Paideia Text and Issues Lecture:  “Anglo-Indian Belonging and the Imperial Construction of Race”

Brian Caton, associate professor of history, will present the first Paideia Texts and Issues lecture of the spring semester. While “Bridgerton” may excite our sensibilities by placing twenty-first-century racial sensibilities into the context of London at the turn of the nineteenth century, what did real mixed-race people think, and how did they live during that time and beyond? This lecture uses the lives of two Anglo-Indian men—James Skinner (1778-1841) and Henry Charles van Cortlandt (1814-88)—to show how a sense of belonging was central to their careers, their decision-making, their constructions of family, and their senses of legacy.