Early British India was more ethnically hybrid than usually assumed

Evidence

In White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, William Dalrymple has noted that the British then ‘inhabited a world that was far more hybrid, and with far less clearly defined ethnic, national and religious borders, than we have been conditioned to expect… It was as if this early promiscuous mingling of races and ideas, modes of dress and ways of living, was something that was on no one’s agenda and suited nobody’s version of events.’ — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 284

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s interest in how imperial encounters produce hybrid identities — links to Dalrymple’s broader work on Anglo-Indian assimilation.