Fishing Fleet Husband Hunting In The Raj

by Anne de Courcy

From the late 19th century, when the Raj was at its height, many of Britain's best and brightest young men went out to India to work. Countless young women, suffering at the lack of eligible men, followed in their wake. The women were known as 'the fishing fleet', and this text is their story.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, India, Biography, Historical, Travel, 19th Century

335 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Born in 1927, Anne de Courcy is a well-known writer, journalist and book reviewer. In the 1970s she was Woman’s Editor on the London Evening News until its demise in 1980, when she joined the Evening Standard as a columnist and feature-writer. In 1982 she joined the Daily Mail as a feature writer, with a special interest in historical subjects, leaving in 2003 to concentrate on books, on which she has talked widely both here and in the United States.

A critically-acclaimed and best-selling author, she believes that as well as telling the story of its subject’s life, a biography should depict the social history of the period, since so much of action and behaviour is governed not simply by obvious financial, social and physical conditions but also by underlying, often unspoken, contemporary attitudes, assumptions, standards and moral codes.

Anne is on the committee of the Biographers’ Club; and a past judge of their annual Prize. Her recent biographies, all of which have been serialised, include THE VICEROY’S DAUGHTERS, DIANA MOSLEY and DEBS AT WAR and SNOWDON; THE BIOGRAPHY, written with the agreement and co-operation of the Earl of Snowdon. Based on Anne’s book, a Channel 4 documentary “Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage”, was broadcast.

Anne was a judge for the recent Biography section of the Costa Award in 2013, and is also one of the judges on the final selection panel judging the best of all the genres.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is so boring I don't know how much more of it I can take. It started off quite well talking about the girls sent out to India to find husbands or visit friends or family. The descriptions of the voyages were quite interesting. The book jumps all over the place back and forth in time which again was interesting when it was about sailing as the ships changed from bare cabins that had to be furnished by the passengers to steam/sail and the shortened route through the Suez Canal.

The Suez Canal was built by a French company under the aegis of Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt (until removed by the British). The British were opposed to the Canal, seeing their own trade routes and empire interests threatened by this French initiative. They officially condemned the project as one of slavery and encouraged rebellion among the workers. They conveniently forgot that 80,000 Egyptian forced-labourers had died in building the British railroad through Egypt just a few years earlier.

And the entire world seems to have condemned slavery by Europeans in the Americas but totally forgotten that the Arabs were not only among the main dealers of slaves in Africa but used slave labour themselves. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania only finally criminalised slavery in 2007 and up to 20% of its population are traditional slaves, that is property. (Modern slavery is defined as the possession or control of a person with the intention of depriving them of all rights and exploiting them for labour. Here is a list of countries with the most slaves today. I have read two books of traditional slavery in Sudan, Slave: My True Story (she was later enslaved in London, not a mile away from my flat) and Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America.

Back to the book. There are a great deal of stories of the girls who went out. What really has me bored is the very long passages, chapters-full, that the author quotes word for word from diaries of girls whose fathers are the de facto rulers of India or of high enough social standing to be invited to these aristocratic parties. There are long descriptions of clothes they wore, their jewellery, their friends' clothes and jewellery, and what their parents wore and their jewellery, not to mention the men resplendent in dress uniforms. Occasionally someone does something like pick flowers or get new dresses or their is a description of a train ride in ultra-luxury.

I think the author was impressed herself by the lives of these very rich and entitled (and after a title) girls. It is as boring as reading anyone's diary when they consist not of reflection or discussion but who wore what and where they went and how many boys there were.

The book isn't badly written but nothing happens. Turn anywhere and there are more descriptions of clothes and parties and young men. The author does write of the apartheid imposed by the British after they took over India from the East India Company, but other than the Indians were servants or rajahs and both equally unacceptable as husbands for English girls. I would have liked a bit more meat on the bones of the social life of girls in the time of the Raj but it's not that kind of book and I can't keep my attention on it. So I've read nearly half of it and that's enough. I used to have this compulsion to finish books, but not now.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a stunning read. It takes us back to the days of the Raj in India, and the 'fishing feet' of young women leaving Britain to go husband-hunting in the extraordinary world of 19th century white and male-dominated India.

Society there was a strange mix of toughness, stoicism, glamour, romance, boredom, rigid protocols and snobbery. There were many who had an intense loyalty to the country, especially those born there. India definitely got under the skin of many of the British who lived there - in spite of the harshness found in many of their situations. There were a lot of people of the Raj who fell in love with India.

There were some huge issues though - people who felt they had to send their children to school in England when aged about five. A terrible wrench, especially for those unable to afford trips to see their children during their schooling. British society in India was also massively obsessed with hunting and sport. (Partly perhaps because men in the army were not allowed to marry until they were thirty.) It was an intensely male society. Heat was another issue. Although many people went and spent the summer in hills stations, it could not always be avoided.
Herewith an extract that shows some of the hardships that people had to put up with in summer

"What struck new arrivals first was the heat, sometimes like a scorching blast from a hot oven, sometimes sticky and damp...

As well as stifling in flannel underwear, women invariably wore corsets, and it wasn't until the 1920s that cotton dresses and light underwear made their appearance.

In Delhi Week, the cold-weather season ended. On 12 March the men changed into white and the hot weather officially began, with the temperature gradually increasing up to a maximum of around 45 degrees C (or 130 degrees F) in the shade. "We are beginning to feel the real heat" wrote Lady Canning in 1856.

