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“The Foreign Element”: Newcomers and the Rhetoric of Race, Nation, and Empire in “Oxbridge” Undergraduate Culture, 1850–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Paul R. Deslandes
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Extract

The Oxford and Cambridge man has long inspired fascination both in Great Britain and abroad. Many have, in fact, acquired an illusory understanding of these enigmatic university students through various caricatures and representations created in literature and film. Yet, despite an apparent level of popular interest, relatively few attempts have been made to understand the culture of male undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge in a systematic and scholarly way. With the exception of Sheldon Rothblatt's work on student life in the early nineteenth century, J. A. Mangan's skillful exploration of the cult of athleticism's impact on the ancient universities, and some select studies of individual student societies and organizations, we know very little about the ways in which undergraduates lived their lives, saw their worlds, and viewed those who were traditionally excluded from these milieus. We know even less perhaps, despite the existence of Richard Symonds's examination of the relationship between Oxford and empire, about the ways “Oxbridge” undergraduates saw themselves as Britons and leaders of an imperial and “superior” English race. The conflation of English and British is intentional here. Applying English attributes to Britons did not generally present many problems for university men, even those from Scottish, Welsh, and Anglo-Irish backgrounds. “Britishness” and “Englishness” were often applied interchangeably by Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates although, as others have observed, uses of the term “English” tended most often to refer to the admired attributes or “personal” and “communal” traits of Britons, particularly those among the elite.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1998 , pp. 54 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1998

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References

1 Perhaps the most notable example of this is Hughes's, ThomasTom Brown at Oxford: A Sequel to School Days at Rugby. By the Author of “School Days at Rugby,” 2 vols. (Boston, 1861)Google Scholar. The university novel in the nineteenth century emerged as a very popular genre. On this genre in the twentieth century, see Carter, Ian, Ancient Cultures of Conceit: British University Fiction in the Post-war Years (London, 1990)Google Scholar. Recent films include Chariots of Fire (United Kingdom, 1981)Google Scholar, and Oxford Blues (United States, 1984)Google Scholar. For an earlier version of the latter, see A Yank at Oxford (United States, 1937)Google Scholar. Glimpses of these worlds are also offered in the 1980s Merchant-Ivory adaptations of E. M. Forster's novels. See, e.g., Maurice (United Kingdom, 1987)Google Scholar, and Howards End (United Kingdom, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 More work on female undergraduate culture is needed. For one good short study of the women's colleges, see Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1985), pp. 125–62Google Scholar. Reba Soffer has also observed this relative lack of scholarly studies on the cultures of Oxford and Cambridge students. See Soffer, Reba, Discipline and Power: The University, History and the Making of an English Elite, 1870–1930 (Stanford, Calif., 1994), p. 167Google Scholar.

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4 I will use the abbreviation “Oxbridge” throughout this article for several reasons. While problematic in its tendency to conflate and minimize differences between the two universities or, indeed, the subcultures and different outlooks of the particular colleges, it serves a useful function in denoting a certain form of higher education and highlights the similarities between Oxford and Cambridge as cultural systems. Furthermore, the ways in which British undergraduates conceived of race, nation, and empire remained fairly consistent at both universities. “Oxbridge” thus is a useful shorthand for conveying this similarity in perspective. R. D. Anderson notes the utility of this abbreviation in his Universities and Elites in Britain since 1800 (London, 1992), p. 10Google Scholar. I am also following the lead of Sheldon Rothblatt and J. A. Mangan who have both used the term “Oxbridge” in their work. For Richard Symonds's examination of Oxford, see his Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. While Symonds has illustrated the influence of the University of Oxford on empire and the influence of the empire on Oxford, no attempt has been made to explain the more insidious expressions of imperial, racial, and nationalistic ideals and discourses in the university setting or to chart the general reactions of British undergraduates.

5 For brief discussions of this, see Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), pp. 5–6Google Scholar; and Heathorn, Stephen, “‘Let Us Remember That We, Too, Are English’: Constructions of Citizenship and National Identity in English Elementary School Reading Books, 1880–1914,” Victorian Studies 38, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 399–401Google Scholar.

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9 Reba Soffer, in Discipline and Power, argues that the course of liberal study, especially as it was embodied in the study of modern history, acted as a licensing system for those members of the national elite trained at the ancient universities.

