The Compassionate Memsahibs

The Compassionate Memsahibs

Author: Mary Ann Lind

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1988-04-27

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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The Compassionate Memsahibs refutes the traditional view--perpetuated in the works of writers like Rudyard Kipling--of the memsahibs as a homogeneous group of aloof, pampered women who had little interest in India. Here Mary Ann Lind presents information about the lives of fifteen memsahibs--all of which is previously unpublished--who voluntarily participated in reform and welfare activities in India during the first half of this century. Their activities and experiences placed them outside the more expected lifestyle of the memsahib and offer contemporary social historians a new window through which to view the Raj.


Book Synopsis The Compassionate Memsahibs by : Mary Ann Lind

Download or read book The Compassionate Memsahibs written by Mary Ann Lind and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1988-04-27 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Compassionate Memsahibs refutes the traditional view--perpetuated in the works of writers like Rudyard Kipling--of the memsahibs as a homogeneous group of aloof, pampered women who had little interest in India. Here Mary Ann Lind presents information about the lives of fifteen memsahibs--all of which is previously unpublished--who voluntarily participated in reform and welfare activities in India during the first half of this century. Their activities and experiences placed them outside the more expected lifestyle of the memsahib and offer contemporary social historians a new window through which to view the Raj.


Memsahibs

Memsahibs

Author: Ipshita Nath

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2022-06-16

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 1787388786

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For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores. The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging with political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression. From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.


Book Synopsis Memsahibs by : Ipshita Nath

Download or read book Memsahibs written by Ipshita Nath and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores. The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging with political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression. From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.


The Magic Mountains

The Magic Mountains

Author: Dane Kennedy

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0520311000

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Perched among peaks that loom over heat-shimmering plains, hill stations remain among the most curious monuments to the British colonial presence in India. In this engaging and meticulously researched study, Dane Kennedy explores the development and history of the hill stations of the raj. He shows that these cloud-enshrouded havens were sites of both refuge and surveillance for British expatriates: sanctuaries from the harsh climate as well as an alien culture; artificial environments where colonial rulers could nurture, educate, and reproduce themselves; commanding heights from which orders could be issued with an Olympian authority. Kennedy charts the symbolic and sociopolitical functions of the hill stations over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that these highland communities became much more significant to the British colonial government than mere places for rest and play. Particularly after the revolt of 1857, they became headquarters for colonial political and military authorities. In addition, the hill stations provided employment to countless Indians who worked as porters, merchants, government clerks, domestics, and carpenters. The isolation of British authorities at the hill stations reflected the paradoxical character of the British raj itself, Kennedy argues. While attempting to control its subjects, it remained aloof from Indian society. Ironically, as more Indians were drawn to these mountain areas for work, and later for vacation, the carefully guarded boundaries between the British and their subjects eroded. Kennedy argues that after the turn of the century, the hill stations were increasingly incorporated into the landscape of Indian social and cultural life. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.


Book Synopsis The Magic Mountains by : Dane Kennedy

Download or read book The Magic Mountains written by Dane Kennedy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perched among peaks that loom over heat-shimmering plains, hill stations remain among the most curious monuments to the British colonial presence in India. In this engaging and meticulously researched study, Dane Kennedy explores the development and history of the hill stations of the raj. He shows that these cloud-enshrouded havens were sites of both refuge and surveillance for British expatriates: sanctuaries from the harsh climate as well as an alien culture; artificial environments where colonial rulers could nurture, educate, and reproduce themselves; commanding heights from which orders could be issued with an Olympian authority. Kennedy charts the symbolic and sociopolitical functions of the hill stations over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that these highland communities became much more significant to the British colonial government than mere places for rest and play. Particularly after the revolt of 1857, they became headquarters for colonial political and military authorities. In addition, the hill stations provided employment to countless Indians who worked as porters, merchants, government clerks, domestics, and carpenters. The isolation of British authorities at the hill stations reflected the paradoxical character of the British raj itself, Kennedy argues. While attempting to control its subjects, it remained aloof from Indian society. Ironically, as more Indians were drawn to these mountain areas for work, and later for vacation, the carefully guarded boundaries between the British and their subjects eroded. Kennedy argues that after the turn of the century, the hill stations were increasingly incorporated into the landscape of Indian social and cultural life. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.


