Eurasian

“ Not the least of the incitements to their energy and ambition was the interest “Our Club,” excited among the outsiders. Many sneered at what they called the “airs,” the Eurasians were putting on. Many were the insulting remarks that came to our ears. The lash of envy is often a greater stimulant than words of praise. A very few spoke well of our enterprise, though all seemed to feel a chagrin that we had such a grand building and much finer grounds than theirs. ”

“ Society recognizes that Eurasia has certain claims—to charities and commissions of inquiry, to humane treatment, to commiseration, to good advice. It holds meetings, raises subscriptions, discusses the Eurasian problem in the newspapers, and supplies inquiry commissioners from among its most honorable and distinguished. But the claims of Eurasia upon society must be made distinctly in forma pauperis; it is only the lower classes who have any. For the well-to-do in the landaus society has only a somewhat amused and cynical toleration, and does not dream of bowing. ”

“ Towards natives the Eurasian is cold, haughty, and formal; and this attitude is repaid, with interest, in scorn and hatred. There is no concealing the fact that to the mild Gentoo the Eurasian is a very distasteful object.
But having said this, the case for the prosecution closes, and we may turn to the many soft and gentle graces which the Eurasian develops.
In all the relations of family life the Eurasian is admirable. He is a dutiful son, a circumspect husband, and an affectionate father. He seldom runs through a fortune; he hardly ever elopes with a young lady of fashion ”

“ The sight of a native with a half-caste wife is much rarer, for there Eurasian as well as native antipathy comes into operation. The whole conscious inclination of Eurasian life, in habits, tastes, religion, and most of all in ambition, is toward the European and away from the native standards. On the whole, Eurasian prejudices against the natives are probably stronger than European ones, and more unreasoning. ”

“ The next crime is that the Government and Europeans do not assist them, and the next is that the better class of Eurasians do not look after these despised unfortunates of their own race or caste. They in their pride try to appear what they are not, and try to conceal the pit from whence they were digged. They may powder as much as they please, but there is not chalk enough in the world to conceal or remove the pigment in their skins. They may put on style, live in wealth and luxury, and in their egotistical imbecility ape the Europeans in everything ”

“ Is it any wonder that many Eurasians are not better than they are, brought up in such adverse degrading circumstances? Of what use is prayer to them in Church, one hour of one day in seven, when every day and hour of the whole week the devils of poverty, misery and uncleanness reside and exist in their homes? ”

“ One evening after returning from one of my trips and trying to analyze this antipathy, prejudice or hatred of the Europeans for the Eurasians I recalled this saying, “It is said that a person always hates the one he has injured.” I thought there may be a great deal of truth in this and further, the Europeans may look upon us as connected with themselves. We are constant, perpetual reminders of the lustful sins of themselves or their class. ”

“ You know the Eurasians, what they are?”
“Don’t I know?” I exclaimed. “Am I not one of them to my sorrow and shame?”
Without regarding my remark he said, “The natives are bad enough in every way, just what their ancestors and circumstances have made them. They are born deceivers and liars. They are capable liars, and can tell a lie with a semblance of truth in it, and then to protect the first will thatch it with another, and so on indefinitely as they build their roofs, one thatch upon another. The Europeans are not noted for lying. ”

“ I was rather glad that they had not seen the paper, as I had furnished them with tickets-of-leave; or they might have been tempted to curse their fathers, which is bad business when it can be avoided.
“There is a prejudice against the Eurasians, both among the Europeans and natives. It is not surprising that the heathen natives, with all their old feelings about caste, should prefer to have their own people about them, but not at all creditable that Europeans, all probably calling themselves Christians, should despise and degrade a people who are a part of themselves and begotten by them. ”

“ The Eurasians form but a very small proportion of the community, for there is only one Eurasian in every 1,337 of the population of the Madras Presidency, and it is more than probable that a considerable proportion of those returned as Eurasians are in reality pure Natives who have embraced the Christian religion, taken an English or Portuguese name, and adopted the European dress and mode of living. ”

“ There is a large number of Eurasians in the station. How many of them ever went to church? Not more than a score. Why the others did not attend is not for me to say, only to mention the fact. Where were the rest? Some out shooting; others at their games; the most of them in their miserable homes, spending their time in idleness, frivolity and vice, drinking the wretched cheap liquor that Government has provided for them. You have never been to their homes; you know nothing of their poverty and squalor; you have no idea of the social vice and drunkenness among them, unfitting them for any work. ”

“ We have seen a good many Eurasians, or people descended from European parents on one side and Asiatic on the other. Their position is an unhappy one, as they will not associate with the natives, and, on the other hand, they are not allowed to associate with the Europeans. Despising the one, and despised by the other, they have no recognized social standing, and no one speaks well of them. ”

“ As the sais has gone to a place from which he will never be dismissed, and though he may not be flogged by a sahib, he will have to meet the ghosts of those starved horses, so let him be happy if he can. As I had promised on my honor, though an Eurasian is not credited with much of that, I never told the story until now, and the learned vet, and the distinguished Government committee, can have the free and full benefit of my information. ”

“ The Government refuses to enlist them as soldiers. The railway companies put up notices, “No Eurasians need apply.” Few of them are in Government offices. There are almost none in the banks. The mercantile firms will have none of them. A very few are in the shops. ”

“ Yet, now that temporarily he was free of it, he realized that there was that within him which responded to the call of the catacombs; there was a fascination in the fume-laden air of those underground passages; there was a charm, a mysterious charm, in the cave of the golden dragon, in that unforgettable place which he assumed to mark the center of the labyrinth; in the wicked, black eyes of the Eurasian. ”

