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Women and Empire

Though men played dominant roles in colonial territories, European women also worked as educators, missionaries, nurses, and housewives. What was life like for European women in the colonies?

This book, it is hoped, will meet the very generally felt want for a practical guide to young housekeepers in India. A large proportion of English ladies in this country come to it newly married, to begin a new life, and take up new responsibilities under absolutely new conditions. . . .

The first duty of a mistress is, of course, to be able to give intelligible orders to her servants; therefore it is necessary she should learn to speak Hindustani. . . .

The second duty is obviously to insist on her orders being carried out. And here we come to the burning question, “how is this to be done?” . . . The secret lies in making rules, and keeping to them. The Indian servant is a child in everything save age, and should be treated as a child; that is to say, kindly, but with the greatest firmness. . . . [F]irst faults should never go unpunished. By overlooking a first offence, we lose the only opportunity we have of preventing it becoming a habit. . . .

In their own experience the authors have found a system of rewards and punishments perfectly easy of attainment. One of them has for years adopted the plan of engaging her servants at so much a month — the lowest rate at which such service is obtainable — and so much extra as buksheesh [a tip or bribe], conditional on good service. . . . Of course common sense is required to adjust the balance of rewards and punishments, for here again Indian servants are like children, in that they have an acute sense of justice. . . .

We do not wish to advocate an unholy haughtiness; but an Indian household can no more be governed peacefully, without dignity and prestige, than an Indian empire.

Juma [the family’s male Kenyan servant] had a patronizing air that [my mother] resented, and she doubted if he was showing enough respect. Those were the days when to lack respect was a more serious crime than to neglect a child, bewitch a man or steal a cow, and was generally punishable by beating. Indeed respect was the only protection available to Europeans who lived singly, or in scattered families, among thousands of Africans accustomed to constant warfare and armed with spears and poisoned arrows, but had themselves no barricades, and went about unarmed. This respect preserved them [the Europeans] like an invisible coat of mail, or a form of magic, and seldom failed; but it had to be very carefully guarded.

Max Buchner, colonial bureaucrat

As for free social intercourse with the daughters of the country [African colonial subjects], it is to be seen as more helpful than harmful to health. The eternal feminine, also under dark skin, is an excellent charm against low spirits, to which one is so vulnerable in the solitude of Africa.

Carl Büttner, prominent missionary

Frau Kleinschmidt [the Nama-African wife of a German missionary is] highly respected by whites and natives. . . . [H]er household could be a model for all the whites living in Damaraland [central Namibia]. . . . In short, this entire family [with seven children], descended from a mixed marriage, has had an important role in the development of this land and one can only wish that there be more like it.

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Paul Rohrbach, colonial bureaucrat

[German men are ruined by] keeping a filthy house with the lazy, ignorant, indolent, in a word barbaric and in almost every respect base colored wenches. [German men] for years and years have had no other contact with women besides this intercourse that is down-dragging, demoralizing, and nothing but coarse sensuality.

Editorial, Hamburg News, 1912

The tolerance of mixed marriages would deeply degrade the prestige of the white race in Central Africa and would severely endanger the white women. Mixed marriages would then be permissible for white women as well, with native men. The white woman would thereby lose the only thing that offers her an unconditional protection from attacks in the colonies today, the respect of the colored.

Editorial, Usambara Post, 1912

The European woman alone can solve the problem [of race mixing]. Only she can accomplish something positive, all so-called disciplinary measures belong to the realm of prohibitive and negative decrees, in which no real value resides: nature cannot be driven out with a pitchfork

ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

European women played a major role in the colonies during the era of New Imperialism. Using the sources above, along with what you have learned in class and in this chapter, write a short essay that describes their experience. How did women’s ideas about race and gender help define the relationship between European colonizers and their colonial subjects?

Sources: (1) F. A. Steel and G. Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper & Cook (London: Heinemann, 1898), pp. 1–4, 9; (2) Quoted in Margaret Strobel, European Women and the Second British Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 23; (3, 4) All quotes from Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 81, 86–87, 103, 120–121; (6) “Timetable” in LaRay Denzer, “Domestic Science Training in Colonial Yorubaland, Nigeria,” in African Encounters with Domesticity, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 119.