Last Children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India was edited by Laurence Fleming and published by Radcliffe Press in 2004. This book is a collection of retrospective reminiscences contributed by people late in their lives, the 120+ story tellers having all spent most of their childhood and adolescence in British India, the Princely States or Burma. The most evocative stories were the personal accounts of powerful emotional experiences while growing up in India - the sights, smells and sounds of India, their homes, families, staff, schools and holidays.
The book was presented in two volumes, perfect for history bloggers who tend to read only one chapter at a time. The first volume (1919-39) was organised by geographic regions of India and grouped all of the stories of the children by those areas. The second volume (1939-50) was arranged chronologically, covering WW2 and soon after. Most of the contributors’ stories were split up and were divided into a few sections. An index would have made it possible to go back and forward, within each individual’s story.
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The book was presented in two volumes, perfect for history bloggers who tend to read only one chapter at a time. The first volume (1919-39) was organised by geographic regions of India and grouped all of the stories of the children by those areas. The second volume (1939-50) was arranged chronologically, covering WW2 and soon after. Most of the contributors’ stories were split up and were divided into a few sections. An index would have made it possible to go back and forward, within each individual’s story.
British military family arriving in India
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Last Children of the Raj book
Separation from family was a dominant theme, even for those children sent to distant schools within India’s hill stations eg Simla. Those children who went to boarding schools in the hill stations were taught together with Anglo-Indians and Europeans born in India. At least those educated in India were only separated from their families for 10 months each year. But it came at a price. The children who stayed in Indian schools would not have had access to the lessons and examinations that groomed lads towards the best career paths.
When WW2 erupted in 1939, many children who were in school in Britain were recalled to India, moving into temporarily-created schools in India. In 1940, in one convoy the P&O troopship Stratheden carried at least 200 children back to India. Dangerous to be sure, but at least the parents got their sons and daughters safely by their sides. As WW2 went on, the older sons joined up as officers in the British and Indian armies.
Many suffered emotional traumas; children of the Raj had needs and feelings of their own that were not being listened to! But according to the stories in the book, most children adapted to their predicament - this was a cost of Empire and of keeping the family in its appropriate class position. Even more, the Raj made them proud to be British; history had given them a special role in the world.
Upon retirement, Raj families had to face a reduced income and important decisions about where to live out the rest of their days. I felt very sad for those families, even though I never lived in any colonial service. Losing the one home a family had lived in for a generation ..was always tragic.
Of course the Raj was about rule, not about power sharing. So Indians could only serve the Raj as servants or friends; Indians could never be central to the events in their own nation. For as long as the Indians were not governing their own country, they could only show their true feelings within the various independence movements. So the alternative name of the book, Orphans of the Imperial Dream, probably reflected the times better.
I have not seen Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families (2004), and Margaret MacMillan’s Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives and Daughters of the British Empire in India (2007) but they seem to touch many of the same themes found in the Fleming book.
Photo credit: thedrumming.org
These children’s fathers were railway engineers and other professionals, army officers, teachers, members of the Indian Civil Service, plantation owners and businessmen. In India during the last 30 years or so of British rule, the fathers' careers were important since they were the very men who were there to develop and modernise India.
Plus the fathers’ careers meant the children grew up in a society even more stratified than Britain by income and occupation. Inevitably these children grew up with the nice houses, good schools and plenty of household staff that were the distinctive features of life in British India. A comfortable life-style, but one unprotected from epidemics, vicious heat, mosquitoes, snakes and wild animals. [I was not coddled as a child, but one sight of a scorpion in my bedroom would have got me into a ship home, the NEXT morning].
Unless forbidden to do so by their English-speaking nannies, many of the contributors in this book had spoken Indian languages as children. Since picking up Indian languages from doting servants, some children spoke English almost as a second language.
These children, born in 1914-40, provided a social history during the last decades of the British Raj that occurred during a hectic era: world war, self-rule movements and the violent birth of independent India and Pakistan. Nonetheless these privileged children of the Raj remembered an exciting and exotic childhood. Still we have to ask: did they fully acknowledge being a part of expatriate life in both countries – an expat in India and in the UK? Where was “home”?
These children’s fathers were railway engineers and other professionals, army officers, teachers, members of the Indian Civil Service, plantation owners and businessmen. In India during the last 30 years or so of British rule, the fathers' careers were important since they were the very men who were there to develop and modernise India.
Plus the fathers’ careers meant the children grew up in a society even more stratified than Britain by income and occupation. Inevitably these children grew up with the nice houses, good schools and plenty of household staff that were the distinctive features of life in British India. A comfortable life-style, but one unprotected from epidemics, vicious heat, mosquitoes, snakes and wild animals. [I was not coddled as a child, but one sight of a scorpion in my bedroom would have got me into a ship home, the NEXT morning].
Unless forbidden to do so by their English-speaking nannies, many of the contributors in this book had spoken Indian languages as children. Since picking up Indian languages from doting servants, some children spoke English almost as a second language.
These children, born in 1914-40, provided a social history during the last decades of the British Raj that occurred during a hectic era: world war, self-rule movements and the violent birth of independent India and Pakistan. Nonetheless these privileged children of the Raj remembered an exciting and exotic childhood. Still we have to ask: did they fully acknowledge being a part of expatriate life in both countries – an expat in India and in the UK? Where was “home”?
One of the most disruptive experiences described was that of being sent home on long, lonely trips to Britain at an early age… for a Proper Education. Perhaps we can understand why it was so important for most British families in India to send their young children, especially boys, home to Britain, given that formal education was critical for their futures. But it broke my heart reading how they had to be sent home alone, or occasionally with their mothers. They boarded at school during term, and with grandmothers or aunts during school holidays. They might have seen their mothers once a year and their fathers even less frequently.
Separation from family was a dominant theme, even for those children sent to distant schools within India’s hill stations eg Simla. Those children who went to boarding schools in the hill stations were taught together with Anglo-Indians and Europeans born in India. At least those educated in India were only separated from their families for 10 months each year. But it came at a price. The children who stayed in Indian schools would not have had access to the lessons and examinations that groomed lads towards the best career paths.
When WW2 erupted in 1939, many children who were in school in Britain were recalled to India, moving into temporarily-created schools in India. In 1940, in one convoy the P&O troopship Stratheden carried at least 200 children back to India. Dangerous to be sure, but at least the parents got their sons and daughters safely by their sides. As WW2 went on, the older sons joined up as officers in the British and Indian armies.
Many suffered emotional traumas; children of the Raj had needs and feelings of their own that were not being listened to! But according to the stories in the book, most children adapted to their predicament - this was a cost of Empire and of keeping the family in its appropriate class position. Even more, the Raj made them proud to be British; history had given them a special role in the world.
Upon retirement, Raj families had to face a reduced income and important decisions about where to live out the rest of their days. I felt very sad for those families, even though I never lived in any colonial service. Losing the one home a family had lived in for a generation ..was always tragic.
Of course the Raj was about rule, not about power sharing. So Indians could only serve the Raj as servants or friends; Indians could never be central to the events in their own nation. For as long as the Indians were not governing their own country, they could only show their true feelings within the various independence movements. So the alternative name of the book, Orphans of the Imperial Dream, probably reflected the times better.
I have not seen Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families (2004), and Margaret MacMillan’s Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives and Daughters of the British Empire in India (2007) but they seem to touch many of the same themes found in the Fleming book.