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Books by Uther E Charlton-Stevens

Book Chapters by Uther E Charlton-Stevens

Modern Indian studies have become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extendi... more Modern Indian studies have become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extending over a broad canvas of crucial issues. As a result of socio-political transformations, certain concepts—such as Ahimsa, Caste, Darshan, and Race—have taken on different meanings.

Bringing together ideas, issues, and debates salient to modern Indian studies, this volume charts out the social, cultural, political, and economic processes at work in the subcontinent. Authored by internationally recognized experts, this work consists of over one hundred individual entries on concepts central to their respective fields of specialization, highlighting crucial issues and debates in a lucid and concise manner.
Each concept is accompanied by a critical analysis of its trajectory and a succinct discussion of its significance in the academic arena as well as in the public sphere. Enhancing the shared framework of understanding about the Indian subcontinent, Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies will provide the reader with insights into vital debates about the region, underscoring the compelling issues of colonialism and postcolonialism.

Book Reviews by Uther E Charlton-Stevens

Uther Charlton-Stevens presents an extensive review essay on Rochelle Almeida’s recent book, Brit... more Uther Charlton-Stevens presents an extensive review essay on Rochelle Almeida’s recent book, Britain’s Anglo-Indians (Lexington, 2017). He considers her work on first generation Anglo-Indians who migrated ‘home’ to Britain both important and heretofore understudied. Finding Almeida’s thesis persuasive, that these first generation migrants to Britain formed a hybrid sub-culture of British Anglo-Indianness in contrast to those who went to Canada or Australia, Charlton-Stevens highlights possible intersection points with other scholarship and new areas for further inquiry.

Papers by Uther E Charlton-Stevens

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eur... more Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict. The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2022

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. ... more This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. ... more This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans were two overlapping and interconnected Eurasian groups. They dev... more Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans were two overlapping and interconnected Eurasian groups. They devised remarkably similar strategies - for example: hypergamy, racial passing, migration, colonization and reformulations of identity - to contend with the British withdrawal from South Asia. In both cases British policy had been to persuade mixed race populations, whose fate had hitherto been interwoven with the imperial state, to embrace the land of their birth as their homeland and to cease to identify themselves as closely with Britain. In India the Anglo-Indian leader Frank Anthony found willing partners in the Congress leadership, with whom he could fashion a place within the new democracy for his people as a nationalist minority with a strong communal identity. However, in Burma (now Myanmar) Mr. C. H. Campagnac, faced Burmese nationalists who had a less compromising approach to minority questions, and Anglo-Burmans found their position increasingly untenable. A reluctant Britain eventually stepped in and issued passports to many Burmese Eurasians and offered them 'repatriation' through an assisted passages scheme. Although in both cases individual and collective strategies included a range of similar choices, including migration and ideas for the setting up of pan-Eurasian colonies, the contrast between the political outcomes for communal organizations in the shape of constitutional safeguards (or lack thereof) in these postcolonial states provides a fruitful framework for examining the Eurasian question across Asia more broadly during the process and aftermath of decolonization.

Racial passing is a subject that has attracted much attention in the historiography of the Americ... more Racial passing is a subject that has attracted much attention in the historiography of the Americas, as well as other settings such as South Africa. It has hitherto been overlooked in the South Asian context. Mixed race groups in South Asia have until recently also been largely neglected by historians, while attracting more attention from geographers and anthropologists.
Mixed race groups such as Anglo-Indians have been perceived as marginal, despite existing on the fault line of constructed racial difference. In many ways they embody the colonial connection and the transnational most tangibly, and through their mere presence make problematic the binary of ruler and ruled, colonizer and colonized. The British perceived not only those of mixed race but also poor whites of Indian domicile as undermining their racial prestige in the eyes of their Indian subjects, treating the two groups as essentially one class. However the socio-racial and class-based hierarchies which the British sought to erect and to police motivated widespread attempts at transgression, resulting in widespread passing in hopes of upward mobility along the spectrum from Indian Christians to mixed-race Anglo-Indians to supposedly unmixed Domiciled Europeans and even into the ranks of the British population, such as those who came out to take senior positions on the railways. This world of racial mixing and transgression was one which the British found unsettling and which later Indian Hindu nationalists, concerned with concepts of purity, also had reasons to overlook. Exploring racial passing across the boundaries erected by the Raj should yield us far greater insight into the nature of race in late colonial India and the lasting impact of the imperial presence.

