Children in an Imperial Encounter

Pre.doc. project by Karen Vallgårda, Tamil Studies at Colombia University and The New School for Social Research, New York

The project is part of Galathea3 and a fieldwork grant is reserved by The Bikuben Foundation. Travel expenses are granted by Nordea Danmark Fonden, Carlsbergs Mindelegat for Brygger I. C. Jacobsen, and Augustinus Fonden

The project’s topic is childhood in the cultural encounter between Indians and Danes in South India 1862-1919. In that period, the majority of Danes who traveled to India were Christian missionaries and they came into contact primarily with so-called “low-caste” Indians. It is often neglected, however, that children also took part in the encounter. Indian children attended missionary schools, were adopted by Danes or worked in their households. Danish children came to India with their parents or were born in Índia. Finally, a small number of mixed-descent children resulted from sexual relations between Danes and Indians. The aim of the project is to investigate how Danish and Tamil adults reflected and acted in relation to children and childhood, as well as how the different groups of children experienced the encounter.

Children in imperial encounters constitute a marked site of cultural contestation, internally in as well as among the various groups. Making the children embody the “right” race, class, caste, and gender roles was a critical element in the reproduction, challenge, and reorganization of imperial power relations. The childhoods of the Indo-Danish encounter were thus structured by discursive as well as practice-related battles about principles of inclusion and exclusion in the different social categories.

Including both Danish and Tamil sources, the project sheds light on a hitherto uncovered aspect of Danish historical relations to another part of the world. At the same time, it aims to bring a historical perspective to bear on the many cultural encounters taking place in today’s postcolonial and globalized world.