Epistolary Labour: A Cultural History of the Imperial Letter and British Family Life in Colonial South Asia, 1857-1921
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leicester
Department Name: Sch of Historical Studies
Abstract
During the age of Empire from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, many British families were mobile and endured constant separations, as family members moved around the world for government and military postings, travel and missionary work. Materials such as letters, gifts, drawings and photographs were fundamental for distant individuals to share news, discipline their children and maintain a sense of belonging to family at home. Family events including births, marriages and death were all marked by the exchange of these kinds of objects, and without them continued affection for one another was lost during such moments of transition and upheaval. This project will trace the communication networks within imperial families over time and also understand why geographical and cultural separation inspired such creativity. Individuals took to water-colouring, scrapbooking and writing stories in intricately written letters to document their time on the Indian subcontinent, but also to make their correspondents in Britain feel intimate with their new lives and environments.
In her 2004 text Empire Families, Elizabeth Buettner generated conversation about the positive effects of letter-writing on the 'long-distance intimacy' of families serving the Raj during late imperial rule. Kate Smith and Margot Finn have explored correspondence, but also material culture, within disconnected families in the earlier period of East India Company rule. I will build on this research to produce a new study of a selection of families and their archival collections which will span a more extensive time period than has been addressed thus far. In this way, many family archives with connections to colonial South Asia, which have not been previously examined with a view to historical research, will be introduced to the field through this project.
Extensive research will be conducted into the biographies of at least five colonial families, such as the collections of the Warnefords-cum-Nightingales of the Andaman Islands or the Starr family of the North-West Frontier. These family deposits in institutions such as The British Library and The Centre of South Asian Studies are extremely rich, often containing hundreds of intensely personal letters detailing everything from relationships to illness to violence, but they do not often receive attention. Deep analysis of the language in the letters or the artistic techniques of water-colours or drawings in these collections will help us understand how imperial families operated and the myriad ways they articulated loss and longing. But it will also be important to take a wider view of the political and social context of these sources. For instance, historians including Emily Manktelow and Esme Cleall have recently demonstrated that the colonial family was deeply politicised due to the unstable power dynamics between coloniser and colonised. This project will bring these kinds of sources to the fore of cultural historical analysis when they have too often been dismissed as mundane and insignificant.
Another intention for this project will be to explore whether Indian communities and individuals could provide emotional support to, and share affection with, these imperial families. A function of new imperial history is to appreciate the two-way exchange between metropole and colony, valuing the impact of Indian culture on British mentalities and behaviour. Generally, research into imperial families has focussed upon the evidence of British expatriates maintaining ties with British friends and kin in the metropole, without considering how they channelled their energy into creating new bonds in India - sometimes with so-called 'natives' through interracial marriages or adopted families. This project will thus aim to be one of the first in-depth investigations into the wide range of new relationships that could form in the colonies across the racial and cultural divide.
In her 2004 text Empire Families, Elizabeth Buettner generated conversation about the positive effects of letter-writing on the 'long-distance intimacy' of families serving the Raj during late imperial rule. Kate Smith and Margot Finn have explored correspondence, but also material culture, within disconnected families in the earlier period of East India Company rule. I will build on this research to produce a new study of a selection of families and their archival collections which will span a more extensive time period than has been addressed thus far. In this way, many family archives with connections to colonial South Asia, which have not been previously examined with a view to historical research, will be introduced to the field through this project.
Extensive research will be conducted into the biographies of at least five colonial families, such as the collections of the Warnefords-cum-Nightingales of the Andaman Islands or the Starr family of the North-West Frontier. These family deposits in institutions such as The British Library and The Centre of South Asian Studies are extremely rich, often containing hundreds of intensely personal letters detailing everything from relationships to illness to violence, but they do not often receive attention. Deep analysis of the language in the letters or the artistic techniques of water-colours or drawings in these collections will help us understand how imperial families operated and the myriad ways they articulated loss and longing. But it will also be important to take a wider view of the political and social context of these sources. For instance, historians including Emily Manktelow and Esme Cleall have recently demonstrated that the colonial family was deeply politicised due to the unstable power dynamics between coloniser and colonised. This project will bring these kinds of sources to the fore of cultural historical analysis when they have too often been dismissed as mundane and insignificant.
Another intention for this project will be to explore whether Indian communities and individuals could provide emotional support to, and share affection with, these imperial families. A function of new imperial history is to appreciate the two-way exchange between metropole and colony, valuing the impact of Indian culture on British mentalities and behaviour. Generally, research into imperial families has focussed upon the evidence of British expatriates maintaining ties with British friends and kin in the metropole, without considering how they channelled their energy into creating new bonds in India - sometimes with so-called 'natives' through interracial marriages or adopted families. This project will thus aim to be one of the first in-depth investigations into the wide range of new relationships that could form in the colonies across the racial and cultural divide.