Working-Class Raj: Colonialism and the Making of Class in British India

by Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson

Overview

Focusing on the military men, railway workers, and wives and children of the British working-class who went to India after the Rebellion of 1857, Working-Class Raj explores the experiences of these working-class men and women in their own words. Drawing on a diverse collection of previously unused letters and diaries, it allows us to hear directly from these people for the first time. Working-class Brits in India enjoyed enormous privilege, reliant on native Indian labour and living, as one put it, “like gentlemen.” But within the hierarchies of the Army and the railyard they remained working class, a potentially disruptive population that needed to be contained. Working in India and other parts of the empire, emigrating to settler colonies, often returning to Britain, all the while attempting to maintain family ties across imperial distances-the British working class in the nineteenth century was a globalised population. This book reveals how working-class men and women were not atomised individuals, but part of communities that spanned the empire and were fundamentally shaped by it. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009356589
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2023
Series:	Modern British Histories
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi.. Her work has been published in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History and has been supported by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture, and Society, and the University of Rochester's Humanities Center.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Family histories and remaking class in British India; 2. Writing family together across Imperial distances; 3. Military domesticity: creating working-class worlds in British India; 4. Servants in empire: wives, daughters, and domestic service; 5. Class and colonial knowledge: miseducation for empire; 6. Fragmented families: tracing the afterlives of working-class India.