"Any attempt to go out, even in a carriage, makes one grasp, and dissolve immediately, and an open window or door lets in a flood of hot air, as though one were passing the mouth of a foundry," wrote Lord Canning.

Other seasonal hazards were snakes and monkeys. Lady Canning wrote that in her bedroom were lizards, running about the floor, and bats.

"In Pakistan (then the Punjab), in May, June and July is a hell of a heat. In August the monsoon arrives, bringing relief from the high temperatures - but also so much humidity that the human body has to exist in a state of sweat."

The summer was the season when frogs croaked, cicadas sawed away relentlessly and jackals howled... It was the time of year when rabies was most prevalent. For human too the hot weather was intensely debilitating: boils, eczema, infections ad fevers were common. Prickly heat was almost impossible to avoid and although not health-destroying could be appalling unpleasant and painful. "Sitting on thorns would be agreeable by comparison", wrote one lieutenant, "the infliction in that case being local; now, not a square inch of your body but is tingling and smarting with shooting pains."

As the temperature rose, so insect life increased. Lady Canning remarked that her dinner table in Calcutta "was covered in creatures as thickly as a drawer of them in a museum". Sometimes floors seemed alive with beetles; Lady Canning described huge cockroaches ('as big as mice') in her bedroom, 'some move away, side by side, like pairs of coach horses. There were flying ants and bluebottles, green flies and moths. Stinkbugs, the tiny black shield bugs with a horrible, penetrating odour, arrived in their thousands. One earwig-like insect, the blister-fly, could settle on people without their being aware of it, leaving a large and painful blister on the skin, if crushed while removing it.

Slippers and shoes had to be shaken before being put on in case a scorpion had climbed inside. There were hornets that could give a powerful and painful sting. "We had to watch out when playing tennis, as poisonous black bees hung in great clusters from the porch" wrote Betsy Anderson.

In the hot, damp weather, with its extreme humidity, mould destroyed books and shoes, or rotted dresses so that they hung in strips. White ants gnawed at the foundations of houses. These, properly called termites, could eat through a whole trunkful of clothes in a single night, the only wood that can withstand their ravages is teak, one reason for the prevalence of teak furniture in the Raj.

Sleeping outside, under a mosquito net, was the only alleviation. People tried everything, from dining with a block of ice under the table (harvested in the cold weather and buried in pits until needed), to damping pillows, sheets and the screens across the windows.

Then the monsoons arrived. Monica Campbell-Martin wrote "The days grow hotter. But the clouds pile up in thunderous beauty. You breathe air that is a dank and heavy substance, almost tangible. Around you everything is still. Everything living thing seems waiting. Each night after each burning day seems waiting too, in deathly quiet.

"Suddenly, with a crash, the sky disintegrates in a vast avalanche of water. It rains for about three and a half months with intervals of hours, or of a few days..."

Then there were problems with malaria and other diseases, with people sometimes living hundreds of miles away from a doctor or dentist. Living arrangements were often very crude, and the boredom for married women could be quite overwhelming. They were amazingly tough though, and seemed to make the transition from London social butterflies to pioneer wives with little complaint.

There is very little in this book about Indian people - because that isn't the focus of the book, but there are one or two snips that hint at some of the awful results of colonialism.

During the British Raj, India experienced some of the worst famines ever recorded, including the Great Famine of 1876-8, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died and the Indian famine of 1899-1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people perished. The main reason was the British insistence of Indian farmers growing jute or cotton - to facilitate trade - rather than food crops such as rice and wheat. In times of shortage, this policy was catastrophic.

Anne de Courcy writes well, and I found this book fascinating and entertaining. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Raj.

I don't know how to do the *updates* thing on Goodreads, so will end by doing an update here. Real life has become very busy. I therefore won't be using Goodreads for a while. My good wishes to all of you, and I shall see you when things get quieter.

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the time of the British Raj, the Fishing Fleet consisted of the young eligible women of Britain undertaking long journeys by ship to India to attempt to hook a husband. In Britain itself, there were such shortages of 'quality' husband material that for many this was their best way to progress in life, as Britain's best and brightest were in British India (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar)) - in either the ICS (India Civil Service), in the army, in trade or commerce, or other roles.

This book covers just about everything you could ever want to know about this topic over this period (with plenty of examples). With a clear and concise introduction, which summaries the entire book well, and then chapters on each aspect of the topic, there really is nothing missing!

Chapter titles deliver what is promised, with titles such as: The Voyage Out, The Women Who Went out, The Men They Met, Arrivals, The Climate, The Social Whirl, etc being self explanatory. Some of the others which were perhaps the most interesting to me:

Maharajahs (subtitled "It would be a pleasure to be in his harem, I thought" - which shared the diary thoughts of some of the young women who were to accompany others to parties and festivities at a Maharajahs palace - the opulence of the reception rooms, the extravagances of the maharajah's jewels, the elaborate hunting process etc.

Viceregal Entertainments (subtitled "There are so many Ladies") - a little like the Maharajah chapter - the glory and extravagances the Viceroy enjoyed - and by extension his daughters.

The Hills which discusses the hill stations, where the government officials took refuge from the heat of the plains over summer (subtitled "Where every jack has someone else's Jill) alluding to the loosening of morals and what had been got up to when a man was down country working and his wife was at the hill station.

Up Country (subtitled: "Just lift up your skirt's and you'll be all right" which despite how it could sound, was about those wives who accompanied their husbands to the much more remote postings - the forestry wardens, the plantation managers, or near the borders with Afghanistan.

