British identity was forged by imperial overseas encounters snipped from http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=55908# As the United Kingdom debates immigration and assimilation, what does it mean to be British? This column explores the formation of British identity during the early twentieth century, when British multinational enterprises constituted an informal empire engaging many foreign cultures. History shows a far more complicated sense of "Britishness" than some assume. Formal and informal Empire In a recent paper, I examined the substantial foreign footprint of British multinationals in the heyday of formal and informal empire in the early twentieth century, when employees of business formed an important population of British abroad. These British expatriates were in direct contact with non-Europeans, principally through the direct employment of tens of thousands of local people. Their cross-cultural encounters form a significant, previously untapped body of evidence on the nature of "Britishness". British company expatriates sought to create and affirm their British identities overseas. But on further examination, it can be seen that this approach used "British" norms that were in fact not British at all, but which were themselves often the product of previous colonial encounters, hybrids of adaptation and compromise to a foreign environment. My research shows that British identity was forged from transnational interaction with non-British peoples overseas, whose own cultures and identities influenced and helped to form ideas of Britishness. Foreign encounters A good example of this is the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, or BP, as it is now known. Formed in 1909 in order to develop a huge oil find in southern Persia (now Iran), the company looked first to India, jewel of the British Imperial crown and on the border with Persia, for a model as to how to run its operations. The company took the imperial culture and hierarchical relations it found in the familiarity of British India, and introduced them to its company town and operations in Persia. The influence from India was indeed pervasive. From India came both white management staff, steeped in imperial experience and, crucially, Indian skilled and semi-skilled workers, viewed by the company as loyal and trustworthy. These Indians worked in the oil field operations, but Indian influence was not confined to the workplace. In the domestic sphere, household servants were often Indians, many ex-Indian Army. Indian terms and borrowings from Indian languages were used so frequently in everyday company correspondence that staff in London complained that they could not understand them. Indian influences were also evident in physical culture. In its choice of housing for staff, the company chose the Indian bungalow, as well as housing estates inspired by imperial architect Edwin Lutyens' work at New Delhi. Over time, Anglo-Persian developed a lifestyle that resembled life in the British Raj more closely than that of its headquarters city, London. These cross-cultural encounters, which seem on the surface to be traditionally dominant ones of coloniser over colonised, were in fact far more complex and compromised. In reality, there was input from coloniser and colonised and adaptation to changing circumstances over time, so that the "British" culture underwent a process of continuous reinvention. [snip] =============================================== ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India