Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India

by Elizabeth Buettner

Overview

What was life like for the British men, women, and children who lived in late imperial India while serving the Raj? Empire Families treats the Raj as a family affair and examines how, and why, many remained linked with India over several generations.
Due to the fact that India was never meant for permanent European settlement, many families developed deep-rooted ties with India while never formally emigrating. Their lives were dominated by long periods of residence abroad punctuated by repeated travels between Britain and India: childhood overseas followed by separation from parents and education in Britain; adult returns to India through careers or marriage; furloughs, and ultimately retirement, in Britain. As a result, many Britons neither felt themselves to be rooted in India, nor felt completely at home when back in Britain. Their permanent impermanence led to the creation of distinct social realities and cultural identities.
Empire Families sets out to recreate this society by looking at a series of families, their lives in India, and their travels back to Britain. Focusing for the first time on the experiences of parents and children alike, and including the Beveridge, Butler, Orwell, and Kipling families, Elizabeth Buettner uncovers the meanings of growing up in the Raj and an itinerant imperial lifestyle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199287659
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	11/18/2005
Edition description:	New
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Making 'British-Indians': Children, Family Traditions of Indian Service, and Cycles of Migration
1. Danger and Pleasure at the Bungalow: British Children at Home in India
2. 'Not Quite Pukka': Schooling in India and the Acquisition of Racial Status
3. Separations and the Discourse of Family Sacrifice
4. Sent Home to School: British Education, Status, and Returns Overseas
5. From Somebodies to Nobodies: Returning Home to Britain and Perpetuating Overseas Connections
Conclusion: Plain Tales and Family Romances: Remembering the Raj in Post-colonial Britain
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"One of the best works of the 'new imperial history,' this book underscores the interrelations between metropole and colony while revealing distinctions of locality, class, and gender. It is essential reading for scholars interested in questions of travel, race, imperialism, and childhood."—Lydia Murdoch, American Historical Review

"Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families is a remarkable addition to recent Indian and British imperial historiography. Her vivid portrait of different empire families living in India or Britian represents what Robin Winks describes as 'the future of imperial history.' Drawn from firsthand accounts of the daily lives of children and families shuttling between India and the British metropole, she demonstrates how colonial families 'defend themselves and made sense of their lives' from the late nineteenth to India's Independence in 1947. The conceptual originality of Buettner's work and the clarity with which she builds her argument about forming and maintaining imperial lifestyles anticipates a variety of new scholarship within and outside the field of imperial studies and British or Indian history."—History of Education Quarterly

From the Publisher