Drawing heavily from the diaries, letters and memoirs of the men and women of the time (often unpublished, of course) the whole book is formed around multiple examples of the thoughts and actions of the time. Each chapter may contain 20 of more quotations or narrative explanations of the situation of one person. Probably because each chapter gives so many examples, it perhaps becomes repetitive at times. For me the excessive descriptions of what the girls were wearing every time they featured became tiresome quickly (although I can understand for other readers this may be the highlight). I can't say I didn't enjoy the odd namedrop which I recognised (mostly authors), and the quotations from books i have read (Kipling mostly).

But perhaps best of all, it is such a quotable book - some really good ones, of which I found only a few for this review:

For the fishing fleet, and ICS man was considered the creme de la creme - once he was eligible. 'Mamas angled for us for their daughters,' wrote John Beames. 'The civil service was, in those days [1858] an aristocracy in India, and we were the jeunesse doree thereof.' Or as Jim Acheson put it in 1913, 'The young ICS men were generally supposed to be the chief quarry - the turbot and halibut of the matrimonial nets.'

It was not a particularly beautiful town: Sir Edward Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, once said that if Simla was built by monkeys, one would have said: "What clever monkeys! They must be shot in case they do it again."

The summer was the season when frogs croaked, cicadas sawed away relentlessly and jackals howled... It was the time of year when rabies was most prevalent. For human too the hot weather was intensely debilitating: boils, eczema, infections ad fevers were common. Prickly heat was almost impossible to avoid and although not health-destroying could be appalling unpleasant and painful. "Sitting on thorns would be agreeable by comparison", wrote one lieutenant, "the infliction in that case being local; now, not a square inch of your body but is tingling and smarting with shooting pains.

So it seems this is a love or hate book. Some reviewers found it had no analysis, others found it didn't have a consistent narrative, others found it a jumble of anecdotes, and some just boring. To some degree it was all those things. But it was still an enjoyable assemblage of personal experiences, wrapped together in a readable narrative. The repetition was a little annoying - almost as if it there were central themes that needed to be reinforced in case the reader had perhaps skimmed over them the previous 3 or 4 times!

For me it was a 3.5 star read, rounded up because I looked forward to reading this for a while.

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book refers to British women who went husband-hunting in India during the days of Empire. They were mostly successful as there were far more men (British of course) than women in India.

Many of these women were born in India – sent back to England to be educated and in their late teenage years would return to India to marry. Marriage was their goal. These were “Upper Class” women and educated. Sadly in that era it was difficult for a woman to find gainful and professional employment (like being a government administrator, a doctor...) – or said otherwise it was easier for them to find a husband in India.

At the beginning of building the Empire it was suitable for a British man to find a partner (and perhaps marry) an Indian woman. But due to innate racism this was forbidden at the start of the 1800’s. There was outright discrimination against children of mixed marriages.

I don’t know whether it was the intention of the author but one comes away with a very dim view of “Empire” – of 200,000 or so Englishman lording over a country of hundreds of millions. These English managers were totally separated from the vast populace. The women (wives) would only mingle with the many servants they had.

There are many interesting sketches, mostly of the 20th century, of the women who went to India. Some lived in luxury and others in isolated areas where they had to fend for themselves – coping with tropical diseases, with large insects scurrying about, snakes, and rats – in their houses!

The book can be uneven and repetitive. There are too many descriptions of clothes worn and the accompanying jewelry (Chapter 8 on the viceroys’ daughter is a prime example). Gandhi and the massacre at Amritsar are mentioned only once, Nehru not at all.

Admittedly this is not a book on the history of India, but these women just seemed so cut-off from the millions surrounding them (the author does acknowledge this). It would have been interesting to know what they thought of India. Many of these women do come off as being superficial considering the education they received. Their diaries are replete with the nightly dances they attended; filtering through the herd of men who were trying to bestow affection (and more) unto them. It was standard that the men would only marry after the age of thirty (Empire rules) – some of the women (girls) were still in their upper teens.

As per the author there was very little of pre and extra-marital affairs because it was such a closed society – so people would talk and reputations tumble. Still this book is an interesting view on British Imperialism.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Lady Mary and her sisters were swanning round Downton Abbey in their prettiest frocks and sighing at the dearth of eligible bachelors, thousands of brave young women packed their bags, said a lifelong goodbye to their families, and shipped off to India, the exotic jewel in Mother’s England’s colonial crown. Rather than resign themselves to spinsterhood, with their only prospects as governess or live-in companion to some ailing wealthy widow, these women headed off half way round the world on an ambitious husband hunt.

The journey itself was adventure enough. Passengers faced many months at sea, with seasickness and “dressing for dinner” often the least of their worries. What they found when they finally disembarked was a steamy, foreign, glittering world of dances, banquets, tiger shoots, and polo parties. Not to mention hoards of uniformed men, gasping for female company.

Anne de Courcy’s Fishing Fleet is named for the nickname given to the thousands of young women who went out to India from the mid-nineteenth century up until World War Two. Clearly a vast amount of research has gone into the book and at times, it can be a little dry as de Courcy rattles off facts and figures, dates and statistics, with their attendant footnotes. That quibble aside, de Courcy is a brilliant researcher and historian.

