MIXED BLOOD: DISCOVERING EURASIANS

Abstract

A personal journey through the literature by a former journalist with Anglo-Chinese grandsons. He examines Eurasian origins starting from the time of Alexander the Great and notes the way in which the relatively benign view of the early French, Dutch and British colonialists gradually hardened-an attitude reflected in, and justified by, some fairly questionable intellectual theories. Much of his focus is on India and the position of Anglo-Indians who, interestingly, proved that doubts about their loyalty were not well founded. In employment terms they would never be at the top, though equally they were not at the bottom. But the game changed as independence spread through Asia and many Anglo-Indians and other Eurasians left to lead their lives elsewhere.

Notes

London, Jonathan Cape, 1966.

p. 24.

Teresa Kowalska, Han Suyin: Voices From The Gaps. University of Minnesota, 2000. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/suyinHan.php.

Liam Fitzpatrick, ‘Han Suyin’. Time, 13 November 2006. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1554959.00.html.

Cedric Dover, Cimmerii? Or Eurasians and their Future. First published in India, 1929. Simon Wallenberg Press, 2007, pp. 13–14. This is part of Wallenberg's Anglo Indian Heritage series, four books by Anglo Indians written to offer an Anglo Indian view of their community and its history. A second book from this series is quoted later in the article. Wallenberg Press is at [email protected].

Lionel Caplan, paper presented to a conference, Transnationalism, at the University of Manchester, department of social anthropology, May 1997. http://les.man.ac.uk/sa/transnat.htm.

James Morris, Pax Britannica, the climax of an empire. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, p. 134.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_(mixed_ancestry). This entry in the encyclopaedia is a useful and helpfully referenced introduction to the general subject; the next paragraph is heavily reliant on it for facts and figures.

William Dalrymple, White Mughals, love and betrayal in eighteenth century India. London: Flamingo (paperback edition), 2003. Biographical summaries of members of the Palmer family are on p. xxvi.

Lawrence James, Raj, the making and unmaking of British India. London: Abacus (paperback edition), 1998, p. 219.

Yvonne Foley, Liverpool's Eurasians, 1880-2006. http://www.movinghere.org.uk/stories/Story581.htm?identifier=stories/Story581.

Han Suyin, The Crippled Tree. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965, pp. 198, 207.

Macropedia, Vol. 9, pp. 457, 466.

Bruce Grant, Indonesia. Part of a series of Penguin Specials. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967, p. 20.

Trevor Royle, The Last Days of the Raj. London: John Murray (paperback edition), 1997, pp. 258–259. There is, however, The United Kingdom Anglo-Indian Association, part of an international federation whose members are listed in the books of the Simon Wallenberg Press Anglo Indian Heritage series.

Anton Gill, Ruling Passions, sex, race and Empire. Accompaniment to television series produced by Roger Bolton Productions for the BBC. London: BBC Books, 1995, p. 182.

http://www.everythingeurasian.com/faq.html. This is a website set up and compiled by Mr Lu; it is a valuable source of information on Eurasians, listing books, articles, films etc by and about them.

Dover, p. 28.

Gunner Myrdal, Asian Drama, an enquiry into the poverty of nations. A study of The Twentieth Century Fund. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1968, Vol. 2, pp. 980, 982.

Herbert Alick Stark, Hostages to India, or the life story of the Anglo Indian race. Third title in The Anglo Indian Heritage Series. First published in 1926. Simon Wallenberg Press, 2007, pp. 7–9.

Ibid., pp. 15–16.

Morris, pp. 134–135.

J.D. Legge, Indonesia. A volume in the series The Modern Nations in Historical Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964, pp. 8–9.

Dalrymple, p. 317.

Han Suyin. The Crippled Tree. p. 290.

Charles Allen (ed), Plain Tales From The Raj, images of British India in the twentieth century. London: Andre Deutsch and the British Broadcasting Corporation, sixth impression, 1978, p. 83.

Royle, p. 25.

Dover, pp. 24–25.

Stark, p. 88.

Allen (ed), p. 70.

Ibid., pp. 70, 223.

Gill, p. 171.

Allen (ed), p. 136.

Ronald McKie, Malaysia in Focus. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1963, p. 20.

Dover, p. 20.

James, p. 219.

Stark, p. 43.

Dover, p. 21.

Ibid, pp. 35–36.

Stark, pp. 93–94.

Published by Michael Joseph. In 1956 the book was turned into a film with Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. The BBC had a television series during the 1980s. A radio version was re-broadcast on Radio 4 Extra during April 2012.

Caplan: http://www.ilias.nl/iiasn/30/IIASNL30_16.pdf.

Legge, p. 9.

The Crippled Tree, pp. 425–427.

Stark, p. 96.

Grant, p. 22.

Legge, p. 115.

Hugh Tinker, Ballot Box and Bayonet, people and government in emergent Asian countries. London: Oxford University Press under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1964, pp. 26–27.