Antoine Polier

Colonel Antoine-Louis Henri de Polier (1741–1795) was a Swiss adventurer, art collector, military engineer and soldier who made his fortune in India in the eighteenth century. He was the father of Count Adolphe de Polier. Life Antoine-Louis was born in Lausanne from a French Huguenot family who emigrated to Switzerland in the mid 16th century to escape the wars of religion. He was the youngest son of Jacques-Henri de Polier and his wife Jeanne-Françoise Moreau. He later learned Hindi and Persian. Antoine Polier was an engineer from Lausanne who supported the military adventures of Robert Clive and later became a rich trader and loyal supporter of the British Raj administration in Calcutta. He devoted his free moments to collecting rare manuscripts in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic. Many were sent back to France to augment the growing collection in the Royal Library. France was now the center for the study of ancient Indian languages and its 'orientalism' spread to Germany in the early 1800s as Europe began to show a keen interest in early Indian-Persian-Zoroastrian origins. He designed the Bibiyapur Kothi, a royal residence outside of Lucknow.