The most enjoyable sections are the anecdotal accounts of women who lived the life, based on correspondence, diaries and interviews. This is where the history comes alive and the women get to tell their tales. A Fishing Fleet girl had to be hardy and uncomplaining. For all of India’s charms, there was much to endure: bats in the bedroom, cholera, thieving monkeys, smallpox, corsets and crinolines in unbearably hot weather, and crushing boredom. Outside of the social season, there was little for a married woman to do, once she had successfully caught herself a husband. Children were sent “home” to England to be educated, usually not visiting or being visited by their parents for a number of years. The daughters, heads brimming with childhood memories of the sights and smells of India, often then returned eagerly as young women looking to find husbands of their own. The lure of the Raj was strong.

Not a quick or light read, The Fishing Fleet cleverly conjures up an utterly foreign world of whirlwind romances in colonial times.

[Jessica Leight · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book extremely disappointing, and for devoted readers of the Sunday Times book review: be warned that the book does not live up to its billing there! The premise is an interesting one: to explore the lives and personal histories of British women who traveled to India to marry British officials and officers stationed there under the Raj. But ultimately the book is no more than a disjointed collection of anecdotes, and a repetitive collection at that. While the chapters ostensibly have themes, there was little relation between the themes and the content; every chapter repeats more or less the same points. Some of the personal stories were interesting, but there was no broader framework; particularly glaring as the absence of any critical evaluation of the role played by these women, and especially their husbands, in a colonial system that was unjust and exploitative. It's an apology for colonialism of sorts, wrapped in a layer of nineteenth century gossip.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book accompanied me on a recent trip to Dubai. I was seeking winter sun, not a husband, but the exotic locale and pleasant-but-slightly-stultifying routine (breakfast, swimming, tennis, tea, cocktails) resonated with the subject matter. It was a good beach book: engrossing to a point, but not so compelling that one couldn't happily abandon it for other entertainment. I enjoyed learning more about life in colonial India, but felt that the book was too repetitive in some ways and too sketchy in others. The author mostly uses diaries and letters to flesh out the story of British wives in the Raj, but we only get glimpses into any one particular life. The subject matter piqued my interest, but this particular history doesn't really satisfy the curiosity it raises -- at least in this particular reader.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

You may find what your great- grand mother did to find her husband.
Many short stories.

[Johanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Car crash history - or how to write history for UKIP nostalgists and the Daily Mail. I think this is one of the most unanalytical / unquestioning history books I have ever read. All about gels going orf to the raj and surviving the tiger hunt. Really - well not quite that bad but almost. I would have abandoned it but I continued in a sort of horrified fascination. It is a litany of the lives of young middle-class women who were shipped out to India to find a husband. Their lives largely merge into one and even across a hundred plus years there doesn't seem to be much difference either in events or attitudes. So they go out on a boat in there late teens or early twenties where they meet some jolly nice men but largely its just social, then they arrive in India where all the single men come down from remote points flock round these young women and select the one they want on what to contemporary eye seem often to be the flimsiest grounds and the briefest acquaintance. As being an old maid is a terrible thing these naive innocent women then spend their days producing children and leading otherwise vacuous lives whilst the men go and do manly things (usually involving controlling the natives or killing animals). Not a mention of a single one doing anything that is of any use except to the anglo-indian society, lots of mention of dresses jewels and social engagements. The issue of interracial relationships is touched on only briefly to explain how they were simply not done and how a family could be stained for generations!, There is no comment on the exploitation of the people, the land, or any consideration of the consequences of that whole period and its impact on subsequent history of India, UK etc. i am sure there is a fascinating book to be written about women in india in this period but this isn't it. meanwhile I'll stick to William Dalrymple

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

The British Raj, stretching from 1858 when the Crown took over management of India from the East India Company, to Independence in 1947, is very much a story of the British Empire at its height, and as such, rightly or wrongly, has always evoked a particular kind of nostalgic glamour - elephants and howdahs, maharajahs, tiger hunts at dawn, polo games and gymkhanas, brilliantly-clad officers and jewel-bedecked ladies at the Club. It was also an intensely masculine world, populated by soldiers and members of the ICS, Indian Civil Service, a world where men outnumbered women four to one. As a result, in an era where it was the height of any respectable woman's ambition to marry and marry well, it was seen as an ideal place to 'catch a husband'.

Many of the women who embarked for India, the 'Fishing Fleet' as they were known, were not new to India. Many had family members already living out there - brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins - and many were returning to their families after being sent to England for an education. The entire social set-up of life in many of the big cities in India seemed set-up for the prospect of marriage - young men often stationed in remote hill stations and outposts would have few opportunities to meet young women, and when they came down to Madras, Delhi or Calcutta there would be balls and dances and picnics every night, where the men flocked around the newly-arrived young women.

But married life was often a great contrast to the pleasures and excitement of courting - many of these young girls, often straight from school and married after whirlwind romances, would find themselves stationed dozens if not hundreds of miles away from 'civilisation', no electricity, no running water, no clubs and parties, sometimes in unstable regions, with husbands who often spent all day outside, leaving their young wives with little to occupy themselves.