10 The importance of this imprimatur did not go unnoticed either by undergraduates or by contemporary observers. A quick look at some article and periodical titles supports this statement. For examples of student observations, see ‘C.T.C.,’ “Oxford Manners,” Oxford Critic and University Magazine 1 (June 1857): 19–24Google Scholar; The Oxford Manner (Oxford, 1913)Google Scholar; and The Oxford Point of View (Oxford, 1902)Google Scholar. For external observations, see Sandars, T. C., “Undergraduate Literature,” The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 3, no. 70 (28 February 1857): 196–97Google Scholar; and Collins, William Lucas, “Light and Dark Blue,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 100, no. 612 (October 1866): 446–60Google Scholar.

11 On the origins of the Oxford and Cambridge student bodies, see Anderson, C. Arnold and Schnaper, Miriam, School and Society in England: Social Backgrounds of Oxford and Cambridge Students (Westport, Conn., 1952)Google Scholar. See, also, Perkin, Harold, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London, 1989), pp. 370–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rothblatt, Sheldon, The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 86–93Google Scholar; and Stone, Lawrence, “The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body, 1580–1910,” in Stone, , ed., The University in Society, p. 74Google Scholar.

12 See Deslandes, Paul R., “Masculinity, Identity and Culture: Male Undergraduate Life at Oxford and Cambridge, 1850–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1996)Google Scholar, for a discussion of these traits and the various ways in which they were fostered at the universities. For other work on British masculinities in the nineteenth century, see Mangan, J. A. and Walvin, James, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1880–1940 (Manchester, 1987)Google Scholar; Roper, Michael and Tosh, John, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991)Google Scholar; and Tosh, John, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth Century Britain,” History Workshop Journal 38 (1994): 179–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 This construction is addressed in Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 This idea has been explored in a range of different studies. See, e.g., Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993), p. xxvGoogle Scholar; and Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), p. 6Google Scholar. See, also, Hall, Catherine, “‘From Greenland's Icy Mountains … to Afric's Golden Sand’: Ethnicity, Race and Nation in Mid-Nineteenth Century England,” Gender and History 5, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Herrup, Cynthia, “Introduction,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1992): 307–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This concept is also central to the work of gender historians. See Scott, Joan, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 7, 25, 28–29, 39, 41Google Scholar.

16 The process of university reform began in 1850 when a royal commission was formed to examine the state of Oxford and Cambridge. Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England was removed as a condition for matriculation and degree conferral in the 1850s. The year 1871 signaled the almost complete elimination of a statutory Anglican monopoly on the universities with the eradication of all religious qualifications except for those offices and posts that were explicitly clerical. See Mallet, C. E., A History of the University of Oxford (London, 1927), 3:281–353Google Scholar. On these reforms, see, also, Green, V. H. H., Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1963), pp. 297–337Google Scholar. Vera Brittain has addressed the unofficial (i.e., without admission to full rights and privileges, including degrees, until 1920 at Oxford and 1948 at Cambridge) presence of women in The Women at Oxford: A Fragment of History (London, 1960), pp. 70–71Google Scholar. Other accounts of women at the ancient universities include Leonardi, Susan, Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989), pp. 13–45Google Scholar; McWilliams-Tullberg, Rita, Women at Cambridge: A Men's University—though of a Mixed Type (London, 1975)Google Scholar; and Sutherland, Gillian, “The Movement for the Higher Education of Women: Its Social and Intellectual Context in England, c. 1840–1880,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Britain: Essays Presented to A. F. Thompson, ed. Waller, P. J. (Brighton, 1987), pp. 91–116Google Scholar.

17 See Stone, , “The Size and Composition, 1580–1910,” in Stone, , ed., The University in Society, pp. 67–69Google Scholar.

