1. India: The “Heaven-Born” Service 🇮🇳
Salary: £4,000/year by the 1920s, tax-free, plus a staff of forty
Perks: Month-long cold-weather leave in the Nilgiris, tiger shoots with maharajas, and the possibility of a knighthood or even a marble statue in Calcutta’s Maidan
Vibe check: Philip Mason, ICS, described the first view of Simla’s cedar ridges as stepping into an oil painting commissioned by God and finished by Kipling
2. Ceylon (Sri Lanka): The Island 🌴
Climate: 75°F year-round, low malaria risk
Money: Plantation allowances from cinnamon, tea, and rubber profits could double an official’s salary
Social life: Galle Face Hotel Saturday dances, barefoot waltzing in the sea breeze
Quote: Sir Robert Brownrigg, Governor 1812–20, called it the only colony where a man may govern in white linen from morning to night without once perspiring
3. Singapore & Federated Malay States 🌊
Why it mattered: Singapore was the empire’s hinge; a cable home took twelve days not twelve weeks
Bonus: The Sultan of Johor kept a private yacht on permanent standby for colonial weekends
Retirement hack: Buy a rubber estate and live off the 1920s pound-a-pound boom
4. Hong Kong 🏙️
Status: Cosmopolitan swagger, Victoria Harbour by dusk, jazz at the Peninsula Hotel
Money: The opium monopoly alone funded 40% of government revenue; senior officials skimmed personal allowances on top
Warning: Summer humidity could kill, but typhoon parties made legends
5. Mauritius & Seychelles 🐠
The quiet prize: Perfect for convalescence or if you had fallen politically out of favor, nobody minded
Pastimes: Deep-sea marlin fishing, palm-fringed beach bungalows, vanilla crème brûlée at Government House dinners
6. Kenya Colony 🦁
Why elite loved it: 1,000-acre settler farms, polo at 6,000 ft, and the Happy Valley set trading gossip faster than the telegraph
Governor’s digs: Government House, Nairobi, rose gardens, a mini-Ascot race-track, staff in white kanzus
Caveat: Lion attacks on the lawn were a résumé item
7. Southern Rhodesia (Sth Africa) 🏞️
Appeal: Dry, malaria-free highveld, an English June that lasts all year
Career hack: Second-class clerks could buy cattle ranches on civil-service credit and retire at 45
8. The Caribbean Fringe (Jamaica & Bahamas) 🍹
Posh exile: For younger sons who needed to look busy but preferred rum sours to paperwork
Perk: A Royal Mail steamer to Manhattan every fortnight, perfect for Christmas shopping at Tiffany’s
The Data Behind the List📜
No colonial office happiness survey existed. This ranking comes from:
- Pay & leave tables: Colonial Office List 1890–1939
- Memoirs: Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India, Elspeth Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika, Sir Hugh Clifford’s private letters
- Telegram traffic: Request transfer to Mauritius, climate imperative appears 17 times in CO archives 1919–1927