De Courcy has written a number of books focusing on young women of a certain class and station, the débutante generation, one might say. She has a real flair for narrative and a deep understanding of the kinds of lives these women led, the roles that were laid out for them and the real courage it often took to balance lives of glamour and exoticism and romance with the often harsh realities of married life in India. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it's really awakened my interest in the era of the British Raj. I think I'll look out for her other books as well.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

They came every year, usually arriving in the great port cities of Bombay, Madras or Calcutta. Well into the 20th century, just the ocean voyage to get there was a dangerous and risky business; but most of these young English ladies would tell you that what they left behind might be riskier. These young women had a goal in mind. They came to India to find a husband. In the days when Britannia ruled the waves and took up "the White Man's burden" there was only one function for a lady to fulfill. Ladies were destined to become wives and mothers. A lady who did not wed might become a governess or a paid companion, but these jobs were ill paid and little better than endless servitude. A young woman who hoped for a comfortable life must get herself a husband and the richer and more distinguished the better. If she failed to find a spouse in England, her best chance lay in India.

For a wild variety of reasons, many of the best and brightest young men chose to go to India to make their fortunes. There were military, governmental and diplomatic posts begging for talented younger sons to fill them. A relatively young man might look for promotions, better pay and more promising social position. By the time he was nearing thirty and thinking of marriage, he would have something to offer an English lady. But there were four unmarried men to every English girl, thus the attraction for "the Fishing Fleet." A young woman might look forward to a season of house parties, hunting parties, dances, dinner parties, polo matches, card parties, amateur theatrics, costume parties, tennis, golf and swimming parties. And throughout this giddy season, she would have the opportunity to talk to, dance with and flirt with a lot of different men.

Anne de Courcy uses the letters and journals of young women who did travel to India for a husband. They had many reasons, differing reactions to India's culture, climate and people, and their futures varied but they all shared their memories with their children and the families they left in England. De Courcy relates their experiences in a lively fashion, but with great warmth and sympathy for these very young women, thrust into a foreign land and a strange culture. I found this book fascinating and compelling. I believe it would greatly appeal to those who enjoy tales of the British Raj, Indian history and Victorian colonization.

[Chi Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not know that adorable little romances from colonial India could make me die inside.

Jokes aside, this study provides a fascinating account of husband-hunting, a social phenomenon that even modern day readers can relate, with many twists unique to that time and place. The author adeptly combines firsthand accounts of the numerous (English) women who went through the same ordeal, with contextualized explanations of how race, imperialism, family, love, sexuality, ageism and identity politics influenced the various decisions each young man and woman made along the way.

Interestingly, this book and the writing techniques feel like a novel, a parallel Les Miserables. In the version of Les Miserables that I read in my childhood, Victor Hugo included many nonfictional description of the contemporary France as preludes to elements of his main fictional story. Here Anne de Courcy uses many informative chapters on weather, social lives, summer retreats, etc in the colony almost as a background, so that her favorite main characters, albeit very real, can shine in the limelight (not that I am complaining, since they were all lovely). The pacing of topics is definitely a thoughtful and deliberate choice. As I have learned before, the fiction and non-fiction categorization remains a modern invention, and in this instance the author walks a fine line between these two. The daughters of the Raj become real and surreal, believable and unthinkable, historical yet modern and familiar in their own way.

[Gayle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a present from my mother-in-law, who had presumably seen a review somewhere (although she did say she had mistakenly thought it was fiction!) and not the sort of book I would ordinarily pick up. Therefore I had been putting it off since I thought it might be a 'difficult' read. I couldn't have been more wrong - purely enchanting! It describes the life of young women going out to India in the days of the Raj to find husbands since the number of men to women was extremely advantageous for them. The life could be one long social round depending on where they ended up and in fact seemed even more rigid with social niceties than Victorian or Edwardian Britain but on the negative side, they had to cope with the disease and the climate. A very interesting read, which is now prompting me to consider picking up Jewel in the Crown or Passage to India and reflect further.

[Mary Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a strong interest in the British Empire, as my birth country Ireland was a colony, so our narratives are tied. I love the Indian subcontintent as I lived there for a few years. And romance? Love it! In spite of the very practical goals of the girls who went to India to get husbands and were determined not to 'return empty' - the unkind name given to those who chose to come back without marrying - there is Romance in plenty to be found in 'the Fishing Fleet'.

I enjoyed these mini biographies, for that is what they are. The Raj was little Britain in India, and De Courcy does a lovely job of taking the reader on a trip back in time.

Protocols and precedence was even more important in the Raj than in England, and often bordered upon the ridiculous. I enjoyed the story of the two American girls who decided to get a little fun out of this, to the embarrassment of their hosts.

Racism of course was pervasive in the colonies. In order to rule, all the top jobs had to be kept for Britishmen. The saddest aspect of this exclusivity in the Raj was the price that the children had to pay. It was imperative that they grow up British, so when they reached age 6 or so, they were sent 'home' for an education - 'home' to cold boarding schools, often with nowhere to go for the holidays...many did not see their parents for 10 years, at which time the girls rejoined their families as part of the 'Fishing Fleet'. They married, had children and the cycle repeated.

India is a magnificent country, and I loved the very expressive descriptions sent in letters 'home'. In the days before color film or even color photography, these writings brought India to life for the relatives in England. This kind of writing is in danger of being lost when you can transmit a picture on your cellphone to anywhere in the world, and I appreciated the vivid paragraphs penned by lonely young wives upcountry in Kashmir or Assam while their men were out on field trips, and though they had a houseful of Indian servants, their nearest English neighbors, and therefore their nearest company, might be miles away.
Worth reading!

[Julie Goucher · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the author was undertaking her research we did correspond rather briefly, but my interest regarding my ancestral links to India was out of the time frame for Anne's book.

I waited rather eagerly for the book to be published. Once it hit the shelves of my local library I managed to grab the book and then quietly enjoy it.

