India & the English: 18th and 19th Centuries

Colonialism in British India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as with colonialism more generally, was highly dynamic and took on numerous different forms dependent on location and time. Colonialism was never a fixed plan; there was no ‘handbook’ for the colonial regime, rather most colonial legislation came about as reactions to specific tensions and ‘problems’ that were encountered in the new colonies (Blunt 1999: 423). Thus, the Colonial regime employed a variety of approaches in order to adapt to and deal with highly culturally specific situations. It is often obvious the ways in which British presence shaped and affected the colonies they held, but what is frequently forgotten are the ways in which the colonies in turn vastly shaped the metropole and the British people themselves in a constant back and forth pull. The process of these interactions between Britain and India acted to form the identity of the English; shape notions of race, class and gender, as well as affect the pre-existing power dynamics between the genders and classes (Blunt 1999: 432; Buettner 2000: 279)

Empire changed Britain and the British; it affected how they saw themselves. Notions of what it meant to be European, English, white came about as a result of colonial encounters. The British sense of self was built in regards to the ‘others’ whom they encountered; ideas such as what it meant to be a woman and the correct use of space, vis a vis others” (Buettner 2000: 281). Most fundamentally, empire changed the existing power dynamics and hierarchies that had already existed in England; between men and women, the upper and working classes. Instead all were now viewed as British citizens, with all the privileges that entailed and who often found new status raised above the ‘foreign other’. People who had once been marginalized at home gained new forms of empowerment in the new colonial settings (Blunt 1999: 423).

The ruling classes in India were not drawn from the British aristocracy, but were instead more from the so called ‘middling’ ground of English society; middle and upper class military officers. The soldiers who enlisted were often Scots and Irish, from the lower ends socially; the colonial regime was one of the few forms of upward social mobility at this time (Chattopadhyay 2005: 247). Additionally, there were also working class Britons who were present in India as merchants, traders and planters, however, the presence of these ‘undesirables’ was not welcome and the ruling classes feared that it would undermine the colonial project by undermining the superior character which the natives perceived in the British. Primarily, it was mostly men in India, earlier in the colonial period a majority of these men took wives from within the native population often encouraged with financial rewards (Blunt 1999: 426). However, after the mutiny of 1857 this became discouraged by colonial officials. Instead it was believed that only English women were acceptable spouses for English men and that the success of the Empire and the colonial project in India depended on the success of British women to make decent British homes and raise British children fit for ruling the empire there (Blunt 1999: 422, 426; Chattopahhyay 2005: 258-259).

Women held an unusual and frequently contested place in British India, there presence seen as both undermining the masculine colonial regime whilst also being necessary to shore up the empire (Blunt 1999: 423). English women found their traditional roles altered in their new colonial homes. While as traditionally wives were still subordinate to their husbands, these women were above Indian men and held new power over their servants. The space between the public arena and the private domestic life was more blurred in the colony; the home became a metaphor for the empire, colonial administration overflowed into the home which became a reflection of the larger social colonial relations (Blunt 1999: 427-429; Chattopadhyay 2005: 260). The processes by which these women came to hold new forms of power and status often came about as a result of tensions within the colonies (Blunt 1999: 423). Paradoxically, these processes which allowed some people to move up the social hierarchy also acted to delegate others to its lower ranks. Many people of British and European decent who were on the lower end of the socio-economic ladder and had lost touch with Britain were considered ‘domiciled’ and were often stigmatized, grouped with the Anglo-Indians of mixed decent in thus lost their status as whites and the privileges it afforded them (Buettner 2000: 280)

Race then was a precarious and unstable concept in British India, far from being a concrete set of characteristics it was based on much more; racial status, particularly white racial status involved more than simply biology, ancestry or phenotype. Within emerging notions of race, whiteness and who was considered white was still evolving, it involved class, wealth, education and most importantly frequent contact with the metropole (Blunt 1999: 432-434; Buettner 2000: 281). Poorer whites increasingly found themselves, based on their socio-economic standing, deemed of ambiguous ancestry and grouped with Eurasians of mixed backgrounds, thus denying them their status as white (Buettner  2000: 280). Whilst the elites were sure of their superiority over the Indian natives, Anglo-Indians of mixed ancestry and poor lower class British (who shared similar standing in life) created a problem; they blurred the distinctions between colonizer and colonized (Buettner 2000: 279). Since their sense of self was built in opposition to the ‘other’, so it became fundamentally important to distinguish themselves, distance themselves and fix the attributes of the ‘other’ through various laws and colonial practices (McGowen 2005: 282). Colonial legislation often seems to be in reaction to a perceived threat, the constant fear of losing power meant there was always the need to try and maintain control and prove legitimacy (Blunt 1999: 423)

Shannon Turner-Riley
ANTH 365: Colonialism and Daily Life 
Instructor: Dr Ann Stahl
Wednesday 9^th March, 2011

 References Cited

Blunt, Alison.

1999 Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886–1925. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24(4): 421-440.

Breckenridge, Carol A.

1989 The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World Fairs. Society for
Comparative Studies in Society and History 31: 195-216.  B

Buettner. Elizabeth.

2000 Problematic Spaces, Problematic Races: defining ‘Europeans’ in late colonial India. Women’s History Review 9(2) 277-292.

Chattopadhyay, Swati.

2002 ‘Goods, Chattels and Sundry Items’: Constructing 19^th-century Anglo-Indian Domestic Life. Journal of Material Culture 7(3): 243-271.

McGowan, Abigail S.

2005 ‘All that is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful’: Design and the Defense of Tradition on Colonial India, 1851-1903. Journal of Material Culture 10(3): 263-287.