88 HENRY E. ROSEBOOM AND CEDRIC DOVER 



allegiance to their fathers, was obviously an asset in sovereignty, besides 

 encouraging trade and extending the Christian horizon. For example, the 

 Court of Directors of the East India Company, addressing the President of 

 Madras in 1678, wrote: 



The marriage of our soldiers to the native women of Fort St. George is a matter of such 

 consequence to posterity that we shall be content to encourage it with some expense, 

 and have been thinking for the future to appoint a pagoda to be paid to the mother of any 

 child, that shall hereafter be born of any such future marriage, upon the day the child 

 is christened, if you think this small encouragement will increase the number of such 

 marriages. 



In the circumstances, the fate of the community was more than ordinarily 

 affected by political misfortunes and a changing perspective. With the 

 decay of Portuguese, Dutch and French power, the growth of the hybrid 

 offspring of these peoples was naturally arrested. With the expansion of 

 English power and the progress of communications, the economic value of 

 Indo-Britons diminished. And, as India became a more pleasing proposi- 

 tion for Englishmen, the community was not only neglected but even re- 

 pressed. In 1791, persons with Indian blood in their veins were excluded 

 from the Services of the East India Company, though they had previously 

 enjoyed complete social and political freedom and had filled posts of im- 

 portance in every branch of the Company's activities. This condition 

 prevailed till 1833 when the Company's Charter was renewed and it was 

 decreed that no person "shall by reason of his religion, place of birth, descent, 

 colour or any of them be disabled from holding any place, office or employ- 

 ment under the said Company." At the same time, however, it was also 

 decreed that the higher posts in the Services of the Company, and later of 

 the Crown, should be filled by recruitment only in England. This effec- 

 tually debarred the majority of Eurasians from competing, and even the 

 few who surmounted the barrier found themselves victimised by preferential 

 treatment and social ostracism. 



So the community, deliberately propagated and encouraged, first by the 

 Portuguese and lastly by the English, was left to grow up in an atmosphere 

 charged with an overt but cruel ostracism, affected by racial and religious 

 prejudices and economic fear. The damaging effects of this attitude are 

 readily imagined though difficult to assess. We need not consider the 

 subject further, for it has been discussed in some detail by Stark, Wallace 

 and Dover. It may only be added that, excepting in the Dutch colonies 

 (Kielstra, 1929), prejudice against Eurasians was (and still is) even more 

 pronounced further East. The community, however, still survives. And 

 a literature of proportions shows that it has not only survived, but that it 



