The British Empire
By the late 19th century, the British Empire was the largest formal empire that the world had known. In addition to white settler colonies in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand, there were colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. In 1815, Britain had become the dominant power in the world following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, with its wealth and power built on the slave trade and the growing demand for sugar, tobacco, cotton, tea, and coffee. Apart from southern Africa, the move into sub-Saharan Africa did not really begin until after 1885, when the major western European nations agreed to divide Africa into spheres of influence.
Throughout the 19th century, the British claimed that the empire maintained the Pax Britannica—or peace of Britain. However, in what has been called Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, the British Army was at war somewhere around the world every year during Queen Victoria’s reign. The British Empire was at its largest following World War I, when Britain was granted control of a number of German colonies in the Treaty of Versailles. Ironically, at that time the empire was beginning to implode because of the growth of nationalist movements in the colonies and the debt from the war. The process of decolonization accelerated after World War II, as the majority of colonies gained their independence and joined the British Commonwealth—essentially a trading organization. Although the process of decolonization is often portrayed in British textbooks as peaceful, in fact this was not the case, notably in India and Kenya.
Furthermore, during the 19th and 20th centuries, an increasing number of people from the colonies began to travel to Britain, often for educational opportunities. Following World War II, the British government invited people from the Indian subcontinent, African colonies and the Caribbean to immigrate to Britain to help rebuild the country. This changed the demographics of modern day Britain, which is now a multicultural society.
Recently, scholars have argued that empire did not just occur overseas, but that empire also shaped domestic British history and British identity. From 1850, there was an explosion of images available to the British public about the empire. We live in such a visual world today it is hard to imagine what the impact of the sudden and very dramatic growth of print culture meant to the British, and how the images that began to flood the country in illustrated magazines shaped understandings of empire at home. Nonetheless, these images functioned to instruct their readers about the far away places and people who were connected to their lives through the reach of empire. With them came lessons about indigenous cultures, racial hierarchies, and gender roles.
Women in the British Empire
While British women in the empire were always outnumbered by British men, from the beginning of empire women traveled to many sites of empire, where they established homes and found opportunities and a way of life not available to them in Britain. Beginning around 1850, the numbers of white women living in the empire increased, partly because the empire grew considerably in the later 19th century—the period historians call the Age of New Imperialism—and partly because of the rising concern in Britain over the relationships between British men and indigenous women. Encouraging white British women to travel to the colonies was seen by the British as a way to protect and maintain the social hierarchy of the colonial world, while preserving British racial purity.
In evaluating the role of British women in the empire, it is important to differentiate between colonies in Africa and India and white settler colonies where the situation of British women was substantially different. In Australia, where the number of British settlers rapidly outnumbered the indigenous population, men substantially outnumbered women, especially in the early stages of white settlement. Male convicts outnumbered female convicts four to one, and the beginning of the colony in Australia was marked by the rape of women—both white and indigenous. In Australia, the numbers of women did not equal that of men until after World War II. As the colony developed, most settlers moved to isolated rural farms where women lived hard-working lives. By contrast, in New Zealand, while men did outnumber women, it was a colony that encouraged settlement by families—a factor that shaped the lives of women. Interestingly, in 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote.
In India, British women enjoyed a way of life that would not have been possible for most of them at home. This included the luxury of a large number of servants and the prestige and sense of racial superiority that came with being a colonial power. Until late in the 19th century, Africa was thought unsuitable for white women. The only exception to this was southern Africa, where the British government had encouraged settlement by families since the 1820s, as part of the effort to increase British dominance over the Boer population.
The relationship between British women and colonized women was complicated by a number of factors. For most British women, the empire provided a place of possibility where they could experience a range of opportunities denied them in Britain. At the same time, until well into the 20th century, white women were not allowed to work outside the domestic sphere in empire, except in very specific occupations usually closed to British men, such as the education of colonized women. In most cases, white women sought to maintain a social distance between themselves and colonized women. Yet they lived in close proximity to their female servants, and in many cases entrusted the care of their small children to them.
A number of British women did seek to alleviate the situation of colonized women through missionary work, education, and medicine. They called colonized women their “sisters,” in a relationship that has been characterized by Antoinette Burton as “imperial maternalism.” Attitudes towards colonized women varied, depending on the site of empire. It was not uncommon for British women to view Indian women as needing sisterly protection from child marriage and the restrictions of purdah. On the other hand, attitudes toward African women were much less sympathetic, and they were frequently seen as primitive and highly sexualized.
