Charles Pawsey
British colonial administrator and diplomat (1894-1972)
Sir Charles Ridley Pawsey (14 July 1894 – 21 July 1972) was a British colonial administrator.
Biography
Pawsey was born in Surbiton, Surrey, the second son of Charles James Pawsey and Ellen Edith Pawsey. His father was Paymaster In Chief of the Royal Navy. He was educated at Berkhamsted School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with a BA. He was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment in 1914 and won the Military Cross as a second lieutenant (temporary Lieutenant) in 1916 and bar as a second lieutenant (temporary captain) the next year. He was promoted captain in 1917 and relinquished his Territorial Army commission on 30 September 1921.
Pawsey joined the Indian Civil Service in 1919. He was appointed Assistant Commissioner in Assam in 1919, becoming Director of Land Records in 1932. He was made a Deputy Commissioner in 1935 and was District Commissioner, Naga Hills during the Burma campaigns of 1942 to 1944. Pawsey's bungalow and tennis court were the place where the British Fourteenth Army finally turned the tide of the war against the Japanese during the Burma Campaign of World War II at the Battle of Kohima. The part of this battle centred on his bungalow was known as the Battle of the Tennis Court.
The public source identifies “Charles Pawsey” as british colonial administrator and diplomat (1894-1972). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Charles, Pawsey and British.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5081541. VIAF identifies the subject as 70907108. The Library of Congress control number is nb2005000203. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1972, 1914 and 1916.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Pawsey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.