“ Such is the land with which we have to deal, Russia, the seeding-place of nations, the home of restless tribes. Here the vast level of Northern Asia spreads like a sea over half of Europe, following the lowlands between the Urals and the Caspian Sea. Over these broad plains the fierce horsemen of the East long found an easy pathway to the rich and doomed cities of the West. ”

“ To the Greeks what is now Russia and Siberia, Seven Rivers Land and Russian Central Asia was vaguely Scythia. They fumbled northward and eastward as in a great darkness, and they were rather afraid to go on. Yet we know that even before the records of Greek history there was an Eastern trade on the Volga and from the Caspian to the Baltic. The merchants of Persia and India traded with the Russia of those days. The Persians ruled from the Oxus to the Danube, and in the wilderness stretching from the Oxus to the Great Wall of China dwelt the primeval nomads. ”

“ His native country was on the confines of Europe and Asia. Now Europe and Asia were, in those days, as now, marked and distinguished by two vast masses of social and civilized life, widely dissimilar from each other. The Asiatic side was occupied by the Persians, the Medes, and the Assyrians. The European side by the Greeks and Romans. They were separated from each other by the waters of the Hellespont, the Ægean Sea, and the Mediterranean, as will be seen by the map. ”

“ The Empire of Russia—except for the great expansion in Central Asia which has taken place during the last forty years, and which has now brought its frontiers close to India—was scarcely less vast and formidable in 1853 than it is at present. Stretching from Germany on the west, to the Pacific Ocean on the east, bordering the Black Sea, and pressing on Turkey, Persia, and China, it occupies an immense and continuous territory, both in Europe and in Asia, and exercises many and important influences over the civilization of the world. ”

“ For from time immemorial the peninsula of Asia Minor has been the great battlefield between the Orient and the Occident. Topographically it is like a great bridge over which, as has been well said, “the religion, art and civilization of the East found their way into Greece; and the civilization of Greece, under the guidance of Alexander the Macedonian, passed back again across the same bridge to conquer the East and revolutionize Asia as far as the heart of India. Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, have all followed the same route in the many attempts that Asia has made to subdue the West.” ”

“ In the Far East of Asia political supremacy belongs to the cultural nations of the Mongolian race; Western Asia has in fact been a part of Europe and will be organized by the agreement of Russia, France, England, and Italy. Russian Asia will remain united to Russia, English and French Colonies will continue to be English and French; nations under European rule will be secured, in accordance with their cultural development and their number, national autonomy and participation in the government. ”

“ Although I had had the opportunity, for some years past, of studying the contrast between European and Asiatic modes of life, and the critical position in which I found myself made it incumbent upon me ever to be strictly on my guard, nevertheless, I could not avoid committing many glaring mistakes. The difference between Eastern and Western society does not consist merely in language, physiognomy, and dress. We Europeans eat, drink, sleep, sit, and stand, nay, I feel inclined to say, laugh, weep, sigh, and gesticulate otherwise than Eastern people. ”

“ Opposition to Occidental reform and attachment to Oriental modes of thought and conduct continue to exercise a powerful influence in Russian politics. Europe and Asia still fight for supremacy in the heterogeneous mass which constitutes this hybrid Empire, and there are those who believe that, although Russia poses as European in manner, in soul she is an Asiatic power;331 and that the time will come when the slender ties which bind her to the West will be snapped by the greater force of her Eastern affinities. ”

“ Eurasia, where it is probable that mankind originated, was the greatest land mass on the globe in Tertiary times. Modern Europe and North Africa formed relatively small peninsulas in the extreme west of this Tertiary land mass. It is probably from Eurasia that man spread out to the uttermost parts of the habitable globe, carrying with him his language and such cultural features as had developed at the time of each successive migration. No race or language or cultural invention seems to have entered Eurasia [Pg 19] from adjoining land areas. ”

“ We need only fix our eyes on the character of political life in Russia, its social circumstances, the relation of the people towards the upper castes of the governing circle, the general state of popular culture, and the modes of popular thought, to see how everything there is Asiatic, aye, wildly Asiatic in tendency; and how little, in spite of the long struggle after European civilisation, has yet been taken in, to speak comparatively, from what we call European or Western life. ”

“ On that immense frontier where Russia touches Asia, we shall everywhere find the Russians standing on a markedly lower level of development, and in freedom of manners far behind those Asiatic peoples to whom we would impart the advantages of our younger European as compared with their old Asiatic civilisation. ”

“ Europe never came to Asia. The Greeks built up a whole literature about the fact that Asia invaded their country ... and not because they invaded Asia. Afterwards the descendants of Alexander, the Macedonian Generals, founded a few dynasties in Western Asia. They disappeared, and they did not leave even a trace of themselves behind. Nothing European has ever taken firm root in Asia. ”

“ The movement goes on, and it is not primarily due to the density of population in European Russia. All Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under rather than over-populated. There is plenty of room. Why, then, should Russia increase? or why not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia. The old world is hollow at the core, and Russia has access to that great, wide hollowness, stands at the door of it and stares into the great emptiness. Then her people are wanderers; they have the wandering spirit. ”

“ In the view of mediæval Europe the inhabited world was cut off on the west by this mysterious ocean, and on the south by the burning sands of Sahara; but eastward it stretched out no one knew how far, and in that direction dwelt tribes and nations which Europe, from time immemorial, had reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodotus, the secular antagonism between Europe and Asia had become a topic of reflection among the Greeks, and was wrought with dramatic effect by that great writer into the structure of his history, culminating in the grand and stirring scenes of the Persian war. ”