Imperialism and sexual exploitation: A response to Ronald Hyam's ‘empire and sexual opportunity’

Berger, Mark T.

doi:10.1080/03086538808582781

Cited by 46 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…10 As a number of scholars have pointed out, the memsahib hypothesis has several gaping holes, not the least of which is that sexual relationships between white men and colonised women often provoked the ire of not only the women themselves, but also the men of their communities. 11 More provocatively, Ann Laura Stoler argues that this hypothesis fundamentally reverses the directionality of cause and effect; it is not that white women's arrival had the unfortunate side effect of introducing racial divisions into colonies. Rather, colonial authorities imported white women precisely at the moments when they wished to establish more firm racial boundaries; their arrival 'coincided with perceived threats to European prestige, increased racial conflict, covert challenges to colonial politics, outright expressions of nationalist resistance, and internal dissension among whites themselves'.…”

Section: Troublesome Intimacies: White Women and African 'Houseboys'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recipes for Disaster: Cookery Books and the Management of Intimacy in Colonial Kenyan Settler Homes 1919–1944

Williams

2022

Gender & History

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This article examines two household guides produced by and for settler housewives in colonial Kenya. The article argues that these texts were part of a larger discursive project which emphasised the necessity of maintaining social and affective distance between white women and the African men who worked as domestic servants in colonial homes. Importantly, this distance was viewed as necessary to maintaining the sexual wellbeing of the colony, since both officials and settlers suggested that white women were to blame for cases of interracial rape in the colony. This discourse held that white women inculcated sexual desires in their servants by behaving towards them with excessive intimacy. This article focuses especially on 'KiSetla', the dialect of KiSwahili used in Kenyan settler homes. As a language native neither to mistress nor servant, KiSetla was predestined to produce daily confusion between white women and their African male employees. Yet, this was precisely the point -the production of quotidian hostilities helped diffuse anxieties about cross-racial and gendered contact. This article positions household guides as disciplinary texts which sought to manage the intimacies of the colonial home through scripting affective distance between white mistresses and African servants.The Kenya Settlers' Cookery Book and Household Guide was first published in the late 1920's 'in the hope', as its preface states, 'that it would assist newcomers to East Africa'. 1 The text had all the standard trappings of a British cookbook -with some 'exotic' flair. Readers could find a tried-and-true recipe for plum pudding, but they could also find a list of suggested goods to pack for a successful safari. Colonial cookbooks like this one produced a particular vision of colonial womanhood, one which emphasised the domestic sphere and the housewife's role as mistress of all she surveyed. In Kenyan settler homes, this domain extended to the management of a full household of domestic servants, almost always male and almost always African. Nestled among ads for 'Quinacine' flu cure and tips for saving rancid butter, Kenyan household guides offer a wealth of data on how housewives were instructed to comport themselves in the racially charged spaces of the colonial home.This article focuses on two colonial Kenyan household guides -The Kenya

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Section: Troublesome Intimacies: White Women and African 'Houseboys'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recipes for Disaster: Cookery Books and the Management of Intimacy in Colonial Kenyan Settler Homes 1919–1944

Williams

2022

Gender & History

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“…5 Anstruther does at times raise issues deserving of further attention. His comments on Stanley's total lack of 'all social instinct, especially in relation to women' (p. 187), confirmed in the latter regard by Richard Hall's more recent biography (1974), reminds us that even now there needs to be more work done on the connection between sexual repression and imperialist ventures, even though controversy rages over the terms of this link (Berger, 1988). Unfortunately, as with the discussion of the father-son relationship enjoyed by Livingstone and Stanley, Anstruther's book suffers here from the absence of a sophisticated social or psychological criticism, and / Presume is thus finally more reflective than illuminating.…”

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confidence: 99%

Victorian Britain and ‘Primitive’ Africa: Figures and Tools of Imperialism

Youngs¹

1991

Africa

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“…50 Hyam's critics have labelled him 'phallocentric' and an 'imperial apologist'. 51 The attacks on his argument made by feminist historians are perhaps unsurprising, as in his introduction, he directly labelled feminist constructs and approaches 'unhelpful' and 'hysterical' and argued that such approaches represent all women simply as 'victims'. 52 Yet, such a reading is reductionist and wilfully superficial.…”

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confidence: 99%

Defining Prostitution and Redefining Women’s Roles: The Colonial State and Society in Early 19th Century India

Wald

2009

History Compass

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The seismic shifts in Indian society which took place over the course of the 19th century have been the focus of a number of studies in recent years. These changes permanently altered the lives and livelihoods of many groups across the socioeconomic spectrum. Among the most dramatically affected were those women who would come to be categorised as ‘prostitutes’. Prior to their inclusion in the category of ‘prostitute’, the women ranged from temple dancers, erudite courtesans and (monogamous) concubines to those women who come closest to our contemporary understanding of ‘prostitute’– working as they did in bazaars or cantonments as sex workers. Yet, in the century before, very few of these groups of women would have considered themselves to be of ‘ill‐repute’. These ideas about ‘morality’ and ‘prostitution’ in India were not simply adopted from Europe. Instead, they were born out of a complex process of contestation and negotiation across the subcontinent, involving various parties, from army surgeons to pandits. As this article will argue, analysing the conditions which prompted these changed categories is as important as understanding the political and social implications of the practice of prostitution in India and the empire.

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Imperialism and sexual exploitation: A response to Ronald Hyam's ‘empire and sexual opportunity’

Cited by 46 publications

References 9 publications

Recipes for Disaster: Cookery Books and the Management of Intimacy in Colonial Kenyan Settler Homes 1919–1944

Recipes for Disaster: Cookery Books and the Management of Intimacy in Colonial Kenyan Settler Homes 1919–1944

Victorian Britain and ‘Primitive’ Africa: Figures and Tools of Imperialism

Defining Prostitution and Redefining Women’s Roles: The Colonial State and Society in Early 19th Century India

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