Doctoral Thesis by Uther E Charlton-Stevens

Doctoral Thesis, 2012

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eur... more Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict.

The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.

Modern Indian studies have become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extendi... more Modern Indian studies have become a site for new, creative, and thought-provoking debates extending over a broad canvas of crucial issues. As a result of socio-political transformations, certain concepts—such as Ahimsa, Caste, Darshan, and Race—have taken on different meanings.

Bringing together ideas, issues, and debates salient to modern Indian studies, this volume charts out the social, cultural, political, and economic processes at work in the subcontinent. Authored by internationally recognized experts, this work consists of over one hundred individual entries on concepts central to their respective fields of specialization, highlighting crucial issues and debates in a lucid and concise manner.
Each concept is accompanied by a critical analysis of its trajectory and a succinct discussion of its significance in the academic arena as well as in the public sphere. Enhancing the shared framework of understanding about the Indian subcontinent, Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies will provide the reader with insights into vital debates about the region, underscoring the compelling issues of colonialism and postcolonialism.

Uther Charlton-Stevens presents an extensive review essay on Rochelle Almeida’s recent book, Brit... more Uther Charlton-Stevens presents an extensive review essay on Rochelle Almeida’s recent book, Britain’s Anglo-Indians (Lexington, 2017). He considers her work on first generation Anglo-Indians who migrated ‘home’ to Britain both important and heretofore understudied. Finding Almeida’s thesis persuasive, that these first generation migrants to Britain formed a hybrid sub-culture of British Anglo-Indianness in contrast to those who went to Canada or Australia, Charlton-Stevens highlights possible intersection points with other scholarship and new areas for further inquiry.

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eur... more Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict. The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2022

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. ... more This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. ... more This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans were two overlapping and interconnected Eurasian groups. They dev... more Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans were two overlapping and interconnected Eurasian groups. They devised remarkably similar strategies - for example: hypergamy, racial passing, migration, colonization and reformulations of identity - to contend with the British withdrawal from South Asia. In both cases British policy had been to persuade mixed race populations, whose fate had hitherto been interwoven with the imperial state, to embrace the land of their birth as their homeland and to cease to identify themselves as closely with Britain. In India the Anglo-Indian leader Frank Anthony found willing partners in the Congress leadership, with whom he could fashion a place within the new democracy for his people as a nationalist minority with a strong communal identity. However, in Burma (now Myanmar) Mr. C. H. Campagnac, faced Burmese nationalists who had a less compromising approach to minority questions, and Anglo-Burmans found their position increasingly untenable. A reluctant Britain eventually stepped in and issued passports to many Burmese Eurasians and offered them 'repatriation' through an assisted passages scheme. Although in both cases individual and collective strategies included a range of similar choices, including migration and ideas for the setting up of pan-Eurasian colonies, the contrast between the political outcomes for communal organizations in the shape of constitutional safeguards (or lack thereof) in these postcolonial states provides a fruitful framework for examining the Eurasian question across Asia more broadly during the process and aftermath of decolonization.

Racial passing is a subject that has attracted much attention in the historiography of the Americ... more Racial passing is a subject that has attracted much attention in the historiography of the Americas, as well as other settings such as South Africa. It has hitherto been overlooked in the South Asian context. Mixed race groups in South Asia have until recently also been largely neglected by historians, while attracting more attention from geographers and anthropologists.
Mixed race groups such as Anglo-Indians have been perceived as marginal, despite existing on the fault line of constructed racial difference. In many ways they embody the colonial connection and the transnational most tangibly, and through their mere presence make problematic the binary of ruler and ruled, colonizer and colonized. The British perceived not only those of mixed race but also poor whites of Indian domicile as undermining their racial prestige in the eyes of their Indian subjects, treating the two groups as essentially one class. However the socio-racial and class-based hierarchies which the British sought to erect and to police motivated widespread attempts at transgression, resulting in widespread passing in hopes of upward mobility along the spectrum from Indian Christians to mixed-race Anglo-Indians to supposedly unmixed Domiciled Europeans and even into the ranks of the British population, such as those who came out to take senior positions on the railways. This world of racial mixing and transgression was one which the British found unsettling and which later Indian Hindu nationalists, concerned with concepts of purity, also had reasons to overlook. Exploring racial passing across the boundaries erected by the Raj should yield us far greater insight into the nature of race in late colonial India and the lasting impact of the imperial presence.

Doctoral Thesis, 2012

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eur... more Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict.

The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.