The Firingees of Bangladesh: Colonial Encounters, Eurasian Identity and the History of Christian Culture (1500?2025)
By Prof. Dr. Milton Biswas
From the arrival of Portuguese sailors in the sixteenth century to the hidden legacies of Eurasian Christian communities in modern Bangladesh, The Firingees of Bangladesh offers the first full historical and cultural reconstruction of one of South Asia's most overlooked peoples.
The term "Firingee"?once used to describe European outsiders, mixed-race Christians, traders, interpreters, and colonial intermediaries?reveals a unique world of hybridity, migration, faith and identity negotiation across five centuries.
In this groundbreaking study, Prof. Dr. Milton Biswas traces the emergence of Eurasian Christian communities in Bengal, exploring how Portuguese encounters shaped new cultural formations at the crossroads of Asia and Europe. Drawing on archival research, oral histories, missionary records, and postcolonial memory, the book uncovers forgotten histories of Christian culture, creole languages, mercantile networks and marginal lives.
This volume explores:
- The origins and meanings of the term Firingee
- Portuguese maritime expansion and colonial encounters in Bengal
- The formation of Eurasian Christian communities and hybrid identities
- Creole languages, cultural adaptation and social belonging
- Christianity's interaction with Bengali religious worlds
- Economic roles in ports, trade and colonial labor systems
- Decline under British imperial restructuring
- The Partition of 1947 and Eurasian identity crisis
- The survival of Firingee descendants in postcolonial Bangladesh
- Archival recovery and rewriting plural national histories
The Firingees of Bangladesh is essential reading for scholars and readers of South Asian history, colonial studies, religious history, Eurasian identity, Christian cultural heritage and Bangladeshi pluralism.
A landmark contribution to global Bengali historiography and subaltern Christian studies.