Following the end of World War II, increasing numbers of women from former colonies moved to live in Britain, to work in a wide range of jobs, notably nursing. For many, Britain was seen as a place of economic possibility, although most of the jobs were low paying.
Views of the British Empire
Until recently, the British Empire was represented in popular culture and scholarly literature as a masculine preserve. The empire was seen as a place where men pursued glory, found wealth, and discovered their masculinity.
In this view of empire, indigenous women and British women were usually seen as marginal, or, in the case of indigenous women, often absent altogether. Scholarship on British women in the empire has portrayed their presence in negative ways, stressing their shallow and secluded lives and their reluctance to establish any contact with non-Europeans, except servants—whom it was implied they treated in demeaning and demanding ways. Furthermore, it was argued that the presence of white women in the colonies damaged race relations and created a great social distance between colonizers and colonized. This was because white women needed to be protected by white men from what was purported to be the unbridled passion of colonized men, and because the arrival of white women in the colonies ended sexual relationships between British men and indigenous women. Obviously, this point of view ignores the exploitative nature of most of these relationships. While these relationships could include marriage, more commonly they did not, and the children were not recognized as British. Moreover, the family was often abandoned when the man returned home. This interpretation of the impact of British women on empire, which still lingers on in the scholarship and popular understanding of empire in Britain today, gave rise to the argument that women lost Britain the empire.
More recently, the studies on both British women and indigenous women have developed more nuanced interpretations of their role in empire. Some scholarship frames British women’s contribution to empire around questions of their complicity or resistance in an effort to challenge the earlier negative stereotype. This approach portrays women either as villains deeply implicated in the running of empire, or as heroines who challenged the hegemonic processes instituted by British men.
More convincingly, other scholarship demonstrates how British women in a male-dominated system could reinforce and at times challenge the power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. However, even those women who challenged specific aspects of empire, such as lack of educational opportunities for Indian women, did not question the framework of British empire.
Thus, regardless of whether the interactions were marked by condescending disregard for indigenous peoples or by a seemingly benign maternalism, the power hierarchies implied in the project of empire resulted in a system that privileged white womanhood and the cultural traditions of the British over those of the colonized. In the last 20 years, postcolonial feminism has demythologized the British Empire by highlighting the insidious legacy for colonized women that, in many places, still exists today.
Painting, The Secret of England's Greatness
There are many paintings that represent the British Empire, but The Secret of England’s Greatness (1863) by Thomas Jones Barker is one of the most powerful. It depicts Queen Victoria presenting a bible to a kneeling African chief in the Audience Chamber at Windsor. In the background are her husband, Albert, and members of the government. The painting was reproduced in engravings and was very popular at the time. Despite the frequent depiction of empire as a masculine world, the queen was the symbolic figurehead of the British Empire, especially after she was crowned Empress of India in 1876. As you look at the painting, try to imagine what it might suggest to someone living in Victorian Britain about the British Empire. Do you think it possible for a Victorian to imagine switching the position of the two central figures—in other words, Queen Victoria kneeling to an African chief?
Painting, The Children of Edward Holden Cruttenden
This 18th-century painting of the children of Edward Cruttenden depicted with their ayah was painted in Britain by Joshua Reynolds. The earliest immigrants from India came to Britain as the servants of employees of the East India Company. Many Indian women came to Britain employed as ayahs or nannies. British families who had spent time serving in India brought an ayah back with them to care for the children on the long journey back to Britain. If they no longer needed their services, they were expected to provide for the return voyage home—many did not. Some ayahs were able to return home to India by advertising in newspapers for a position with a family traveling to India. Some Indian women found themselves permanently stranded in Britain. It was not until 1897 that a home for ayahs was opened in London, providing them with a place to stay until they could get a return passage home.