The book looks at women who migrated to India looking for a husband during the period of the mid 19th Century until 1947, when India gained it's Independence.

I loved the colour of the cover which for me set the tone of the book. I enjoyed the depth of the research, which was gathered from letters and memoirs of the time and the focus of the book.

There is a suitable explanation of why the women were there, and why they risked travelling the globe to find a husband, but there was little detail on how the women adapted to the change in culture and their experiences. The author further explores the processes in India at this time, the bureaucracy of India and mixed raced children and how they were viewed.

Despite all that, I was a little disappointed. There is little scope given to how these women coped, not only with the country and culture, but also how they experienced married life with the men they met in India. I felt as though the author ran out of steam with the subject matter before the end of the book.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Malaria, dengue fever, cholera, blistering heat, monsoons and snakes were just a few of the perils of life in India during the Raj. Yet, many women left England to spend a year in that country with relatives or friends in order to find a husband. Most were successful due to the fact that the men outnumbered the women by quite a percentage. Once married, the lady would still have to contend with all the attendant disadvantages of living in India, but most were instilled with the British comportment of having a 'stiff upper lip' and went about their lives without complaining. Along with finding out all about this aspect of husband-hunting it was also amazing to hear how the English seem to bring all the ceremony, culture and manners of their native land to whatever country they are living in even when it might be easier to discard some of the pomp and rigidity of the times in order to live more harmoniously with their surroundings. All in all, this was a fascinating read.

[Val · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style of the book is gossipy and anecdotal, which makes it entertaining to read. The content and context are superficial; this is not attempting to be a history book. It skitters about between too many people and too long a time period to give any coherent picture of either British India or any of the women mentioned and I was starting to find the book shallow and repetitive. I was not all that interested in who wore what to each party to take place in India over 150 years.
There are a couple of more detailed stories towards the end of the book which showed the women as individuals. They gained the book an extra star.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book deals with a really interesting subject: the practice of English women traveling to India to find a husband among the English men working for the Raj.

Full of diary and journal entries, the depictions from the men and women who lived in or traveled to India during the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th were fascinating and entertaining. India was at the same time magical, romantic, vibrant and dangerous, isolated, restrictive and hot. This book presents many facets of life in India through the eyes of the English.

I was shocked to learn that, despite their control over India during the Raj, "there were never more than 300,000 Britons in India, amid an indigenous population of 250 million." No wonder the Company started paying young women to come in order to provide wives for the men working there.

I also learned that intermarriage was encouraged for some time, but that it became practically forbidden due to factors like "earlier edicts banning Eurasians from the best jobs, nineteenth-century religious fervour and the growth in the numbers of European women."

It was very interesting to see how the English tried to maintain their cultural norms (sometimes even more so than those in the homeland) while in India. Dress, etiquette, courtship, etc. were dictated mostly by English standards.

It was also interesting to read about so many stories of men and women who met and were married in almost no time at all, how they moved from place to place within India, navigated long separations, and embraced (or tolerated) the very different country.

The subject matter was very engaging, but the presentation was mediocre. The narrative skips around a lot depending on the subject of each chapter and the writing style was kind of bland (probably owning to the fact that it depended on so many quotes from the source material). It got the job done but it could have been much more dynamic.

There were also some weird judgments through in by the author that abruptly changed the tone of the book. At one point when speaking of the English she writes, "They were not motivated by pure self-interest, rather by a sense of mission. Trade, of course, was still a main concern but they believed equally that the world would be a better place if ruled by Britain – as much of it was." Um, ok. I guess it depends on who you ask.

Toward the end of the book she writes, "Did the Fishing Fleet girls have any real influence on the conduct of affairs in this vast country that was home to so many of them during the time of the Raj? The short answer is no." She goes on to talk about how the Raj was run strictly by men so the women had no influence, but I find that to be a ridiculous assertion. Women don't have to be in leadership to have influence and it's incredibly naive to believe that the impact of marriage and society (among countless other ares) that the women provided for the men all came to nothing. I also find it kind of dumb that the author of a book about the Fishing Fleet would end her book about them with the statement that they really had no impact (so little impact that you chose to write a book about them?).

Despite the average presentation and oddball opinions of the author, I learned a lot about something that I didn't even know existed and I really enjoyed getting such a personal and vivid picture of India in this particular context.

[Stephan · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the most part, I enjoyed The Fishing Fleet. It brings together an amazing collection of first-hand accounts, many of them unpublished and probably hard to access. Unfortunately, the book also has a number of drawbacks. To a large degree, the book is made up of first-hand anecdotes, grouped roughly thematically, and connected by rather short narratives. It paints an impressive picture of life in the Raj, mostly during the imperial period, when most of British India was directly ruled by the British via the Indian Civil Service - i.e. the latter part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, apart from that rough thematic organisation, there is little structure to the book. Within each chapter, we jump forward and back in time - it's very hard to spot any historical development. Also, for a book written in 2012, the perspective is extremely limited. De Courcy identifies strongly with the mostly (upper) middle-class British girls and women that went to India and got married there. This may be due to the prevalence of sources, but still: We hear very little of lower-class women, we hear little about the "returned empties" (women failing to find a husband), we hear extremely little about the political process in India, and basically nothing from a native Indian perspective. As an example, Gandhi is mentioned twice, only in passing, in only one chapter. Also, the language is largely the language of colonialism - including the somewhat derogatory "Fishing Fleet girl" that De Courcy uncritically adopts as her own.