18 For figures on the growth of the student population, see Brooke, Christopher, A History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1993), 4:594Google Scholar; Engel, A. J., From Clergyman to Don: The Rise of the Academic Profession in Nineteenth Century Oxford (Oxford, 1983), p. 291Google Scholar; and Porter, H. C., “May Week,” Cambridge 20 (1987): 49Google Scholar. Between 1871 and 1893, forty-nine Indian students matriculated at Oxford. When a government committee was formed in 1907 to inquire into their status in the United Kingdom, the committee reported that figures for that year were thirty-two and eighty-seven for Oxford and Cambridge, respectively. See Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, p. 257Google Scholar. Numbers at Oxford, not surprisingly, declined during the war. In the Trinity term of 1920, however, the delegates for “oriental” students reported that the number of students from the “Orient,” most of whom were from India, stood at seventy-four (fifty-seven Indians, seven Ceylonese, one Malay, three Siamese, two Japanese, three Egyptians, and one Chinese). By the following autumn, that number had risen to one hundred twenty-three (one hundred eight Indians, five Ceylonese, three Siamese, one Egyptian, three Chinese, two Japanese, and one South African). See “Delegates for Oriental Students, Minutes of Meetings,” 1916–44, Minutes of the University Delegates Committees, Oxford University Archives, UDC/M/20/1. In a similar manner, the Intercollegiate Indian Students' Committee reported that for the 1919–20 academic year ninety-seven students were in residence at Cambridge. See Manning, Bernard, “Secretary's Report for 1919–1920,” Intercollegiate Students' Committee, Minutes, 1916–1943, Cambridge University ArchivesGoogle Scholar, Min. VII.12.

19 See Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, pp. 270–83Google Scholar.

20 See Greenstein, Daniel I., “The Junior Members, 1900–1990: A Profile,” in The History of the University of Oxford, ed. Harrison, Brian (Oxford, 1994), 8:51–52Google Scholar.

21 Antoinette Burton notes the importance of exploring this dynamic in “Colonial Encounters in Late Victorian England: Pandita Ramabai at Cheltenham and Wantage, 1883–6,” Feminist Review 49 (Spring 1995): 29–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Burton, , Burdens of History, p. 36Google Scholar. A component of this process is addressed in Lindeborg, Ruth H., “The ‘Asiatic’ and the Boundaries of Victorian Englishness,” Victorian Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 381–404Google Scholar.

23 These attributes and the rhetoric of race, nation, and empire were refracted through the prism of the student press. This article is based on an analysis of 192 magazines, newspapers, and reviews produced by undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge between the years 1850 and 1920. These ranged in form and content from serious literary reviews to ephemeral and largely humorous, if not wholly silly, pamphlets produced for boat race festivities. Publications of this sort, occasionally rendered problematic by the anonymity of authors and editors, were one of the many locations in which undergraduate identities were formulated, defined, and recast during these years. Newspapers, magazines, and reviews amused undergraduates, provided valuable news, articulated codes of behavior, defined undergraduate space, instructed new students, censured authorities, and functioned as one device that unified disparate undergraduate populations.

24 “The Ordinary Undergraduate,” Rattle 1, no. 3 (27 February 1886): 3Google Scholar. For an earlier example of this sort of description, see ‘C.T.C.,’ “Oxford Manners,” p. 23.

25 See Haweis, Hugh Reginald, “Editor's Address,” Lion University Magazine 1 (May 1858): 5Google Scholar; and “Editorial,” Pageant Post, by Members of Merton College (June 1907): 2–3Google Scholar.

26 “Cambridge and Democracy,” Cambridge Observer 1, no. 13 (29 November 1892): 9Google Scholar.

27 “Editorial,” Pageant Post, by Members of Merton College, p. 3Google Scholar. For another example, see ‘An Undergraduate,’ “A Day in His Life at Oxford,” Murray's Magazine 3 (May 1888): 669Google Scholar.

28 “The Corpse in the Cargo (Borrowed from Ibsen),” Snarl 2 (14 November 1899): 14Google Scholar.

29 “University Life,” Great Tom: A University Magazine 1 (April 1861): 6Google Scholar.

30 “Our Fourth Year,” Granta 5, no. 75 (16 January 1892): 130Google Scholar.

31 For four examples of this, see [Copleston, R. S.], Oxford Spectator 8 (12 December 1867): 4Google Scholar; Lefroy, Edward, “The Long Vacation,” in Undergraduate Oxford: Articles Reprinted from the Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduate's Journal, 1876–7 (Oxford and London, 1878), p. 2Google Scholar; “Oxford,” Cambridge Observer 1, no. 10 (8 November 1892): 10Google Scholar; and “Thoughts That Occur,” 'Varsity 14, no. 329 (13 October 1914): 3Google Scholar.

