Interesting. This is probably a dumb question, but for clarity purposes ... the Empress of India and Queen of Great Britain are not the same person, correct?
Edit, further reading on the document when it was submitted ... it claims the date of the papers is 4 Oct 1889. That doesn't make sense. He arrived 1870, but wasn't naturalized until 1889? 19 years?
Originally Posted by: Zero2Cool
1. They are different titles. But they are held by the same person. It was a typically British move. The East India Company had essentially overthrown the line of Mughal emperors. But when the East India Company was dissolved (late 1860s), the English still had this, er, imperial attitude toward "The Raj". And therefore it was only natural for a Tory like Disraeli to convince the queen that it wouldn't hurt to be an empress, too. (If I recall correctly -- kings and queens never did so much for me; they were well on their way out as anything but a symbol already by this time -- but I think Victoria's daughter was going to be emperor when her husband ascended to the German throne, so one couldn't have the "superior" British queen/mom with the lesser title.
2. 19 years isn't that surprising for naturalization.
Today, everything is complicated by "green cards" and other visa questions. But 19th century immigration was a different thing. There was "border control," but once the person was in, they were pretty much in. Too, immigrants tended to do one of two things -- either they moved inland very soon, or they lived in ethnic "ghettos" (a term that today tends to get equated to "slum" but originally simply indicated an area of a city where one or another nationality concentrated. If you were an Irish immigrant, you moved to where other other Irish were. Germans moved to where the Germans were, Hungarians to the other Hungarians, etc.
It wasn't a time of great prosperity for all of them, and almost all of them had to deal with various kinds of bigotry, nativism, discrimination, municipal corruption, etc. But the feds and the "need for papers" -- those were 20th century "innovations".
One of the great freedoms that everyone took for granted in the nineteenth century was the freedom of movement. The only ones who couldn't move were the slaves -- and even they were allowed to move if they managed to get far enough north or west (at least until the Compromise of 1850).
Also a function of the 20th century and the spread of technologies of communication and electrification was the regular concern with daily politics and other things demanding an assertion of "citizenship" to participate. Things such as the "privilege" of paying income taxes -- it was Lincoln's (ahem!) innovation, but only with the 16th amendment in 1913 would it have the consensus of legitimacy that, unfortunately, it enjoys now.
So, while your ancestor would have been able to become a citizen relatively easily (essentially had to demonstrate a sufficient ability to speak English) after he got past any border restrictions, he probably wouldn't have needed to. Many inhabitants of the ghettos of this era never bothered.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)