Sydney Haldane Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier

Olivier, Sydney Haldane Olivier, 1st Baron, 1859-1943, British colonial administrator. Olivier was one of the first members of the Fabian Society, contributing to the famous Fabian Essays (1889). He was colonial secretary in Jamaica from 1899 to 1904 and later governor of the island (1907-13). In 1924 he was secretary of state for India during Ramsay MacDonald's brief Labour government and was raised to the peerage. A number of his works deal with colonial questions, among them White Capital and Coloured Labour (1906, rev. ed. 1927) and The Anatomy of African Misery (1927).