The book is well-indexed and comes with an extensive list of sources, although at least in the Kindle edition these are hard to connect to the main text. As entertainment, it works fine. As a work of history, it lacks structure, analysis, and even a minimal broadness of perspective. I don't regret reading it, but I do feel regret when thinking about what it could have been.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the time of the Raj (ie the British occupation of India), many young women sailed out to India in search of a husband, since there were so many British men required either in the army or in the Civil Service to manage the country. The women became known as the 'Fishing Fleet'. This book describes their lifestyle, which, during the season, seems to have been highly social with balls, parties, picnics and even tiger hunts, though very much circumscribed by protocol and there was no fraternization with an Indian unless he was a Maharajah.

Once they had snared their husband, life for some changed dramatically eg if their husband was posted with the army to a remote outpost or if he was a tea planter in a remote valley. Then, they had to be quite resourceful, as they were not near medical help, shops or other conveniences.

This book chronicles all of this in great detail. It quotes extensively from memoirs and diaries of the time, which can get rather repetitive. It also jumps back and forward in time, as the Raj lasted for nearly 100 years, which makes it hard to track. However, it gives a good picture of a certain social phenomenon.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am sorry to only give this 3 stars as the subject is very interesting and gives a different look at this period of our history than I have normally read. However, the way the book has been written has made it confused and disjointed. A chapter may start in 1922, a few paragraphs later be in 1879 and a few paragraphs later be back in 1905. Also it used the same fact or quote in several different chapters. There is no flow to the journey through the book making it a disappointing read.

[Sarah Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins.

During the Victorian period in Great Britain, "trade with India, the jewel in Britain's burgeoning commercial Empire, was vast and the promise of wealth and success - if they survived disease and peril - beckoned the young men of the Company" (1-2). Since union with Indian women was socially unacceptable by the mid-1800s, many British women followed the men to India in search of a successful spouse. These women, known as the Fishing Fleet, and their stories are detailed in this history. In a time when failing to marry meant social disgrace for young women, India was seen as a desirable marriage market, particularly since men greatly outnumbered women. Marriage was approached with speed and more as a business transaction than a romantic pursuit.

The importance of becoming successful in the eyes of the empire and society was emphasized by the fact that men who travelled to India were granted "no home leave for eight years" so "young men often left in the knowledge that they would never see someone dear to them again" (57). It seems unthinkable in today's world to commit to making a lengthy trip by ship to a inhospitable climate, where you would be stuck without respite for at least eight years. Knowing the difficulties and infrequency of traveling home, its little wonder that the Fishing Fleet came about. Otherwise these men would go years without encountering eligible British women they could marry.

Each chapter of this book is centered around a specific aspect of the Fishing Fleet, including the voyages, the parties, courtships, engagements, first homes, etc. De Courcy clearly spent a great deal of time researching unpublished memoirs, letters, photographs, and diaries to build a rich picture of life in India and includes copious real-life examples. Although I enjoyed the book immensely and appreciate the overarching history provided by the book, my favorite chapters were the few in which de Courcy focused on a particular individual. For example, one chapter is devoted to Elisabeth Bruce, the daughter of the Viceroy and her story of courtship and marriage in India. (In particular, I was amazed to learn that when Elisabeth married, she had a "700-lb wedding cake, for which 4,000 eggs had been used" (123)). This sort of case study chapter reeled me in more than the general chapters with endless examples pulled from the author's research.

In many ways, the British regime in India was their ceaseless attempt to replicate British society and culture in a vastly different climate and world. Most of Victorian dress was vastly unsuitable for the climate, but was worn nonetheless. For example, "one of the stranger habits of the Raj was the insistence on wearing flannel next to the skin, advocated by virtually all doctors until well into the twentieth century" (85). In some parts of India the temperature can exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, so its difficult to imagine wearing flannel underwear. In addition to the climate extremes and the diseases associated with India, it was still considered only proper for British children to attend British schools. Thus mothers were torn between sending their children off alone to boarding school in Great Britain and remaining with their husbands in India. "One after one the babies grow into companionable children; one after one England claims them, till the mother's heart and house are left unto her desolate" (308).

At times I almost felt as if chapters of this book were written in no particular order and then pieced together before publication. For example, it is repeated endlessly throughout the book that men were not encouraged to marry before the age of 30. This became such an oft-repeated sentence that I started to become really annoyed after having read it for at least the tenth time. However, perhaps the author felt the need to repeat this since she was unsure of which chapter would be read first, possibly leaving the readers without critical information that would only appear in later chapters. Additionally, I was disappointed that my advance copy lacked the many illustrations that the final copy will have.

This book is a social history of Britain's rule in India. Where other books about Britain's empire in India detail the politics, this deals with marriage and home life, which I found interesting. Beyond just the practice of shipping off ladies to India to marry, I learned a great deal about the social life, domestic practices, education, and lifestyles of Europeans in India during the 1800s.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.

Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.

"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"

This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.

But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.

And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he could have their heads cracked with a baton.

Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.

The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.

It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.

For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.

The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.

This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.

Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....

In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.

Hence the necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.

"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."

"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"

Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.

"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."

Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.

Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.

"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"

Australian caste system?

"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."

Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?

"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."

Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.

"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.

"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.

"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.

"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"

Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.

Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.

"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"

This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.

But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.

And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he could have their heads cracked with a baton.

Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.

The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.

It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.

For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.

The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.

This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.

Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....

In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.

Hence the necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.

