The sixty years between 1773 and 1833 determined British paramountcy in India. Those years were formative too for British Eurasians. By the 1820s Eurasians were an identifiable and vocal community of significant numbers particularly in the main Presidency towns. They were valuable to the administration of government although barred in the main from higher office. The ambition of their educated elite was to be accepted as British subjects, not to be treated as native Indians, an ambition which was finally rejected in the 1830s.

As early as the 1830s, Eurasians (later called Anglo-Indians) of British birth already exceeded the number of British citizens in colonial India. At the time of India's independence they outnumbered all British residents. Yet within the development of this community there were problems to be faced (social, economic and attitudinal), as well as questions which its rise posed to British authority. Sometimes these were hypothetical: could, for instance, a large mixed-race population of British descent cause political danger to British interests in India as had the colonists of America? Other questions raised by a fast-growing mixed-race population which identified with its British fathers were practical: how should they be educated and employed? And were they to be treated as British or Indians?;The 60 years between 1773 and 1833 determined British paramountcy in India. Those years were formative, too, for British Eurasians. By the 1820s Eurasians were an identifiable and vocal community of significant numbers, particularly in the main presidency towns. They were valuable to the administration of government although barred in the main from the higher office. The ambition of their educ