32 For examples of this particular strategy, see [Hilton, Arthur Clement], The Light Green: A Superior and High Class Periodical 1 (May 1872): 16Google Scholar; “On Bedmakers,” Cambridge Meteor 7 (14 June 1882): 125–27Google Scholar; “Scouts,” Undergraduate 1, no. 16 (1 November 1888): 243–44Google Scholar; and “On College Servants,” Blue: A 'Varsity Journal 2, no. 12 (14 November 1893): 4Google Scholar.

33 The concept of “little worlds” was routinely applied by undergraduates to descriptions of the universities. See, e.g., ‘Carfax,’ “Words and Their Derivations,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1, no. 4 (2 May 1874): 58Google Scholar; “Jottings from the Journal of a Japanese,” Cambridge Tatler 2 (13 March 1877): 9Google Scholar; “Editorial,” Ephemeral 1 (18 May 1893): 2Google Scholar; and “Thoughts That Occur: ‘I See That All Things Come to an End,’” 'Varsity 8, no. 24 (17 June 1909): 604Google Scholar.

34 “University Life,” p. 6.

35 For reactions not originating with undergraduates but with some of the same concerns, see “Letter to His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury,” 1867, Vice-Chancellor's Correspondence, Cambridge University Archives, V.C. Corr. III.1(3); and “Letter to His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury,” 1871, Vice-Chancellor's Correspondence, Cambridge University Archives, V.C. Corr. III.1(38). These letters, written largely by graduates and resident fellows, implored the archbishop to protest and resist proposed legislation to remove religious tests. One college fellow, in a pamphlet written in 1876 as a response to reform, observed: “We are living in the midst of great changes.” See “A Fellow of a College,’ Spiritual Destitution at Oxford: A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Oxford; Being an Appeal to His Lordship to Provide Facilities for Divine Worship and Instruction in the Faith for 2,500 Undergraduates Residing for a Considerable Portion of Each Year within the Limits of His Jurisdiction (Oxford, 1876), p. 3Google Scholar. Charles Dickens (the Younger) similarly noted in 1884 that “Oxford is at present in a transition state.” See Dickens, Charles, “The Dictionary of the University of Oxford,” Dickens's Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1884), p. 120Google Scholar. In one case, an undergraduate view of reform was cautiously optimistic. See “Oxford,” Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1 (April 1856): 242–43Google Scholar. The primary concern here was with restoring Oxford's position as a national institution.

36 ‘G.J.W.,’ “Brasenose Ale,” Great Tom: A University Magazine 2 (June 1861): 91Google Scholar.

37 Jews were finally admitted to the House of Lords in 1885. David Feldman, in his illuminating study of Jews in England, has noted the importance of understanding these episodes of conflict as ones that were not simply about emancipation but, rather, were about English national identity more generally. See Feldman, David, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840–1914 (New Haven, Conn., 1994), pp. 10–15, 45–47Google Scholar.

38 “File about Admission of a Jew,” 25 January 1869, Cambridge University Registers, Cambridge University Archives, C.U.R. 28.1.1 (40.1–5).

39 On the prominence of this phenomenon in political culture, see Wohl, Anthony, “‘Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi’: Disraeli as Alien,” Journal of British Studies 34, no. 3 (July 1995): 377–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 ‘Tristram’ [Housman, A. E.], “‘Varsity Ballads.—No. 2 over to Rome,” Ye Rounde Table: An Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1, no. 5 (1 June 1878): 68–69Google Scholar. In 1883, sixty-one of seventy undergraduates at Pembroke College submitted a petition to the master protesting the visit of Mr. Hartwell de la Garde Grissell, Master of Arts, Chamberlain to Pope Leo XIII, in which Grissell is described as “notorious in Oxford as a proselytising schismatic,” and his presence in an Anglican institution is described as “most distasteful.” See “Petition to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Oxford,” 8 June 1883, Oxford University Miscellaneous Papers, vol. 4, Bodleian Library, Oxford, G.A. Oxon. b. 140Google Scholar.

41 See Colley, Linda, “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1992): 316–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This argument is also developed more fully in her Britons. On the importance of anti-Catholicism as a social, political, and intellectual force in the middle four decades of the nineteenth century, see Paz, D. G., Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (Stanford, Calif., 1992)Google Scholar.

