Impressively researched and persuasively argued, Empire Families integrates imperial history with family history in a sensitive analysis of the people author Elizabeth Buettner terms “British-Indians” (13). The book shares the concern with bridging the colonial-metropolitan divide that has characterized the most compelling imperial histories of the past decade. Writing in conversation with scholars such as Ann Stoler, Mrinalini Sinha, Antoinette Burton, Catherine Hall, and the late Mary Procida, Buettner charts the role of geography, class, ethnicity, age, and gender in shaping the identities of those Britons who lived and worked in India in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the volume's principal contributions are its innovative treatment of the “permanent impermanence” created by patterns of travel between “home” and India (1), its attention to age and gender differences within families, the analysis of stratification within the British colonial population, and an exploration of imperial communities within Britain.
Buettner addresses “the integral role of family practices in the reproduction of imperial rule and its personnel, accounting for the substantial degree of family continuity among the middle classes engaged with the raj” (2). Because India was not a settlement colony, British families established multigenerational roots in the subcontinent without permanently immigrating. Instead, cyclical patterns of travel between India and the metropole emerged as the defining feature of their experiences. While men's careers required years of residency in India, children's education, family furloughs, and parents’ retirement ideally took place in Britain. Social status depended on the frequency and intensity of the family's connections with the homeland. Such patterns of movement distinguished upper- and middle-class British-Indians from typically lower-middle-class and working-class domiciled Europeans, who were perceived as racially ambiguous, and “Anglo-Indians” of “mixed” ancestry. Buettner argues persuasively that holidays and schooling in Britain, and the financial resources making them possible, “combatted the suggestion of racial hybridity” among solidly middle-class British-Indians. At the same time, however, their transience meant that they felt fully at home in neither country, “underscor[ing] their cultural hybridity within British society” (4) and consolidating their identification with other members of the expatriate colonial community during their sojourns in the metropole.
Empire Families considers differences among members of this mobile British-Indian society as well as characteristics distinguishing them from other communities within the colony and at home. For example, parents preferred to send their children to study in England, rather than educate them in India. Failure to spend part of their youths in Britain compromised children's membership in the colonial elite. Adults worried that their sons and daughters might acquire an Anglo-Indian, “chi-chi” accent, which would both mark them as lower middle class and compromise their white racial status. Schooling in Britain was particularly important for boys, whose future career prospects in India were enhanced considerably. This was true not only for those attending elite public schools and universities prior to joining the Indian Civil Service and other high-ranking professions. Graduates of “minor” public schools and colleges catering to colonial youth in Britain were also better placed for work in less-prestigious government departments such as the Police and Public Works, as well as careers in trade. Buettner deserves particular praise for highlighting the experiences of these less-elite British-Indians who are underrepresented in archival collections and overlooked by many published works. For daughters, domesticity remained the ideal throughout the colonial period, and marriage persisted as the principal means of maintaining social status. As a consequence, these women enjoyed greater geographical mobility than their husbands and were free to travel to Hill Stations in India or take extended visits to Britain with their children, while many men were prevented by their jobs from traveling home more frequently than once every five years. Gender differences marked retirement experiences as well. For example, few families stayed on India in old age, and returning to Britain required women, but not men, to assume housework that in India would have been performed by servants. Distinctions also marked British-Indian life within particular colonial enclaves such as Bayswater, Cheltenham, and less-posh Bedford, where locals referred to imperial migrants as “squatters.”
The book is arranged topically, with an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion about Raj memories in postcolonial Britain. The first two chapters deal with childhood at home and at school in India. The remaining chapters shift to the metropole, exploring the meanings of family separations, education, furloughs, and retirement in Britain. Buettner has consulted a wide range of archival sources, most of them housed in England, and an even broader array of published material. Her command of the secondary literature is impressive, and her analysis of prescriptive literature, fiction, private papers, and retrospective material, including oral interviews, is astute. For example, she juxtaposes advice manuals with first hand accounts, balancing aspirations with actual family practices. The analysis of separation and family sacrifice is especially nuanced. Buettner argues that Rudyard Kipling's autobiographical writings have influenced the later reminiscences of others, and she points out that the meanings of family separations and a mobile, imperial way of life have likely changed as individuals have aged and as postcolonial nostalgia has become such a dominant cultural practice.
Empire Families deserves a wide audience. It illuminates the long-term importance of the Empire within metropolitan Britain, beautifully integrating the two within a single analytical field. The study also engages with a broad range of concerns shared by scholars of ethnicity, childhood, and the middle class. Advanced undergraduates and nonacademics, including Raj survivors and their descendants, would also find the book accessible and informative. Such readers would be rewarded both by the immediacy of the subject matter and the clarity of Buettner's writing, which, in contrast to that of some other postcolonial scholars, minimizes jargon without sacrificing analytical precision. Based on the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan, Empire Families is a finely crafted book likely to dominate the field for years to come.
