Understanding European families during the after the long Nineteenth Century is very complicated. Many of the European nations, especially Britain and France, were colonial powers by this time. Families in the homeland would colonize, but they still considered themselves European subjects. This is where this article comes in. It argues that with so many families leaving Britain for India, it became socially important to know who was still British, and who had ‘gone native.” British families in Europe would ideally return to Britain, and needed to keep up their British social status. While domiciled families would not return to Europe, and so did not comfortably fit into the Euro-centric system. This would have implications in Britain itself, although this is not discussed in this paper. British peoples would be very sensitive to social markers that qualified someone as a “true Brit”
Due to the above paragraph, I would categorize this article under “Categories of Difference.” I would also categorized it under “Family relationships and family economics.” The article discusses how families would sacrifice to be able to send their children to a school in Britain. They did this because the increased social status of having their children go to Britain. For their children it was economically imperative to maintain their British markers. Without these markers British employment would be difficult, if not impossible. There would also be economic benefit for the parents. Children attending school in Britain would have been a sign that the parents were not going domiciled. Thus, it was probably a sign that they still upheld British values.
2 comments:
It seems that the jobs the empire provided were essential for the Europeans, but once they had lived abroad they didn't really fit in anywhere. The British could live in a quasi-british colony in India and mostly maintain their identity but not really mix in with Indians, and when they went back home they didn't really fit in there either. I wonder if there is a way to live abroad and not lose your culture, identity and ability to fit in?
I think that this article provides so interesting insights into how Britain viewed the importance of preserving their national heritage. By viewing the British citizens who had adopted the culture of India as of a lower social class, we can see that the while the British approved of exporting their culture to other areas, they did not support the integration of other cultures into their own. In the article, Buettner says that leaving India to receive an education in a metropolitan area allowed individuals to become part of the “better-off community” and to be marked as “European”, while those that attended school in the subcontinent were more indicative of a poorer, “racially ambiguous race.” Furthermore, even those of mixed race that looked British were discriminated against because their fingernails would have a bluish tint to them. The article also mentions how one family discharged their Anglo-Indian nay because the children she cared for began to speak using her “chi-chi” accent.
Thus, the British citizens living in India were required to not only look and act like citizens living in Great Britain, but they were also supposed to sound like them. I think that from this article we can see that societies greatly fear losing their national identity and as a result, will resist the integration of other cultures into their for fear of losing their own, original identity.
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