Service personnel: Australian experiences of interculturality and violence in British India

As a white settler society Australia is often presumed to have been disconnected from Asia and Asians during the first half of the 20th century. However, some Australians lived and worked in British ruled India and brought their memories and experiences of violence, poverty, and intercommunal discord in Asia back into what was then white Australia. Australia and India were both subordinate components of the British Empire and the imperial associations between them meant there was contact and experience of colonial India within military frameworks. Drawing on the letters, diaries and memoirs of military Australians who served in British India, this chapter examines the accounts of the colonial experience of India from an Australian perspective