42 Undergraduates after 1858 in Cambridge and 1868 in Oxford were no longer required to be members of individual colleges in order to matriculate at the university. This change enabled poorer students, and those whose temperaments were less amenable to college life, the opportunity to live on their own in licensed lodging houses. These students, quite frequently foreigners, represented a very small minority and, as noncollegiate men, tended to be excluded from a range of activities considered typical. These differences were observed in George, H. B., “Unattached Students at Oxford,” Cambridge University Gazette 3 (11 November 1868): 23Google Scholar; and Lefroy, Edward, “The Great Unattached,” Undergraduate Oxford (Oxford and London, 1878), pp. 109–17Google Scholar.

43 Edward K. Jupp, letter dated 31 October 1868, in Correspondence of a Junior Student of Christchurch, Oxford in the Years, 1S68–70 (Blackheath, 1871), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

44 For another manifestation of this, see Malchow, H. L., “Frankenstein's Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth Century Britain,” Past and Present, no. 139 (May 1993): 90–130Google Scholar.

45 “The Return from the University Sermon, 1890,” Moslem in Cambridge: A Liberal and Advanced Journal of Universal Scope, Views and Tendencies, Adapted to the Tastes of All Nations, Conducted by Hadji Seivad and a Talented Heathen Staff, no. 2 (prophetic date, May 1890Google Scholar; actual date, November 1870): illustration between 2 and 3.

46 [Davies, Gerald S.?], ”Nursery Rhymes,” Moslem in Cambridge, no. 3 (prophetic date, 1890Google Scholar; actual date, April 1871): 3.

47 [Davies, Gerald S.?], ”The Editor's Address,” Moslem in Cambridge, no. 1 (prophetic date, 1 May 1890Google Scholar; actual date, November 1870): 1.

48 Recent developments in the study of humor have noted this multiplicity of functions. With specific reference to the multidimensionality of humor as a cultural phenomenon, see Palmer, Jerry, Taking Humor Seriously (London, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An attempt to establish a conceptual framework for the sociology of humor appears in Powell, Chris and Paton, George E. C., “Introduction,” in Humor in Society: Resistance and Control, ed. Powell, C. and Paton, G. E. C. (London, 1988), pp. xiii–xxiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 For one discussion of some of these roles and the problems that these changes presented in London during the 1880s, see Walkowitz, Judith, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), pp. 15–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 “Cometary Matter,” Comet 1 (March 1886): 2Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

52 “The Varsity Sports of 1920,” 'Varsity 6, no. 17 (2 May 1907): 276Google Scholar.

53 On the emergence of athleticism as a coherent ideology, see Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School.

54 For a discussion of some of these issues, see Mangan, J. A., The Games Ethic and Imperialism (Harmondsworth, 1986)Google Scholar.

55 “University Boat, 1890,” Moslem in Cambridge, no. 2 (prophetic date, 1 May 1890Google Scholar; actual date, November 1870): 3.

56 This photograph of the University College boat appeared in an Oxford paper called Eights Illustrated. See Eights Illustrated (May 1902), p. 3Google Scholar of photographic supplement.

57 “The University Boat, 1890,” Moslem in Cambridge, no. 2: illustration opposite 4. An almost identical illustration appeared in another undergraduate publication in 1901. A cartoon entitled “Dream of the Future” depicted the university boat with the same diverse crew in the Oxford paper 'Varsity. This was a response to recent discussions among undergraduates about the contributions of Indian students to the University of Cambridge. See “A Dream of the Future,” 'Varsity 1, no. 5 (19 February 1901): 69Google Scholar.

58 ‘Y’ [Reves, G. L.], Tatler in Cambridge 25 (25 October 1871): 20Google Scholar. Colley has much to say about the traditional antipathy between the French and the English in an earlier period. See Colley, , Britons, pp. 17, 24–25, 33–35, 86, 88–90, 251–52, 312, 368Google Scholar. See, also, Cottrell, Stella, “The Devil on Two Sticks: Franco-Phobia in 1803,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, ed. Samuel, Raphael (London, 1989), 1:259–74Google Scholar. As we are able to see from this example, this strategy continued to be a feature of nationalist discourse later in the nineteenth century.

59 “Arrowlets,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1, no. 6 (30 May 1874): 96Google Scholar.

60 Hoggarth, Graham, “Rugger Captain to Freshman from Very Far beyond the Tweed,” Cap and Gown: 'Varsity Humours by Graham Hoggarth and Others (Oxford, 1906), p. 37Google Scholar.

