Know Your City: How military engineer John Blakiston shaped Bengaluru’s Cantonment

5 min readBengaluruJul 29, 2026 11:27 AM IST Most discussion of colonial Bengaluru is split between the Pete, the original walled portion of the city, and the Cantonment, the centre of British influence and everything that came with it. But while the Cantonment region eventually grew to represent many aspects of British high society — from elegant homes to clubs catering to the elite of the time — it began as a purely military establishment. As such, its construction was overseen by a military engineer, John Blakiston, who served in the East India Company military from 1802 to 1814. As it happens, Blakiston also wrote one of the earlier accounts of Bengaluru in the period immediately following the Anglo-Mysore Wars – as part of his personal memoirs, ‘Twelve Years Military Adventure in Thre