"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."

"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"

Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.

"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."

Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.

Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.

"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"

Australian caste system?

"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."

Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?

"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."

Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.

"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.

"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.

"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.

"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"

Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.

Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.

"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"

This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.

But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.

And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he could have their heads cracked with a baton.

Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.

The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.

It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.

For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.

The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.

This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.

Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....

In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.

Hence the necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.

"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."

"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"

Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.

"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."

Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.

Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.

"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"

Australian caste system?

"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."

Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?

"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."

Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.

"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.

"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.

"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.

"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"

Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.

Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.

"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"

This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.

But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.

And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he could have their heads cracked with a baton.

Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.

The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.

It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.

For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.

The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.

This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.

Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....

In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.

Hence the necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.

"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."

"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"

Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.

"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."

Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.

Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.

"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"

Australian caste system?

"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."

Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?

"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."

Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.

"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.

"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.

"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.

"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"

Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.

Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.

"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"

This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.

But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.

And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he could have their heads cracked with a baton.

Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.

The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.

It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.

For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.

The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.

This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.

Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....

In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.

Hence the necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.

"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."

"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"

Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.

"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."

Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.

Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.

"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"

Australian caste system?

"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."

Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?

"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."

Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.

"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.

"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.

"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.

"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"

Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just didn’t do it for me. I understand how the author decided to structure it, but I found her narrative style a bit tiresome—like “this person did this and then that, and then this other person did this and then that, and then this third person did these other things.” We learn only the most superficial of details about the people whose diaries and letters are quoted. We also learn nothing about anyone outside the privileged class. Were there no others around? No Europeans from the lower classes or trades? No non-Anglicans? No real conclusions, either—just a litany of facts about people who happened to leave written accounts (which I recognize have value) without much analysis. Additionally, all the women whose stories she cites apparently met, fell in love, married, and lived fairly happily ever after with no other unhappiness or marital issues to speak of. Surely some Fishing Fleet unions were disasters or at least less than fairytales, but the author doesn’t acknowledge any. She refers to loneliness, but doesn’t provide any real details of any individuals.

[Brianne Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot has been written about India during the Raj: about the East India Company and the complicated politics and the men who ran things and fought for and against it. But there are few books out there about the women who went to India and accompanied those men to the cities and far-flung outposts and plantations, bringing with them a little bit of Britain and a lot of British can-do just-get-on-with-it spirit. The Fishing Fleet is about those women.

Ostensibly, it’s a history of the ladies who, having struck out on the marriage market in Britain, boarded ship in England and headed out to India, where the high men-to-women ratio pretty much guaranteed a proposal within months, if not weeks. But Anne De Courcy’s social history is about much more than that: it’s also about what life—specifically, domestic and social life—was like for the British of the Raj. As it trips nimbly along from the travails of the voyage out through courtship and marriage, the book vividly illustrates, via first-hand reports, everything from elaborate tiger hunting expeditions with bejewelled maharajas to the loneliness and hardship of life ‘up-country’, where neighbours were few and far between and conditions primitive, to say the least.

De Courcy, who clearly admires these women (rightly—most of them had to be pretty tough), covers a lot of ground, even diving into the complex (and racist) social structure that existed in India at the time. Chapters covering a broad range of Fishing Fleet girls are broken up by a few that highlight the romances of specific women: the ultra-privileged daughter of the Viceroy, a woman who spent her whole life hiding her Eurasian ancestry, and a true daughter of the Raj who returned to her Indian birthplace after an English education and promptly fell in love.

Bottom Line: I found this one to be highly addictive, even though I’ve never been particularly interested in Raj history before (I have been long interested in women’s social history, though, so that certainly helped). It’s an entertaining, detailed look at life in India from the women’s perspective. If there’s one quibble, it’s that the focus is almost entirely on middle and upper-class women (particularly the upper middle class), so if you’re hoping for a book that covers all of society (or the lives of Indian women), this isn’t necessarily the one for you.

[Steven Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed de Courcy's book. Like many, I thought it a long read and somewhat unfocused in the narrative, but I really couldn't put it down. She documents a part of life in British India…that of women going off to live in it, find husbands, etc., and it is always interesting. The book is helped by the use of many letters, diaries, and especially photos of most of the women and their husbands, so we can form a bond with them.
The book has no real chronological beginning, but mostly deals with the 1910-1940 period. The ocean voyage, preparing for new life, the hazards of being in the Raj (especially bats in your living room and 'not appearing too clever' are documented with a British style and humor I enjoyed. As one woman recalled, "I was warned we were in bear country, and the Indian women said it wasn't a problem, 'just raise your skirts and they will go away.' I was not willing to put it to the test."
Veddy British throughout.
As for complaints the book ignores the horrors of British rule, de Courcy makes it clear the women had little, if any power…the Raj was thoroughly male (and most certainly were the Hindu and Muslim rulers), and also, I might add that British rule, for its horrors, was fairly benign, and there would have been no united India if not for Britain pulling together. As it was, servants were delighted to serve under the British, and the native rulers were hardly more benign, nor was Indian caste society any less demanding then the British social system.
This is a valuable and entertaining book of a segment of history told mostly through a woman's view, and is a well-written book. perhaps if you want to find a more jaundiced view of the Raj, read Orwell's Burmese Days. Orwell was a policeman in Burma in this era, and makes a nice bookend to this book. With all the failings of suburbia and the world of Stepford Wives, women there don't have to worry about white ants eating up their floors and having to use dirt ones. Nor do they need to have their Topai ready at all times.