One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The last occasion on which I addressed the Society, in 2000, was, like today's, a memorial lecture: to honour the memory of Professor Charles Beckingham. I spoke then about a subject that combined Professor Beckingham's interests with my own: Ibn Battuta and the Mongols. As it happens, I have already done something similar for Professor Lambton: a 90th birthday lecture to the British Institute of Persian Studies, in 2002, when my subject was a reappraisal of the Mongol period in Iran. This was given in the presence of the honorand: a slightly daunting experience; and those who knew her will not be surprised to learn that she was by no means uncritical, if not necessarily of what I said, then certainly of my delivery of it. So I decided that today I would talk about Professor Lambton herself, and attempt to discuss and evaluate her contribution to the field of study which she adorned for so long.

The papers of Sir Edward Denison Ross (1871–1940) at the Archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) include a series of letters from Hungary, which thank him for his contribution in bringing the world's attention to Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784–1842). Some of these letters were produced collectively by learned societies and signed by dozens of male and female members, but many were also written by ordinary people expressing their admiration for Csoma, the scholar who had walked most of the way from Transylvania to India in search of the roots of the Hungarian language and people. This lively response was a result of a lecture that Ross delivered on 5 January 1910 at the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta which became a sensation in Hungary in a matter of weeks. This article therefore looks at the phenomenon of how Ross's purely academic research, to use Albert von Le Coq's words, “touched a nation's heart” and earned him a celebrity status in Csoma's homeland. It is particularly interesting to uncover the motives behind this great publicity and show how it was orchestrated by two young Hungarians in Calcutta for not entirely unselfish purposes.