Empire Families by Elizabeth Buettner
While social and cultural historians of imperial India have enhanced our knowledge of how British men and women made their lives and careers in the Empire, the wider family practices that lay behind Britain's presence in India have received scant attention to date. 'Empire Families' brings these to the fore by focusing on child-rearing patterns and family experiences taking place on both British and Indian soil, as well as the life course these men and women took. Family conduct is significant in the class, racial, and cultural dimensions of the colonial community between the late nineteenth century and decolonization in 1947. What is more, it helps explain how, and why, so many families developed multi-generational histories in India without becoming permanent settlers. Repeated travels between metropole and colony punctuated the life course: childhood overseas followed by separation from parents and education in Britain; adult returns to India through careers or marriage; furloughs, and ultimately retirement, in Britain. Transience and formative metropolitan experiences distinguished better-off Britons not only from the colonized but also from the social inferiors from their own diverse community, racially ambiguous 'domiciled Europeans', and Anglo-Indians. Yet 'coming home' simultaneously reinforced their awareness of cultural differences and alienation from British middle class society. Nostalgia for childhood and adult years in India was common among repatriates, and indeed finds private as well as public expression in Britain well into the post-colonial era. In this first study of family life in colonial India, Buettner highlights the social significance both of growing up in the raj and of the itinerant colonial lifestyle.
One of the most interesting studies of the Empire to appear in recent years * Contemporary Review *
[an] impressive range of source material [..] very rich in detail. * David Omissi, Twentieth Century British History *
The British Raj still lives... it springs to complex life in the beautiful works of scholarship as exemplified by Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families. * Leonard Gordon, The Times Higher Education Supplement *
One very much hopes that further children of the Raj will now come forward, and that before committing their memories to posterity will consult Elizabeth Buettner's excellent book. * John Gardiner, History Today *
...an inspired study...a valuable and scholarly contribution to the social history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, adding a new dimension to Britain's imperial past. * The Social History Society *
[an] impressive range of source material [..] very rich in detail. * David Omissi, Twentieth Century British History *
The British Raj still lives... it springs to complex life in the beautiful works of scholarship as exemplified by Elizabeth Buettner's Empire Families. * Leonard Gordon, The Times Higher Education Supplement *
One very much hopes that further children of the Raj will now come forward, and that before committing their memories to posterity will consult Elizabeth Buettner's excellent book. * John Gardiner, History Today *
...an inspired study...a valuable and scholarly contribution to the social history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, adding a new dimension to Britain's imperial past. * The Social History Society *
Buettner, Elizabeth: - Elizabeth Buettner joined the University of Amsterdam as Professor of Modern History in 2014, prior to which she taught at the University of York. She received her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University and her MA and PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2012-2013, she held a Senior Research Fellowship at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany in conjunction with a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, and in 2006 she was selected to participate in the International Research Seminar on Decolonization sponsored by the National History Center, the Mellon Foundation, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Her publications include Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (2004), which was awarded the Women's History Network Book Prize and led to her being shortlisted for the Young Academic Author of the Year award by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2005. She has written articles in the Journal of Modern History, the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, History and Memory, the Scottish Historical Review (where her piece won the Royal Historical Society's David Berry Prize), Annales de Dü¾Ž–”¼mographie Historique, Ab Imperio, and Food and History. Contributions to edited collections include the chapter 'Ethnicity' in A Concise Companion to History, edited by Ulinka Rublack (2011).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780199287659 |
| ISBN 10 | 0199287651 |
| Title | Empire Families |
| Author | Elizabeth Buettner |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 2005-10-13 |
| Number of pages | 324 |
| Prizes | Winner of Joint Winner: Women's History Network Book Prize 2004. |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |