The British in India’s Zoom lecture series
Uther Charlton-Stevens will speak on ‘Anglo-India and the End of Empire’ on Tuesday 16 May at 18.30 BST.
The standard image of the Raj is of an aloof and pampered British elite lording it over an oppressed and hostile Indian population. The British had not always been so aloof. The earlier, more cosmopolitan period of East India Company rule saw abundant interracial sex alongside greater cultural openness and exchange. The result was a mixed-race minority community known by the early twentieth century as Anglo-Indians.
Colonial authorities made maximum use of those they considered loyal quasi-Europeans, employing them in railways, telegraph and customs departments underpinning military defence and internal security. Independence was a profound upheaval for this in-between group, neither colonisers nor colonised. Uther Charlton-Stevens looks at the dramatic end of British rule in India through Anglo-Indian eyes: a unique perspective, neither colonial apologia nor nationalist polemic.
Dr Uther Charlton-Stevens is the author of Anglo-India and the End of Empire (2022). Of Anglo-Indian descent, he has taught at Oxford, the London School of Economics, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and Volgograd State University. He is President of the Asia Education Foundation and is based in Hong Kong.