From a well-to-do Anglo-Irish family, Robert Montgomery Martin trained as a doctor
and worked in East Africa, Australia, and India during the 1820s. In the following
decade, he pursued his self-appointed task of studying the empire by writing tomes
on its history, taxation, and colonial statistics. After a brief unhappy stint in
Hong Kong as a civil servant, and writing books on Britain and China, Martin wrote
a defence of the policies of the Hudson's Bay Company against the charges of
Alexander Isbister concerning treatment of Aboriginals at
Red River, and those of
James Edward Fitzgerald concerning the company's designs on
Vancouver Island. In his requests in 1848 to examine documents in the Colonial Office, Martin revealed
that the company had commissioned his work, published as
The Hudson's Bay Territories and Vancouver's Island: with an exposition of the chartered
rights, conduct, and policy of the Honourable Hudson's Bay Corporation, 1848. As secretary to the
Second Duke of Wellington, Martin prepared the authoritative
Supplementary Despatches…[of the] Duke of Wellington (15 vols., 1858-72).