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45. The Fishing Fleet: Husband-hunting in the Raj, Anne de Courcy
Well, this was a nice little jaunt through a lot of English racism! Anne de Courcy has written a number of volumes about high society in the debutante era -- I picked up and discarded her 1939: The Last Season for being too boring -- here she manages to be much more interesting, if shockingly embedded in a kind of throwback racism throughout the book. When the British colonized India, there were lots of eligible men, and very few eligible women, the opposite of the situation in England, and so the 'fishing fleet' girls would take a perilous steamer journey to India to do the cool weather high society season with army captains and India Civil Service men, and the viceroys aides-de-camp, etc. the season was full of polo and hunting and balls and endless "weeks." This was apparently part of being in the army, for the British, all the horse riding and hunting was considered the only adequate preparation for war. And you were practically required to get married, as a man. Many of the fishing fleet girls would be engaged within days of arriving, so tight was the market, if they hadn't become affianced to a likely gentleman on the boat ride over. If you didn't manage to become engaged by the time your return journey came around, you were known as a 'returned empty' and were considered an old maid by 25.
It was fascinating to read about how the British empire established its home-country norms in a different climate and then clung to those norms obstinately, to the point where etiquette and points of precedence were followed more closely in the Raj for much longer than they were in England. As de Courcy points out, in England someone of low birth or career could manage to aim higher if they were especially clever or socially connected; in the Raj everything was determined by the husband's rank in the army or ICS. Anyway, the main problem with this book is that there is practically zero interrogation of the issues of race and class going on between the colonized and the colonizers, aside from a few brief passages. The author says that since caste was so embedded prior to their arrival, the British-imposed hierarchies and etiquette was "natural," to the colonized populations, which sounds like a load of colonial bullshit justification to me. You will read pages and pages about the elaborate, gemstone-encrusted turbans and aigrettes and clothes worn by the native maharajas, but only one sentence about how 'sad' it was that they held authority in name only. There are other things, too, like random society women in the narrative will write about some town "rebelling" and having to be put down, and de Courcy glances right over it; however, every name mentioned will have its little footnote about how they later went on to receive such-and-such royal honor, or ascended to some fancy leadership position. It made me want to read a real history of the Raj, to figure out how much of this is unexamined colonialist hogwash through de Courcy's blinkered gaze, and how much of it is real. However, if you want to read about the crazy history of Brits being teddibly, teddibly British in the hill country and Snooty Ooty and about the durbars, it's kind of fun. De Courcy writes touchingly of the colonialists' dilemma, where every had to send their children back to England to be educated, due to rules about citizenship; unless you had a lucky aunt to pick you up, you were basically abandoned in these (occasionally awful) schools for children of the Raj, separated from your family for years and years until you were of age and could go out to either join the army or ICS, or marry someone. Small price to pay, however, in exchange for joining the ruling elite and gaining your fortune, right? Nowhere did I read a single thing that sounded like, oh and look at the awful humiliations or racist murders that happened (though a few are mentioned). What a weird book.
Well, this was a nice little jaunt through a lot of English racism! Anne de Courcy has written a number of volumes about high society in the debutante era -- I picked up and discarded her 1939: The Last Season for being too boring -- here she manages to be much more interesting, if shockingly embedded in a kind of throwback racism throughout the book. When the British colonized India, there were lots of eligible men, and very few eligible women, the opposite of the situation in England, and so the 'fishing fleet' girls would take a perilous steamer journey to India to do the cool weather high society season with army captains and India Civil Service men, and the viceroys aides-de-camp, etc. the season was full of polo and hunting and balls and endless "weeks." This was apparently part of being in the army, for the British, all the horse riding and hunting was considered the only adequate preparation for war. And you were practically required to get married, as a man. Many of the fishing fleet girls would be engaged within days of arriving, so tight was the market, if they hadn't become affianced to a likely gentleman on the boat ride over. If you didn't manage to become engaged by the time your return journey came around, you were known as a 'returned empty' and were considered an old maid by 25.
It was fascinating to read about how the British empire established its home-country norms in a different climate and then clung to those norms obstinately, to the point where etiquette and points of precedence were followed more closely in the Raj for much longer than they were in England. As de Courcy points out, in England someone of low birth or career could manage to aim higher if they were especially clever or socially connected; in the Raj everything was determined by the husband's rank in the army or ICS. Anyway, the main problem with this book is that there is practically zero interrogation of the issues of race and class going on between the colonized and the colonizers, aside from a few brief passages. The author says that since caste was so embedded prior to their arrival, the British-imposed hierarchies and etiquette was "natural," to the colonized populations, which sounds like a load of colonial bullshit justification to me. You will read pages and pages about the elaborate, gemstone-encrusted turbans and aigrettes and clothes worn by the native maharajas, but only one sentence about how 'sad' it was that they held authority in name only. There are other things, too, like random society women in the narrative will write about some town "rebelling" and having to be put down, and de Courcy glances right over it; however, every name mentioned will have its little footnote about how they later went on to receive such-and-such royal honor, or ascended to some fancy leadership position. It made me want to read a real history of the Raj, to figure out how much of this is unexamined colonialist hogwash through de Courcy's blinkered gaze, and how much of it is real. However, if you want to read about the crazy history of Brits being teddibly, teddibly British in the hill country and Snooty Ooty and about the durbars, it's kind of fun. De Courcy writes touchingly of the colonialists' dilemma, where every had to send their children back to England to be educated, due to rules about citizenship; unless you had a lucky aunt to pick you up, you were basically abandoned in these (occasionally awful) schools for children of the Raj, separated from your family for years and years until you were of age and could go out to either join the army or ICS, or marry someone. Small price to pay, however, in exchange for joining the ruling elite and gaining your fortune, right? Nowhere did I read a single thing that sounded like, oh and look at the awful humiliations or racist murders that happened (though a few are mentioned). What a weird book.