61 “Manners Maketh Men,” Screed 1, no. 1 (11 November 1899): 5Google Scholar.

62 On crises of confidence precipitated by the Boer War, see Perkin, , The Rise of Professional Society, pp. 56–61, 158Google Scholar.

63 For a brief history of this development, see Secretary of State, Memorandum on the Position of Indian Students in the United Kingdom (London, 1916), pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

64 Williams, Monier, The Indian Institute in the University of Oxford: The Circumstances Which Have Led to Its Establishment, the Objects It Is Intended to Effect, with a List of Its Supporters, a Statement of Receipts and Expenditure, and an Appeal for Further Aid, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1883), pp. 4–6Google Scholar.

65 Compulsory Greek, but not Latin, was finally abolished as a requirement for all students at Oxford and Cambridge after 1920.

66 See Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, p. 258Google Scholar. See, also, Kumar, Hira Lal, “Oxford University and the Indian Students,” Indian Appeal: A Monthly Magazine on Religious, Social, Education, and Political Questions of India 4, no. 24 (April 1892): 299–300Google Scholar. This article also asserts that Indians preferred to attend Cambridge over Oxford because “of the kind and generous treatment they received there at the hands of the authorities” (p. 299). Symonds notes that the government report from 1907 contains evidence that would seem to indicate that this applied only to the earlier period and that, by the early twentieth century, favor had shifted towards Oxford. See Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, p. 259Google Scholar.

67 “Occasional Notes,” Fleur-de-Lys 1, no. 2 (21 May 1870): 12Google Scholar.

68 For some general figures on Cambridge, see Brooke, , A History of the University of Cambridge, p. 594Google Scholar. Brooke reports in another instance in this book that in 1897 undergraduates totaled around 3,500 (p. 297). For Oxford in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Green, Vivian, “The University and the Nation,” in The Illustrated History of the University of Oxford, ed. Prest, John (Oxford, 1993), p. 73Google Scholar. On the twentieth century, see Wenden, D. J., “Sport,” in Harrison, , ed., The History of the University of Oxford, 8:526Google Scholar.

69 Edward K. Jupp, letter dated 25 October 1869, in Correspondence of a Junior Student, p. 72. Prince Hassan was the son of Ismael Pasha, Khedive of Egypt (Khedive was the title assigned to the viceroy of Egypt by the Turkish government in 1867). He matriculated at Christ Church in October 1869 and was created a doctor of civil law in June of 1872. See Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxonienses, Later Series, E–K (Oxford, 1888), 2:624Google Scholar.

70 For information on the scholarship and its recipients, see “Boden Scholarships,” in Oxford University Calendar for the Year 1882 (Oxford, 1882), pp. 52–53Google Scholar. De matriculated in 1874 at age twenty-one. In 1875, he was called to the bar at Middle Temple and later served in the Indian Civil Service. See Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxonienses, Later Series, S–Z (Oxford, 1888), 4:1, 632Google Scholar.

71 ‘Shoddy,’ “Ode to the Boden Scholars,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1, no. 11 (9 March 1874): 24Google Scholar. In the ode, the name is spelled “Brahajerandath De.”

72 Naidley, H. M., Oxford Commemoration by a Fellow of Experientia (London, 1888), pp. 7–15Google Scholar.

73 “Editorial Notes,” Undergraduate 1, no. 15 (25 October 1888): 226Google Scholar.

74 “A Lecture at Christ's,” Cam: A ‘May Week’ Magazine (9 June 1894), p. 19Google Scholar. Christ's College, like Balliol, acquired a reputation at this time as a place where nonwhite foreigners and, more particularly, Indians, might find an accommodating and receptive climate. At Balliol, this was due to the well-documented connections among the college, its influential Master Benjamin Jowett, and the Indian Civil Service. Many of the Indians in attendance at both universities were there partly to receive training as Indian Civil Service probationers or to further their prospects for careers in professions such as the law.

75 “The Foreign Element,” Ephemeral 5 (23 May 1893): 34–35Google Scholar.

