SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis sets out to examine the way in which the English East India Company recruited servants, civil and military, for service in Bengal, the type of person selected, and the links they forged among themselves and with elements the growth of in the home administration. It also studies an Anglo-Indian community in Bengal. In its second part, it examines the pattern of life created for themselves by the servants of the Company in Bengal from both English and Indian elements. The introduction discusses earlier work in this field and the aim of the thesis. The second chapter reviews the changing powers of patronage exercised by the Directors and the uses to which those powers were put. The third chapter notes the formation of families connected with the Company's service, shows their interconnections, and considers the effects which their formation had upon attitudes to India. The fourth chapter is devoted to a reconsideration of the causes leading to the creation of an Anglo-Indian community in Bengal, the numbers and classes of men involved, the development of institutions in Bengal to care for the offspring of mixed unions, and the attitude displayed towards Anglo-Indians by the home government of the Company. The second part of the thesis attempts to relate the foregoing enquiries to the creation of a British social life in Bengal, and to show how elements taken from English and Indian society were fixed in varying proportions in that social life. Chapter five concentrates attention on the physical environment which the British community created around them, noting their adaptations to the Indian climate, while chapter six is concerned with the social life led within that environment. The conclusion briefly reviews the main themes of the thesis and the findings which it is hoped have emerged.