Eurasians

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They will not allow us to enlist as soldiers. They insult us when we ask for employment in the Government offices. The Government Railway Companies and the 371merchants stick up notices ‘No Eurasians need apply.’ When they advertise for clerks they add, ‘No Eurasians wanted.’
“In the mutiny they made all the use they could of the Eurasians. They were then considered good enough to help them fight and to protect their families. But if another mutiny occurs, the Babus or the Russians may take the country for all the help these haughty aristocrats will get from me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Eurasians are classified to those who stand second in the list of Europeans and those born in any part of India, and who are the Pedigree of European descendants, being born of father European and mother East Indian, and notwithstanding those who can prove themselves as really good Indian descendants, such as mother and father of the same sex, therefore these are called Eurasians. ”

“ The catalogue of European residents being concluded, it remains to notice the Eurasians, the greater number of whom were descendants of Portuguese and natives. Most of these were mean, degraded, lazy individuals forming a section of the population not very much respected. Some, no doubt, were respectable persons, acting either as writers (clerks) , or tradesmen, tailors, carpenters, etc. ”

“ It occasionally happens that pure-bred Natives, with European name and costume, successfully pass themselves off as Eurasians, and are placed on a footing of equality with Eurasians in the matter of diet, being allowed the luxury of bread and butter, coffee, etc. ”

“ I think this is their greatest and worst vice in India, if not at home.”
“Do I not know this?” I asked. “Do I not carry the proof of this in my face every hour I live?”
Said he, “To come to the point. The Eurasians, not all of them, but many, have all the vices and scarcely any of the virtues of both races. They will tell lies of the weakest, flimsiest kind, with not the shadow of a leg to support them. They make promises and break them without any 361hesitation whatever. They are indolent and indifferent, without any of the stamina of manhood. They are weak-minded, soft-hearted and careless. ”

“ The names of many Eurasian gentlemen will live in history. One fact in the formation of the Eurasian must not be overlooked. A great deal depends upon the classes that unite. There is no doubt that if the best English blood had sought the daughters of the princely houses in India, there would have been born and bred a far more noble race than now exists. Too often the Eurasian has been the result of the union of the worst with the worst. The British soldier of bygone days was a rough, illiterate man, possessing his full share of animalism. ”

“ Following the geographical employment of the word Eurasia to describe the whole of the great land mass which is divided into the continents of Europe and Asia, Eurasian has come to be descriptive of any half-castes born of parents representing the races of the two continents. It has further an ethnological sense, A. H. Keane (Ethnology, 1896) proposing to find in the Eurasian Steppe the true home of the primitive Aryan groups. Joseph Deniker (Anthropology, 1900) makes a Eurasian group to include such peoples (Ugrians, Turko-Tatars, &c.) as are represented in both continents. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural van-guard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they preëminently displayed the salient points of distinctive national character which have rendered European civilization so far superior to Asiatic. The nations that dwelt in ancient times around and near the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea were the first in our continent to receive from the East the rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of social and political organizations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Asia beheld with astonishment and awe the uninterrupted progress of a hero, the sweep of whose conquests was as wide and rapid as that of her own barbaric kings, or the Scythian or Chaldaean hordes; but, far unlike the transient whirlwinds of Asiatic warfare, the advance of the Macedonian leader was no less deliberate than rapid; at every step the Greek power took root, and the language and the civilization of Greece were planted from the shores of the Aegean to the banks of the Indus, from the Caspian and the great Hyrcanian plain to the cataracts of the Nile ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In speaking of the Black Sea we have already entered upon that of Asia Minor, which, taken altogether, was perhaps the richest and most important anywhere carried on by the Greeks. Every province of this fertile and beautiful division of Asia abounded in costly or useful articles of merchandise, and its roads and rivers incessantly poured towards Greece not only the productions of its own soil, but those also of Central Asia, brought thither by the caravans from both shores of the Caspian. ”

“ The Eurasian resists exposure to the sun better than the European, and, while many wear solah topis (pith sun-hats) , it is by no means uncommon to see a Eurasian walking about in the middle of a hot day with his head protected only by a straw hat or cap. ”

“ We may, perhaps, forget sometimes, thinking over the greatness of its place in the history of civilisation, how small a country Greece really was; how short the distances upwards, from island to island, to the coast of Asia, so that we can hardly make a sharp separation between Asia and Greece, nor deny, besides great and palpable acts of importation, all sorts of impalpable Asiatic influences, by way alike of attraction and repulsion, upon Greek manners and taste. ”

“ After the Greeks in Europe, Asia and Africa, after Rome, after Byzantium, after the Franks and the German-Roman Empire, after the Crusades, and after Venice, Prussia, having restored the Empire, continued the task of uniting Europe with Asia and Africa and organizing an Old World, under a single control.
The condition of the world is, of course, other than it was in the ancient and mediæval eras; formerly Asia meant to Europe what we call to-day the Near East. The Far East was in no connection with the Near East, the Near East being racially akin to Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Macedonian conquest of Hither Asia was a victory won by men of Greek civilization, but only to a very partial extent a victory of that civilization. The West did not assimilate the East except in very small measure then, and has not assimilated it in any very large measure to this day. For certain reasons, among which some geographical facts--the large proportion of steppe-desert and of the human type which such country breeds--are perhaps the most powerful, the East is obstinately unreceptive of western influences, and more than once it has taken its captors captive. ”

“ 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. ”