Broken Vows and the Colonial Polity: Adultery, Separation, and Divorce in British India, c. 1780–1830

 The paper explores the impact of broken marriages among the British governing elite upon social and political relations on the subcontinent in the era of East India Company rule.  Working from the premise that British elites’ engagement with colonial expansion in India was fuelled to a substantial extent by their need to accumulate capital for marriage, I investigate the ways that broken marriages among the Anglo-Indian governing class illuminate the broader social, economic and political dynamics of imperial expansion.   Distanced from their nuclear families, the youths who predominated in the Company civil service (and in imperial military and naval forces) engaged in a range of marital behaviours that departed from accepted British norms.   Concubinage, premature marriages and adultery shaped the ways in which the governing elite in India interacted as a social group and played a key role in its ability to reproduce itself over time.  Relations that were viewed as fully functional and proper often proved deeply problematic upon return home to Britain. Deploying evidence from private correspondence, wills, inventories, newspapers and government papers, this paper will use case studies in marital breakdown to illuminate the nexus between domestic life and colonial governance in India prior to the establishment of Crown Rule in 1858.