Letter, Mary Moffat
Mary Moffat (1795-1871) was the wife of Robert Moffat, the missionary for the London Missionary Society who established a mission center at Kuruman in southern Africa. Their daughter married David Livingstone. In 1816, Robert Moffat was ordained and accepted as a missionary by the London Missionary Society (LMS). The previous year, while working as a gardener, Moffat had proposed to Mary Smith, the daughter of his employer. Both young people were 20. Like Robert, Mary had attended a missionary meeting earlier in her life, and she shared his interest in missionary work. Initially, her parents objected to the match because they feared they would never see her again if she went overseas as a missionary wife. For a number of years, Robert Moffat worked as an itinerant preacher in the Cape Colony. On December 27, 1819, after waiting two years for her parents to agree to the match, Moffat married Mary Smith in Cape Town. In 1820, he was appointed to evangelize among the Twsana at the Kuruman mission station. Taking his new wife with him, Moffat moved to take up his new position, arriving after a long and exhausting journey of several months. Kuruman, the most northerly LMS mission station, was situated on the edge of the Kalahari desert, so the soil was sandy and the area was frequently short of water. Although Kuruman would eventually become a major center of missionary activity, when the Moffats arrived the mission had barely begun. In order to survive, Robert Moffat needed to be a hunter, farmer, builder, and carpenter in an unstable frontier area, where struggles over land, labor, cattle, and water between competing groups were endemic. Mary Moffat struggled alongside him, raising her growing family. On December 18, 1828, pregnant with her fourth child and feeling unwell and fearful that she might die in childbirth, Mary wrote to a friend (Mrs. Wrigley) expressing her concern that she would leave “a beloved partner with 3 or 4 small children in the midst of barbarians without a civilized female . . .to keep up a civilized establishment in the midst of barbarians is attended with much care and labour on our parts.” Like other missionary wives, Mary Moffat was expected to create a domestic space, in keeping with evangelical values of domestic femininity. Robert Moffat retired from missionary service in 1870 and the couple returned to England. Mary Moffat died the following year in January.
Painting, Scotland Forever
Painted by Elizabeth Butler, Scotland Forever (1881), depicts the charge of the Heavy Cavalry at the battle of Waterloo fought in 1815. The British victory at Waterloo ended the Napoleonic Wars, and ensured Britain’s position as the worlds most dominant imperial power. Elizabeth Thompson, later Lady Butler, was a leading artist of military scenes in the late nineteenth century, and she continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1920. Her pictures depicting soldiers in battle led John Ruskin to admit that he’d been wrong in asserting that women could not paint military scenes. Married to Lieut. Gen. Sir William Butler, Elizabeth Butler took care to draw soldiers as accurately as possible. Although she never observed soldiers fighting in battle, she did watch soldiers training on maneuvers and took great care to correctly represent military uniforms. The enormous popularity of military paintings in the late 19th century, especially those depicting the Napoleonic period, suggests that there was a nostalgic desire to return to a past imagined as glorious and unchallenged.
Diary, Lady Florentia Sale
Lady Florentia Sale (1790-1853), wife of Major-General Sir Robert Henry Sale, wrote a journal of her experiences during the First Afghan War. In January 1842, in what is usually seen as a humiliating defeat for the British army, 4,500 British and Indian troops with around 12,000 camp followers retreated 116 miles from Kabul back to the British garrison at Jalalabad. Within a month, the majority were dead from exposure due to the appalling winter conditions, starvation or bullet wounds. A few were captured, including Florentia Sale. She was held in captivity for nine months before being rescued by British forces dispatched from India. The British then withdrew from Afghanistan. Florentia Sale wrote her journal during her captivity, probably with the hope that one day she would publish it. In 1843, after her rescue, her journal was published rapidly becoming a bestseller in Britain. A sketch of her was included in the work. Notice that she is wearing a turban in the sketch.
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“We commenced our march at mid-day, the 5th N.I. in front. The troops were in the greatest state of disorganization: the baggage was mixed in with the advanced guard; and the camp followers all pushed ahead in their precipitate flight towards Hindostan . . .The pony Mrs. Stuart rode was wounded in the ear and neck. I had fortunately, only one ball in my arm; three others passed through my poshteen near the shoulder without doing me any injury. The party that fired on us were not above fifty yards from us, and we owed our escape to urging our horses on as fast as they could go over a road where, at any other time, we should have walked our horses very slowly . . .The ladies were mostly traveling in kajavas, and were mixed up with the baggage and column in the pass: here they were heavily fired on; many camels were killed. On one camel, in one kajava, Mrs. Boyd and her youngest boy Hugh; and in the other Mrs. Mainwaring and her infant, scarcely three months old, and Mrs. Anderson’s eldest child. This camel was shot. Mrs. Boyd got a horse to ride; and her child was put on another behind a man, who shortly after unfortunately killed, the child was carried off by the Affghans. Mrs. Mainwaring, less fortunate, took her own baby in her arms. Mary Anderson was carried off in the confusion. Meeting with a pony laden with treasure, Mrs. M. endeavoured to mount and sit on the boxes but they upset and in the hurry pony and treasure were left behind; and the unfortunate lady pursued her way on foot, until after a time an Affghan asked if she was wounded, and told her to mount behind him. This apparently kind offer she declined, being fearful of treachery; alleging an excuse that she could not sit behind him on account of the difficulty of holding her child when so mounted. This man shortly after snatched her shawl off her shoulders, and left her to her fate. Mrs. M’s sufferings were very great; and she deserves much credit for having preserved her child through these dreadful scenes. She had not only to walk a considerable distance with her child in her arms through the deep snow, but had also to pick her way over the bodies of the dead, dying and wounded, both men and cattle, and certainly to cross the streams of water, wet up to the knees, pushed and shoved about by man and animals, the enemy keeping up a sharp fire, and several persons being killed close to her.”
