CONTENTS

Anglo-Indians: the Dilemma of Identity By Sheila Pais James
A History of the Anglo-Burmese Community by Dean Burnett
George Thomas - The Rajah from Tipperary Text prepared by Allen Foster
Reviews of Tiger Dreams by Almeda Glenn Miller
"Anglo-Indians - Vanishing Remnants of a Bygone Era" Reviewed by Margaret Deefholts
George Brendish and the Indian Mutiny by Steve Brendish

EDITORIAL

Welcome to the 14^th issue of the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. There has been a break of about a year since the last issue of the IJAIS was published, the main reason for the break was the time and energy required to organise the first serious academic conference dealing with the Anglo-Indians. The Conference was titled "Who are the Anglo-Indians" and was held at the Carlton Crest Convention Centre in Melbourne, Australia on the 18^th of August 2002. After the Conference was successfully concluded an attempt was made to publish the conference proceedings in hard copy, a lack of funding put an end to this idea so I eventually published the Conference papers on the net. All of the above took up much of my precious spare time so that I’ve only just been able to return to the issue of publishing the IJAIS. Mea Culpa Mea Culpa.

The most pleasing aspect of the latest issue of the journal is the number of new researchers and authors who have sent their work to me to publish. The first article is by Sheila Pais James who discusses the continuing issue of the Dilemma of Anglo-Indian Identity. Sheila is studying at the Department of Sociology, Flinders University of South Australia and I look forward to reading more of her work. I would ask readers to peruse her reference list as it contains a number of more recent studies dealing with the Anglo-Indians such as my own Ph.D thesis.

For the first time I have a research article about the Anglo-Burmese Community to publish. Dean Burnett traces the history of the Anglo-Burmese from the late 1800s on to the present. In the latter part of his article he introduces the issue of modern day politics in the Union of Myanmar and how politics is impacting on the Anglo-Burmese today.

For the historians, we have an article about George Thomas – "The Rajah from Tipperary " .The article was taken from The Calcutta Review and prepared by Allen Foster for the IJAIS. Allen is another person I hope to get contributions from in the future.

Another new author to the IJAIS is Almeda Glenn Miller. Reviews of Almeda’s semi-autobiographical book Tiger Dreams appear in this issue of the IJAIS. I personally found the book intreguing from two perspectives. Firstly there is the issue of a person who has grown up in a Western country rediscovering their Anglo-Indian heritage and secondly, Almeda interweaves each chapter with "set up’s" as a potential part of a film. This is the first book dealing with Anglo-Indians that I have seen using this technique.

Margaret Deefholts writes a very positive review of Blair William’s "Anglo-Indians - Vanishing Remnants of a Bygone Era". I and Blair continue to disagree about the long term future of the Anglo-Indian Community; I believe that with the introduction of the internet and the increasing interest that people are taking in their history and ethnic backgrounds the Anglo-Indians will not die out in a generation or two. Blair on the other hand has taken the position that the Anglo-Indians will disappear in the next 50 years. I hope that he is wrong and that the number of Anglo-Indians showing an interest in their backgrounds will continue to increase. Still, Blair has done quite a detailed study of the Anglo-Indians in India, Britain, Canada and the USA and his work deserves to be read and discussed. Margaret is another new contributor and I'm sure we will see more of her work in the future.

Lastly, we have a short piece discussing the painting of the Anglo-Indian hero George Brendish. This article was written by Brendishs' great grandson. The painting of Brendish was commissioned for the conference "Who are the Anglo-Indians?". Not only is the story behind the painting discussed, the story of how it was discovered on the internet by a direct descendent of Brendish makes interesting reading by itself.

Please keep your work coming in – Dr. Adrian Gilbert, Editor IJAIS.

Dr. Adrian Gilbert - Editor, The International Journal of Anglo-Indian studies.

CONTRIBUTIONS

The editor will consider for publication short articles or research notes dealing with the Anglo-Indians. The issues covered in the articles may range from history, sociology and psychology to econometrics. Preference will be given to pieces emphasising current research data that might not otherwise be published. Material should be sent to the Editor - International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies, The Centre of Anglo-Indian Studies, 1 Kurt Place, Noble Park, Victoria, Australia. 3174. Alternately, material may be sent directly via E-mail to the Editor Dr. Adrian Gilbert

Individuals or organisations wishing to cite the work published in the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies, either in full or in part, should in the first instance obtain permission from the Editor.