The Anglo-Indian Household: Paradoxes of Hierarchy and Intimacy in Imperial Domestic Space

Abstract

This article subjects the personal narratives about the domestic spaces of expatriate Britons in India, or Anglo-Indians, to close scrutiny. The households of expatriate Britons were intended to mirror the racial distance of the formal imperial spaces, like clubs, parks and gymkhanas. But far from being an extension of public spaces that separated the colonised and the coloniser, the households embodied the multiplicity of social spaces. Interpersonal relations in these households complicated this bifurcation substantially. Space played a crucial role in the construction of a hierarchy–intimacy paradox in the households, where interracial intimacies existed in tandem with imperial hierarchies.