Continued Anglo/Indian assimilation?

Back in the early days of British India in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a very strong tradition of British governors marrying into native families, and settling down to have children. IIRC, some even converted to Islam and Hinduism, though these were in the minority.

How would it be possible to keep this process going for much longer? Would this make some sort of Indian Mutiny, and later Indian independence movements less potent, with a fairly substantial Anglo-Indian mixed race population? How will Britain herself be impacted? Will the sons of British aristocrats by Indian mothers be accepted into mainstream British society due to their white ancestry, or shunned due to their Indian ancestry?

Not seen this one discussed before...
 
How would it be possible to keep this process going for much longer?

Avoiding the Mutiny of 1857 would help.

Would this make some sort of Indian Mutiny, and later Indian independence movements less potent, with a fairly substantial Anglo-Indian mixed race population?

Unless Britain/EIC is willingly to grant them autonomy/Dominion-status when the Anglo-Indians demand it, no.
 
I suppose a big part of the problem is in the early days of the EIC they were adventurers going to a mysterious far off land. Practically another planet.
By the 19th century and British India though...It was more comparable to being posted abroad today than the big mission of earlier times. Communications with home were stable, getting back was a pretty simple routine matter, etc...
So when in the 19th century racism began to emerge it wasn't so simple to say 'what happens in India stays in India' and they really had to think of their reputation.

I'd think you would have to mess with 19th century racial attitudes totally.
At the least you'd need more recognition of modern ideas of caucasianess.

With high society acceptance is never going to happen. They would rare enough even accept someone from a white common background. Even if they were richer than many of the upper classes.
Amongst general society though I don't see much of a problem racially. Though racist ideas were popular in the world at the time racism has never really been such a big deal with the British. Culturism though- a huge problem. You would really need a very westernised Indian.
 

Skokie

Banned
I think the racist theories of the 19th century could actually be used to justify greater acceptance of British/Indian coupling. I think the people who would need convincing would be the Indians. ;) The castes often stayed in their particular grouping for centuries. I don't think they were lining up to set up their daughters with English/Scottish bureaucrats.

Nonetheless, it's not impossible to imagine convincing the Brahmins that the British are part of their ("Aryan, white, noble") caste and that it's not intermarriage at all. Just refreshing the clan with distant relatives.
 
Or another British attitude. I read that in British-controlled colonial territories the mixing of European and native populations occured less frequently than in the colonial territories of other European powers.

This was due to the changing mores of the 19th C- an important factor was that by the 1820s or so it became much more common for Company officials to bring their wives out to India with them. This sort of put a freeze on the whole idea of keeping an Indian mistress openly* and certainly to the idea of intermarriage. It also had an effect on how Anglo-Indians were treated. Whereas in the late 18th C they were considered eligible for Company posts and such (and in some cases were even sent back to England for schooling) this now became unacceptable- Anglo-Indians drifted into a lower middle class, considered suitable for clerical work and the like but not for executive positions.

If this attitude shift doesn't happen, it all depends on how relations between Indians and British turn out. If the Anglo-Indians get acknowledged as essentially kshatriya-equivalents then they might well form a solid bridge between the two cultures instead of becoming a somewhat disdained subculture.

*Note that this was a common pattern in British colonies like Malaya and Borneo. The first few generations of men who went out happily shacked up with local wives but once the colony was deemed civilized enough for memsahibs to live in Victorian morals clamped down on such liaisons and the Eurasian community was relegated to a lower status.
 
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Perhaps send in more British to India, perhaps have the American Revolution end up in a different fashion and have Britain ship hundreds of thousands of Loyalists to its colonies in India. And make sure that Indian mutiny never happens.
 

Skokie

Banned
If the Anglo-Indians get acknowledged as essentially kshatriya-equivalents then they might well form a solid bridge between the two cultures instead of becoming a somewhat disdained subculture.

Right, that would make more sense.

Would make a kickass TL. Bonus points if it leads to the Hinduization of Britain. :D (Hinduized Victorians, with their eclectic/revisionist view of history, might look at St. Paul's cathedral, formerly the site of a temple to Apollo in Roman times, and convert it to a temple to Shiva or whoever might be considered Apollo's Indian equivalent).
 
*Note that this was a common pattern in British colonies like Malaya and Borneo. The first few generations of men who went out happily shacked up with local wives but once the colony was deemed civilized enough for memsahibs to live in Victorian morals clamped down on such liaisons and the Eurasian community was relegated to a lower status.

This happened to the Dutch too; you can actually tie the decline of marriage rates to native Indonesians to the opening of the Suez Canal.
 
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