British Social Life in India 1608 - 1937

Book excerpt: First published in 1938, the author describes the ways in which the British lived in India from the early adventurous period of the East India Company until the 1930s when modern means of travel and communication enabled the sahibs to keep in close touch with home and eschew oriental influences. He describes their amusements and sports, their domestic arrangements, their relations with the native population. There is a delicious period panorama of Simla in the eighties. He gives a careful historical account of the growth and fate of the Eurasian population. The approach throughout is decorative rather than academic, and leads to a highly entertaining pageant of the British in India.