By the early 20th century, the ideology of racial distance predominated in British India. This simultaneously threw a spotlight on the 'Anglo-Indian problem' and sent intimate relationships between British colonials and Indian women into the shadows of history. One Scottish missionary's solution was to isolate and raise the mixed-race children of British tea planters in an institution in Kalimpong - in the foothills of the Himalayas - before permanently resettling them far from their maternal homeland as workers in New Zealand.

Historian Jane McCabe leads us through a compelling...