Painting, In Memoriam
In 1857, British rule in India was challenged when Indian sepoy troops of the British Indian Army began a year-long insurrection against the British. To the British, the most shocking aspect of the events in India was the massacre of white women and children by Indian men. There was extensive coverage in the press and illustrated journals, which stimulated calls for revenge. Paton’s famous painting In Memoriam was dedicated by the artist to the Christian heroism of “British Ladies in India during the Mutiny of 1857.” In 1858, the first version of the painting, which depicted Indian sepoy troops bursting through the door, was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art in London. The painting aroused immediate debate, as it was thought to suggest that British women were about to be raped by Indian soldiers. The review in The Illustrated London News on May, 15, 1858 stated: “The subject is too revolting . . .The picture is one which ought not to have been hung.” Although British women and children were known to have died during the insurrection, there was no evidence of rape. The artist painted out the Indian soldiers in the original painting, and substituted Scottish highlanders. It was this version that was engraved and sold, leaving intact the myth of the British woman as sexually inviolable by colonial men.
Autobiography, Mary Seacole
In 1857, only 24 years after the British had abolished slavery in the empire, Mary Seacole (1805-1881) published her autobiography entitled the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Written in Britain, following Seacole’s experiences working among sick and wounded British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, the book became an immediate bestseller. Seacole, who had grown up in Jamaica, was the daughter of a Scottish solder and a free woman of African descent who had taught her daughter the art of healing. Seacole traveled to the Crimea at her own expense and in the face of considerable opposition from the British War office, who refused to support sending “a motherly yellow woman” to the Crimea so she could “nurse her sons.” When she arrived in the Crimea, she set up the British Hotel where she sold goods, supplied hot food, and gave medical help to officers and soldiers. Although Mary Seacole is less well known than her contemporary Florence Nightingale, her work earned her the love and respect of the soldiers who served in the Crimean War. This brief excerpt from her book highlights Seacole’s representation of herself as a professional relied upon by soldiers for medical treatment, her attitude towards British soldiers and the war, and the opportunities available during a 19th-century war for a determined woman. Seacole’s book also complicates our understanding of colonial identities, and raises interesting questions about how a woman from a British colony could create a role for herself at the heart of an imperial war.
Travel Narrative, Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) is one of the best known British women to have visited West Africa during the period historians call the Age of New Imperialism. Her early life gave no indication of her future renown. She spent the early part of her life confined to her home taking care of an invalid father. In possession of a small income following the death of her parents, she made two trips to Africa, one in 1893, and then another two years later. While in West Africa, she stayed with missionaries whose work she admired. She also traveled up rivers in a canoe collecting fish specimens for the British Museum and making ethnological observations on the people she met. On her return to Britain, she found people were fascinated by her experiences. She published a book Travels in West Africa (1897), and became a very popular speaker on the lecture circuit, talking about her experiences in Africa. She died of typhoid during the South African War (1899-1902), having traveled to Africa to nurse British soldiers. Despite the fact that she made choices in her own life that challenged the accepted gender norms for middle-class Victorian women, she was not in favor of giving women the vote. She argued that women were not well educated and well informed enough to vote responsibly. This excerpt from a lecture Kingsley gave highlights her attitude to Africa and Africans. Imagine if you were in the audience what you might understand about racial difference and the importance of the role of the British Empire in Africa.