76 See “Memorandum on the Position of Indian Students in the United Kingdom; Reports of the Intercollegiate Indian Students' Committee,” Intercollegiate Indian Students' Committee Minutes, Cambridge University Archives, Min. VII.12; “Register of Colonial and Indian Students from June 1902,” University Registers, Oxford University Archives, UR/L/12/1; “Papers Relating to Indian and Other Oriental Students, c. 1920,” Lodging House Delegacy Papers, Oxford University Archives, LHD/SF/1/5; and “Accounts of the Oriental Student's Delegacy,” 1916–44, Minutes of the University Delegates Committees, Oxford University Archives, UDC/A/2, UDC/M/20/1.

77 For a brief discussion of Indian students, see Visram, Rozina, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain, 1700–1947 (London, 1986), pp. 177–87Google Scholar.

78 Dykes, F. J., “Proctor's Report for 1913–14,” Proctor's Notebooks, Cambridge University Archives, C.U.V. 78, p. 104Google Scholar. This is not to imply that they, too, were not subjected to a rigorous system of discipline; they indeed were. The discrepancy is, however, noted here to illustrate the degree to which most nonwhite undergraduates, as imperial subjects, were seen to need a form of supervision that was much more intrusive, given British assumptions about their “home” cultures and “natural” proclivities, regardless of where they might have been educated prior to “coming up.” The extent to which the idea of uninhibited sexual license was a familiar trope in colonial discourse has been explored in several different works. See Paxton, Nancy, “Mobilizing Chivalry: Rape in British Novels about the Indian Uprising of 1857,” Victorian Studies 36, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 5–30Google Scholar; and Ware, Vron, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London, 1992)Google Scholar. This need for increased supervision was also part of a broader tendency to view Indians as childlike, in need of guidance and constant vigilance, especially in the metropole. See Greenberger, Allen, The British Image of India: A Study in the Literature of Imperialism, 1850–1966 (London, 1969), pp. 42–43Google Scholar.

79 The Oxford and Cambridge Unions were, arguably, two of the most important student organizations. Aside from serving a social function as private clubs, they sponsored weekly debates and were a central feature of the extracurricular, intellectual life of the universities. See Hollis, The Oxford Union; and Brooke, , A History of the University of Cambridge, p. 291Google Scholar.

80 Pryde, Jehu, “The Black Peril,” Granta 14, no. 300 (4 February 1901): 174Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., p. 175.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 See Craddock, Percyet al., Recollections of the Cambridge Union, 1815–1939 (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 169–92Google Scholar.

86 Husain matriculated in 1899 and received a bachelor of arts degree, after having already been awarded one from Punjab University in 1897, in 1901. He was called to the bar in that same year and went on to a prominent career in government in his native Punjab. See Venn, John, Alumni Cantabrigienses: Part II, 1752–1900 (Cambridge, 1944), 2:471Google Scholar.

87 Fazl-I-Husain, , “Correspondence,” Granta 14, no. 301 (9 February 1901): 201Google Scholar. The editor in this same number expressed concern that Husain not confuse his opinions with those expressed by Pryde: “I [the editor] absolutely refuse to submit to having his [Pryde's] possibly spiteful and rather inaccurate accusation fastened onto myself as the President of the Majlis [Husain] undoubtedly does by his ambiguous use of the pronoun ‘you’” (p. 202).

88 “Motley Notes,” Granta 14, no. 301 (9 February 1901): 190Google Scholar. Four men with the last name of Obeyesekere were at Cambridge between the years 1898-1903. All four were from Ceylon and members of Trinity College. Three (Donald, James Peter, and James Stanley) were brothers. Any one of the four could have been the speaker identified in the Oxford paper 'Varsity simply as the Cingalese, Mr. Obeyesekere, who was reportedly “very angry” with the Granta. See ‘The Other 'Varsity,’ “From Cambridge,” 'Varsity 1, no. 4 (12 February 1901): 59Google Scholar.

89 “Billingsgate” is “the name of one of the gates of London and hence of the fishmarket there established. The 17th century references to the ‘rhetoric’ or abusive language of this market are frequent and hence foul language is itself called ‘billingsgate’” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. [Oxford, 1989], 2:195Google Scholar).

90 Husain, , “Correspondence,” p. 202Google Scholar.

91 “Advertisement for ‘English Language Lessons for Foreign Students,’” Oxford Manner (May 1913): 21Google Scholar.

