The Indian Occupation

 

I'm not sure about the uniform, but I think it's British.  Throw in people who look like they're Indian, and it's a reasonable bet that this photo was taken during the British occupation of India.  Also known as the British Empire. 

Views of the World, Market Day, Daijeeling, India

First of all, it's Darjeeling, not Daijeeling.  Whether it's a misprint, or the postcard's publisher didn't know the difference....well, who knows.

 As communities in India go, Darjeeling is a fairly recent one.  It started out as a hill station in the mid nineteenth century.  In a nutshell, India can be a pretty hot place, and it wasn't uncommon for the British occupiers to come up sick from heat, malaria, and a whole host of other nasty stuff that significantly shortened their lives.  So, build mini resorts with English architecture, gardens, food, fun, and drink.  Build them high enough in the Himalayan foothills so that things were cool enough to recall an English autumn, and with any luck, fewer soldiers and diplomats dropping dead.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Click on Views of the World in labels to see more cards from the series.  

Views of the World, Bengali Girls In Eden Garden, Calcutta India

Coincidentally, I've just finished reading Calcutta, by the Indian author, Amit Chaudhuri.  It's a wonderful book that I highly recommend.  And by the way, Chaudhuri rejects the new spelling, Kolkata.

Click on Views of the World in labels to see more cards in the series.

Hindu Dancer

This one's labeled, "WINTER 1959-60."  It's cut from a larger picture.  But was it taken in India or is it from a  performance in the United States?  Haven't a clue.

Mission Boys

Written on the back, "Some of the stuff we work with: Remy and Florian and Michael-who, with Raphael the Novice, make a quartet that is hard to beat intellectually and spiritually-in India.  ASPS  22/8/53"

I'm not real big on missionaries.  Yes, I do understand that many of them provide health care, food, and education in countries where many people go without those things.  But the way I figure it, if someone wants to switch religions, they'll do it without outside interference.  

Anyway, I'd like to recommend a book.  Head Hunting In the Solomon Islands by Caroline Mytinger.  And no, it's not what you think.  It's a very vintage, probably out of print, travel book about two young American women who bum their way to the south seas, earning money painting portraits of the local colonial grandees so that they can also paint portraits of the native islanders.  (At least Caroline paints.  Her companion Margret plays the ukulele.)  The book has it's fair share of racial and ethnic insensitivity, par for the course for a book written in the 1930s and published in 1942, but it also has some interesting insights on the British colonials, and their odd sense that the islands and their peoples were property to be used and exploited as needed.   I'd check thrift shops and used book stores.  So much more satisfying than Amazon.  Remember, Jeff Bezos is not your friend.  

Where were these taken?

With the Hindi writing on the dental office sign and the cow, wandering freely in a city, it's tempting to say India. But then again, people from the Indian sub-continent had settlements all over the far east before the arrival of the European colonial powers. Too, the British used Indians as administrators in colonies as far away as south Africa. I don't know why, but the two ladies in the last photo look Malaysian to me. I'm always willing to be corrected. From the twenties I would think.

Bhutanese Milkmen in Stereo

I've written about Keystone, and Underwood & Underwood, the two largest stereoview companies in the United States in past posts. Anyone interested in going into more detail should click on stereoview in the labels section. In my post of November 28, 2009, "Underwood & Underwood, Geography" I dealt specifically with the Underwood brothers and their company. The backbone of the stereoview industry was geographic images. Staff photographers and free lancers provided many Americans with the only window on the wider world that they would ever know. I was born in 1955 and my first grade teacher still used old stereoviews to teach us geography. The caption on this card reads, "Bhutanese milkmen with curious bamboo-jars, at the public Fountain, Darjeeling, India. Copyright 1903 by Underwood &Underwood."