This paper situates Anglo-Indian gifts within a spectrum of
emotionally-charged exchange mechanisms through which material
objects circulated in British India. At one end of this spectrum was the
market, perhaps best exemplified by the public auctions at which the
personal possessions of deceased Anglo-Indians were sold to any buyer
who could pay the purchase price set at probate. At the other end
of the spectrum of exchange were gifts, commissions and bequests,
forms of exchange that offered the British colonial elite mechanisms
for combating the powerful centrifugal forces that operated within
Anglo-Indian families—most notably disease, death and distance
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