Sir Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard

Girouard, Sir Édouard Percy Cranwill

Sir Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard, railway builder, governor (b at Montréal 26 Jan 1867; d at London, Eng 26 Sept 1932). A graduate of the Royal Military College, Kingston (1886), he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1888 and was in charge of the Sudan railways 1896-98. His construction of a line bypassing the Nile cataracts in the Sudan made possible Kitchener's victory at Omdurman. He then ran railways in S Africa, 1899-1904. Girouard served as high commissioner and then governor of northern Nigeria, 1907-09, and governor of the British East Africa Protectorate (Kenya), 1909-12. In Nigeria, the effects of his policies created a major impediment to Nigerian unity. In Kenya, his views on land alienation conflicted with those of the British government, and he resigned under a cloud. Except for a brief period of munitions procurement and railway organization in Belgium during the war, he was a director of the armaments firm Armstrong Whitworth 1913-32.