Former British Prime Ministers

[Rufusd]

Did the United Kingdom, in history, ever have a Prime Minister of mixed blood. I am especially interested in knowing whether there ever was an Anglo-Indian Prime Minister in the 18th or the 19th century?
Thank You

Rufus D'souza

[Lil O'lady]

Rufus, while the easy answer is 'no', this is governed by the extent to which the families concerned knew about, or chose to conceal, details of their ancestry. Speaking as one who recently discovered one of my grandparents was Indian, which had never been spoken about, I have a suspicion that many more instances of 'mixed blood' existed over the past two hundred years than is recorded in conventional history.

[VHG]

I remember watching "Who do you think you are" on BBC a year or so back.

It featured Alistair McGowan (good scottish name !!).

Turns out his ancestors lived in India.

He flew out there and met a whole community of "McGowans" living in India.

They were rather surreal, these Indians living and dressed like people from an English suburb.

Bit like the comedy show "Goodness Gracious Me" where they showed those Indian families trying to act English and speak with a "posh" accent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_McGowan

[jake-the-peg]

Rather depends on what counts as mixed-blood.

Disraeli came from a Jewish family. His Grandfather came to England from Italy in 1748

[Lil O'lady]

Jake, you're right on the money with raising this kind of issue. many Jewish families from southern Spain and the Mediterranean would also have had arabic / north african ancestry - again, whether they knew it or not.
You have only to walk around places like Bristol and Liverpool, old seaports that had close slaving contacts, to see the number of faces that clearly have some African ancestry.
It's also fascinating to explore why people want to know these things now, whereas it has always been by-passed. I wonder in the past how much was a desire to 'pass for white' in a racist society, or how much was just lack of interest - my own parents appear to have been completely uninterested in anything to do with their own past. Maybe they lacked the time and the resources to explore.

[jake-the-peg]

Well that wasn't what I was thinking about.

The idea of "mixed blood" is a rather flawed one. It kind of assumes that there is some significant genetic difference between Europeans and people from elsewhere like North Africa.

It's mostly in our minds - We mentally ignore certain European variations - live Celtic Ginger hair or Blue eyed Blonde haired Swedes but obsess over differences between say "Europeans" and "Arabs" or "Indians".

Once it was important - people belived that keeping bloodlines close was good - there was "Royal blood", a heirarcy of races.

Sadly it wasn't good, it was very very bad and as we now know wider ancestry is a good not a bad thing and the arisocracy of Europe sufferred dreadfully because of it.

Thankfully now ideas about purity of blood are restricted to the knuckle draggers of the political far right.

[Lil O'lady]

Jake, I think we're supporting the same point - my own view is that above and beyond knowing we're all homo sapiens (although I think I've taught a few neanderthalers over the years) I can't see any positive good coming from agonising over genetic ancestry. I find it amusing that over time, various groups have prided themselves on their pedigree, without ever really knowing much about it. Unfortunately notions of ethnic purity have even in recent years been built into national policies all over the globe.

[tyke1]

I only heard this mentioned recently (on the BBC?). Lord Liverpool was said to be Anglo-Indian. His father (the first Earl of Liverpool) was twice married. He married firstly Amelia, daughter of William Watts, governor of Fort William, Bengal, in 1769. She died in July 1770, only a month after the birth of her only child, Robert who later became Tory Prime Minister. He was PM for 15 years from 1812