For all with an interest in the history
OF THE East India Company and the British Raj
Tuesday 16 May 2023 18.30-20.00 BST (Zoom)
Anglo-India and the End of Empire
Uther Charlton-Stevens
The standard image of the Raj is of an aloof British elite lording it over an oppressed Indian population. The British were not always so aloof. The earlier, more cosmopolitan period of East India Company rule saw abundant interracial sex alongside greater cultural openness and exchange. The result was a mixed-race minority community, known by the early twentieth century as Anglo-Indians. Independence was a profound upheaval for this in-between group, neither colonisers nor colonised.
Uther Charlton-Stevens is the author of Anglo-India and the End of Empire (Hurst Publishers 2022). Of Anglo-Indian descent, he has written extensively on Anglo-Indian identity and has taught at Oxford, LSE, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and Volgograd State University.
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South Asian printed cotton wall hanging (detail), thought to celebrate the capture of Pondicherry, capital of French India, in 1761. The victorious British are shown marching alongside their Indian allies. Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, CC0.
FORTHCOMING LECTURES
Event details
Tickets £5 per lecture or £25 for all five lectures.
Tickets may be booked online by selecting ‘BOOK NOW’, by post or by bank transfer.
If booking by post, please make your cheque payable to ‘The British in India Historical Trust’ and post it to The British in India, PO Box 148, Liphook GU30 9DE with a covering note giving your name and email address. Your ticket/s will be emailed to you. If paying by bank transfer, please email for our account details.
Tuesday 17 January 2023 18.30-20.00 GMT (Zoom)
Hooghly: The Global History of a River
Robert Ivermee
The Hooghly was for centuries a river of global significance. Focusing on those who built settlements along its banks and struggled to control its waters—the Portuguese at Hooghly, the Mughals at Murshidabad, the Danish at Serampore, the French at Chandernagore and the British at Calcutta—Robert Ivermee looks at how the Hooghly provided a conduit for trade, warfare, imperialist ambitions, technological change and new ideas.
Robert Ivermee is Lecturer in British Civilisation at the Catholic University of Paris. He is the author of Hooghly: The Global History of a River (Hurst Publishers 2020).
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Tuesday 21 February 2023 18.30-20.00 GMT (Zoom)
Heart Like a Fakir: General Sir James Abbott and the Fall of the East India Company
Chris Mason
This lecture explores the final forty years of Company rule in India as witnessed by General Sir James Abbott, soldier, Central Asian explorer and district commissioner who became King of Hazara. Drawing on Abbott’s papers, Chris Mason shows how social and sexual relationships between Britons and Indians broke down in the period leading up to 1857.
Chris Mason is Associate Professor of National Security at the US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A retired Foreign Service Officer with extensive experience of Afghanistan and Pakistan, he is the author of Heart Like a Fakir: General Sir James Abbott and the Fall of the East India Company (Rowman & Littlefield 2022).
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Tuesday 21 March 2023 18.00-20.00 GMT (Zoom)
1857: Mutiny or Uprising?
Rana Chhina, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones and Andrew Ward
Rana Chhina opens by discussing Indian viewpoints on 1857. Andrew Ward follows with a presentation on the siege of the entrenchment into which the European community fled when Kanpur’s four native regiments rebelled, the massacre at Sati Chaura Ghat, and how the surviving Europeans were hacked to death. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones concludes with a presentation on Lucknow, examining the conflict from the annexation of Awadh to the siege of the British Residency and the city’s eventual recapture by the British.
Squadron Leader (Retd) Rana Chhina MBE is Secretary and Editor at the United Services Institution of India, Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, New Delhi. He commissioned India’s Historic Battles, a new series of books to which Kanpur 1857 and Lucknow 1857 (HarperCollins Publishers India 2022) belong. Andrew Ward is the author of Kanpur 1857 and Our Bones are Scattered, the definitive account of the Kanpur Massacres. He was raised in India and lives in California. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE is the author of Lucknow 1857 and many others on the Uprisings of 1857 and Lucknow in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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Tuesday 18 April 2023 18.30-20.00 BST (Zoom)
The Decline of Empires in South Asia
Heather Campbell
The post- First World War period was pivotal in global history and geopolitics. And no more so than in South Asia, where for decades the 'Great Game' in geopolitical rivalry of the two greatest modern empires—Britain and Russia—had dominated international relations. But with the advent of Communism in Russia and growing nationalism and pan-Islamism in Afghanistan, Persia and India, Britain's imperial standing was under threat.
Heather Campbell is the author of The Decline of Empires in South Asia: How Britain and Russia lost their grip over India, Persia and Afghanistan (Pen & Sword 2022). She has taught at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London and lives in Austria.
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