Fiction, Indian Tales of the Great Ones
Born in 1870 into a Parsee family in India, Cornelia Sorabji (1870–1954) became a writer and a lawyer. By the end of the Victorian period, many elite Indian men had traveled to Britain to study. Cornelia Sorabji became the first female law student at Oxford University, where she studied from 1889 to 1894. Since women were barred from practicing as lawyers in Britain until 1919, after graduating she returned to India. There she used her legal skills to work for the interests of women property holders who lived in purdah. In 1923 she was called to the English bar, but continued to practice in India. She was in favor of continued British rule, and in later years lived in London. Apart from Indian Tales of the Great Ones, written for children, she published a number of other works including Love Life Behind the Purdah (1901), India Recalled (1936), and her memoir India Calling (1934).
Indian Tales of the Great Ones is a book of children’s stories that was published in Bombay, India, and London. The central elements of the story are based on Indian history. In 1236, following the death of her father, Raziya came to the throne after a succession struggle with her half-brothers. She only ruled for four years, before she was defeated in battle by opponents. However, she is remembered in Indian history as a wise and capable ruler, even though her gender handicapped her ability to rule in a Muslim world.
Fiction, Nervous Conditions
In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Africa in the British colony known as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. From the age of two, she spent four years living in Britain. On her return to Rhodesia, she attended a missionary school in Mutare. In 1977, she went back to Britain to attend Cambridge University, but became disillusioned with life and politics in Britain, returning home without completing her medical degree. She continued her education in University of Harare in psychology. In 1988, Dangarembga achieved success as a novelist with the publication of Nervous Conditions, the first novel to be published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman. In 1989, Nervous Condition won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Dangarembga took the title of her book from Jean-Paul Sartre's introduction to Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth: “The condition of native is a nervous condition.”
From around 1850, British explorers, settlers, and missionaries moved north from southern Africa, eventually leading to the creation of the colony of Rhodesia, named after Cecil Rhodes of the British South Africa Company. During the 1960s, demands by black Rhodesians to be included in the political process led a conservative white-minority government to declare independence from Britain. Under Ian Smith, white Rhodesians withstood British pressure, economic sanctions, and guerrilla attacks until 1980, in an attempt to cling to white supremacy. In 1980, the white minority finally consented to hold multiracial elections, and Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory. The country achieved independence on April 17, 1980, under the name Zimbabwe.
Nervous Conditions is set in Rhodesia in the 1960s. The central character is Tambudzai, a young Shona girl who lives on an impoverished farm. After the death of her brother, Tambu has the opportunity to live with her Western-educated uncle and to receive a missionary Western education. The book depicts a picture of colonial domination from the perspective of a young girl.
In this excerpt, Tambudzai is on her way to attend the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart after receiving a scholarship.
Autobiography, Head Above Water
Buchi Emecheta was born in Nigeria in 1944 to Igbo parents. She was orphaned at a young age, and subsequently educated at a missionary school in Nigeria. She was married at the age of 16 to Sylvester Onwordi, a student she had been engaged to since childhood. In 1960, she moved to Britain with her husband and children, where she worked as a librarian. Despite the difficulties she encountered living in Britain and raising her five children on her own, she not only received her doctorate in sociology, but she became a best-selling writer. Today she is an internationally renowned novelist who has published many books mostly set in Africa. She also published an autobiography about her life in Britain called Head Above Water, which documents her experiences as an immigrant in Britain in the 1960s.
Immigrants have moved to live in the British Isles from Africa and the Asian subcontinent for at least 500 years. However, the demographics of Britain only really began to shift after World War II, when the British government encouraged immigration from Commonwealth countries to help resuscitate a war-devastated Britain. In 1951, the population in Britain of people of African, Afro-Caribbean and Asian descent was estimated to be 74,500; by 1962 it was 500,000. This rapid rise in immigration created a climate of anxiety, and what came to be perceived in Britain as a “social problem.” In 1958, the first race riots in Britain occurred in West London and Nottingham as white reaction to immigration began to escalate. Today Britain is a multiracial society. The 1991 General Census showed that 2.5 million or 4.5% of the population were part of minority groups. Ten years later in the 2001 census, the figures were higher, with one in twelve Britons coming from an ethnic minority.
In this excerpt, Buchi Emecheta describes her expectations before she arrived in Britain, and the very different reality she experienced.
Discussion Questions:
* What do the sources suggest about the way the lives of women, both colonized and colonizers, varied across different sites of empire?
* What can we learn from these sources about the ways that the British Empire shaped the lives of colonized and colonizing women? How did women shape the empire?
* What do the sources suggest about the relationship between different women in the empire?
* What kind of connections did women help to establish between Britain proper and the rest of the British Empire?
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