About “British India — A Family Story of The Raj”

Most of the  postings on this blog will refer to some aspect of my  family’s century and a half (1800-1950) sojourn in India.   I plan to tell stories about growing up in British India during the last days of “The Raj”, and about the social and economic effects of “The Raj”on the world and my family, then and now.  The condition of most of the world today is a direct result of Britain’s attempt to protect the jewel in her crown during those crucial years, and to America’s actions since then as she fashions her own Empire around the  Empire she inherited from Britain.  I plan to mention those linkages as current events warrant and as the spirit moves me.  You will find more about “British India — a Family Story of The Raj ” in the “About” page.  Comments are always welcome. _________________________________________________

Short Family Tree: Blanchette, Roberts, Burgh, et al

When you click on the six column family tree below the jump, you will see six of the many lines of descent which lead to my generation of Blanchettes.

The two columns on the left lead to my maternal grandmother Clemence Adeline Baptiste.  The two in the middle begin with my paternal and maternal grandfathers William Lish Blanchette and Clarence Roberts respectively, and then to my parents, and thus to me.  The column on the extreme right begins with my maternal grandmother Lillian Nierces father Vahd Nierces.  I have no data on her mother other that the family story that she was a “one armed Irish woman”.

Context: The Burghs, Carey, Bengal and Britain (Part 2)

Please see Part 1 for continuity.

Below, I give a bird’s eye view of the Britain that Andrew Burgh and William Carey inherited and then left, never to return.  The post is a summary of a lot of ground.  It is “link dense” for those who want more detail.

Andrew Burgh’s Scotland:

Our ancestor Andrew Burgh was born in Scotland in 1764.  He, and at least two of his brothers went to India as employees of the HEIC.  Andrew himself left Scotland for India in 1781.

Context: The Burghs, Carey, Bengal and Britain (Part 1)

Now that I have found a very early female ancestor almost certainly “country born”, about whose life and whose father’s life I know something, I want to know more about their world.  Below is a shorthand version of their life and times:

World Trade:  For millenia the vast majority of world trade was centered in  the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.   Asians traded with Asians and then with “Middle Eastern” Muslims.  “Europeans”,  in their distant backward, cold and foggy peninsula at the Northwest end of the Eurasian continent, imported their spices and the things they considered the finer things of their lives (eg  muslin textiles and porcelain),  from the “Indies” and from China,  via what is now “Turkey”.