The Meaning of WhiteRace, Class, and the 'Domiciled Community' in British India 1858-1930 (original) (raw)
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Current historiography acknowledges the existence of Domiciled Europeans in colonial India, often referring to them as " poor whites " , 1 but the community has not been the focus of any specific research. Domiciled Europeans were those born in India of parents who were of British and/or European descent who had settled permanently in India. 2 They considered themselves part of the British community, who were originally known as Anglo-Indians, as opposed to the racially mixed European and Indian community who were called Eurasians. However, in order to avoid the derogatory stigma associated with Eurasians or " half castes " , those from mixed unions with fair skins began to call themselves Anglo-Indians. 3 By the turn of the century, the term " Anglo-Indian " ceased to apply to the British and those with no Indian blood and, instead, applied to the those from mixed British and Indian unions and their descendants.
Identifying Domiciled Europeans in Colonial India: Poor Whites or Privileged Community?
2008
Current historiography acknowledges the existence of Domiciled Europeans in colonial India, often referring to them as “poor whites”, [2] but the community has not been the focus of any specific research. Domiciled Europeans were those born in India of parents who were of British and/or European descent who had settled permanently in India. [3] They considered themselves part of the British community, who were originally known as Anglo-Indians, as opposed to the racially mixed European and Indian community who were called Eurasians. However, in order to avoid the derogatory stigma associated with Eurasians or “half castes”, those from mixed unions with fair skins began to call themselves Anglo-Indians. [4] By the turn of the century, the term “Anglo-Indian” ceased to apply to the British and those with no Indian blood and, instead, applied to those from mixed British and Indian unions and their descendants.
Doctoral Thesis, 2012
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.
"Pony Up!": Managing Destitution among Grooms from Australia in British India
Labour History, 2022
This article examines the history of Australian horse-grooms who travelled to India, but o en ended up destitute, at least for brief periods, before travelling on or settling in India. This case study of destitute Australian horse-grooms in British India provides a lens to explore intercolonial politics within the British Empire, particularly the complex socio-political dynamics of intercolonial labour migration during the later nineteenth century. In so doing, the di erent ways class and race intersected in Australia and India, Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History and the conflicts between colonial governments that stemmed from these di erences, are revealed. Vagrant European horse-grooms were regarded as both a problem and in need of assistance in India, while in Australia they were simply regarded as the undeserving poor.
Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, 2004
This article argues that it is not possible to generalise about the politics and racial attitudes of so-called 'unofficial' Europeans in India from observations of the community in Calcutta which, precisely because it was so large, was atypical. Elsewhere where the number of Europeans was smaller, attitudes towards Indians were more complex, and hostility towards the 'official element' of Europeans in civil and military employ with the Government of India was often greater than racial antagonism towards Indians. The Nilgiri Hills in South India, with a population of about 1,500 settlers, are a case in point. The 'White Todas' (the name is taken from a pastoral Hill-tribe) felt distinct from the 'official' Europeans who came up to the main hill-station, Ootacamund, the summer capital of the Madras Presidency, during the hot weather. To avoid complete political emasculation, the 'Todas' at times had to forge political alliances with wealthy Indian mercantile elites, with whom their interests often coincided.
Caste, as conceived in contemporary academic writings or within the policies of the state, is a new idea produced during the second half of the 19th century in the course of and because of the census operations. Colonial census officials, working with concepts of varna and jati, struggled unsuccessfully to define and classify these into castes on a single pan-India list, where each caste had to be discreet, homogeneous and enumerable. The history of caste enumeration in the Indian census illustrates how difficult it is to capture indigenous social hierarchies and identities under the term “caste”. We embark on a new caste census without having addressed many of these challenges.