Bentley's Miscellany'', the political squibs in verse known as the ''Tipperary Papers''.

References

External links

* * * * * 1812 births 1878 deaths English military historians Academics of the University of London Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Chief justices of British Ceylon Knights Bachelor 19th-century English historians People educated at Eton College {{UK-historian-stub