92 On Oxford, see Darwin, John, “The Growth of an International University,” in Prest, , ed., The Illustrated History of Oxford University, pp. 336–70Google Scholar; and, on Cambridge, Brooke, A History of the University of Cambridge, pp. 511–66. Not all undergraduate reactions to this growing internationalism were negative. In one case, “cosmopolitanism” at Oxford was described as a refreshing influence. What is remarkable is that despite such an admission, the notion of British superiority, represented in this case in Oxford athleticism, is upheld. See, “Oxford and the Olympic Games,” 'Varsity 13, no. 305 (14 October 1913): 3–4Google Scholar.

93 Reeve, F. A., Cambridge (London, 1976), pp. 102–3Google Scholar. Visram has also made similar observations about descriptions of Ranji. See Visram, , Ayahs, Lascars and Princes, p. 673Google Scholar. Ranjitsinjhi matriculated at Trinity College in 1889 and left Cambridge as a Cricket “Blue,” but without a degree, in 1893. For biographical information, see Venn, , Alumni Cantabrigienses, p. 243Google Scholar.

94 Cited in Memorandum on the Position of Indian Students, p. 25.

95 The advantages of Oxford were enumerated in the will of the scholarships' benefactor, Cecil Rhodes: “Whereas I consider that the education of young colonists at one of the Universities in the United Kingdom is of great advantage to them for giving breadth to their views for their instruction in life and manners and for instilling into their minds the advantage to the Colonies as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire. And whereas in the case of young Colonists studying at a University in the United Kingdom I attach very great importance to the University having a residential system such as is in force at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge for without it those students are at the most critical period of their lives left without any supervision.” See Scholz, R. F. and Hornbeck, S. K., Oxford and the Rhodes Scholarships (London, 1907), p. 11Google Scholar. On the Germans, see Winter, J. M., “Oxford and the First World War,” in Harrison, , ed., The History of the University of Oxford, p. 5Google Scholar.

96 For some of the reactions of senior members, see Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, p. 165Google Scholar.

97 Compton, Montague, “Through Oxford Glasses,” Oxford Point of View 2, no. 10 (November 1904): 88Google Scholar.

98 Cooke, Desmond F. T., “Through Oxford Glasses,” Oxford Point of View 1, no. 1 (May 1902): 2Google Scholar.

99 “At the Breakfast Table,” Blue: A 'Varsity Journal 1, no. 1 (April 1893): 4Google Scholar.

100 “Thoughts That Occur,” 'Varsity 6, no. 23 (13 June 1907): 347Google Scholar.

101 This was indeed a common strategy employed by undergraduates in distinguishing insiders from outsiders. See ‘Much’ [Iwan-Muller, E. B.], “An American in Oxford,” Shotover Papers, or, Echoes from Oxford 1, no. 5 (16 May 1874): 71–73Google Scholar.

102 “Thoughts That Occur. ‘A Goodly Heritage,’” 'Varsity 8, no. 1 (15 October 1908): 303Google Scholar.

103 “Eights Week” refers to the week in the summer term at Oxford during which the annual intercollegiate boat races occurred. These events were important social and sporting rituals that preoccupied both universities throughout the period examined in this study. At Cambridge, the event was usually referred to as May Week.

104 “Oxford in Transformation,” Bump 4 (23 May 1902): 3Google Scholar.

105 On some British reactions to the practice of saber-dueling, see Gay, Peter, The Cultivation of Hatred (New York, 1993), pp. 9–11Google Scholar.

106 The importance of these anxieties in the early twentieth century has been commonly accepted by most historians of Britain. See, e.g., Searle, G. R., The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 5–15Google Scholar; and Davin, Anna, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop Journal 5 (Spring 1978): 5–65CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

107 See Hoggarth, Graham, “The American Invasion,” and “The Teutonic Invasion,” both in Cap and Gown, pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

108 The quotation is from Williams's memoir: Williams, Eric, Inward Hunger (London, 1969), p. 45Google Scholar, cited in Symonds, , Oxford and Empire, p. 269Google Scholar.

109 Mitchell, David Alexander, “One Rhodes Scholar's Unhappy Experience,” Globe and Mail (9 February 1991), p. D7Google Scholar.

110 This is a quotation from Dr. Julia Briggs, an Oxford English tutor, that appeared in Viner, Katharine, “In the Finals Analysis,” Guardian (8 July 1992), p. 19Google Scholar.