Organizing Empire

Organizing Empire

Author: Purnima Bose

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2003-09-08

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780822327684

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DIVAn analysis of the forms and uses of individualism in colonial and anti-colonial India./div


Book Synopsis Organizing Empire by : Purnima Bose

Download or read book Organizing Empire written by Purnima Bose and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-08 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVAn analysis of the forms and uses of individualism in colonial and anti-colonial India./div


Flora Annie Steel

Flora Annie Steel

Author: Susmita Roye

Publisher: University of Alberta

Published: 2017-03-23

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1772123242

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A collection of essays on the writer who “after Rudyard Kipling . . . was the most famous nineteenth-century British author to depict India” (Nineteenth-Century Literature). Flora Annie Steel (1847–1929) was a contemporary of Rudyard Kipling and rivaled his popularity as a writer during her lifetime, but her legacy faded due to gender-biased politics. She spent twenty-two years in India, mainly in the Punjab. This collection is the first to focus entirely on this “unconventional memsahib” and her contribution to turn-of-the-century Anglo-Indian literature. The eight essays draw attention to Steel’s multifaceted work—ranging from fiction to journalism to letter writing, from housekeeping manuals to philanthropic activities. These essays, by recognized experts on her life and work, will appeal to interdisciplinary scholars and readers in the fields of British India and Women’s Studies. Contributors: Amrita Banerjee, Helen Pike Bauer, Ralph Crane, Gráinne Goodwin, Alan Johnson, Anna Johnston, Danielle Nielsen, LeeAnne M. Richardson, Susmita Roye “Going beyond Steel’s most famous and widely discussed work, On the Face of the Waters, this excellent volume strives to shed light on her less well-known novels, such as The Potter’s Thumb and Voices in the Night: A Chromatic Fantasia, as well as her short fiction and other genres of her writing that have not received much attention from literary critics, including housekeeping advice, journalism, and letters to editors.” —Oxford University Press Journals “The essays in this volume treat topics ranging from Steel’s rewriting of women’s role in the maintenance of British power to her sympathetic representation of the wit and creativity of Indian girls.” —Studies in English Literature 1500-1900


Book Synopsis Flora Annie Steel by : Susmita Roye

Download or read book Flora Annie Steel written by Susmita Roye and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on the writer who “after Rudyard Kipling . . . was the most famous nineteenth-century British author to depict India” (Nineteenth-Century Literature). Flora Annie Steel (1847–1929) was a contemporary of Rudyard Kipling and rivaled his popularity as a writer during her lifetime, but her legacy faded due to gender-biased politics. She spent twenty-two years in India, mainly in the Punjab. This collection is the first to focus entirely on this “unconventional memsahib” and her contribution to turn-of-the-century Anglo-Indian literature. The eight essays draw attention to Steel’s multifaceted work—ranging from fiction to journalism to letter writing, from housekeeping manuals to philanthropic activities. These essays, by recognized experts on her life and work, will appeal to interdisciplinary scholars and readers in the fields of British India and Women’s Studies. Contributors: Amrita Banerjee, Helen Pike Bauer, Ralph Crane, Gráinne Goodwin, Alan Johnson, Anna Johnston, Danielle Nielsen, LeeAnne M. Richardson, Susmita Roye “Going beyond Steel’s most famous and widely discussed work, On the Face of the Waters, this excellent volume strives to shed light on her less well-known novels, such as The Potter’s Thumb and Voices in the Night: A Chromatic Fantasia, as well as her short fiction and other genres of her writing that have not received much attention from literary critics, including housekeeping advice, journalism, and letters to editors.” —Oxford University Press Journals “The essays in this volume treat topics ranging from Steel’s rewriting of women’s role in the maintenance of British power to her sympathetic representation of the wit and creativity of Indian girls.” —Studies in English Literature 1500-1900


Cultures of Empire

Cultures of Empire

Author: Catherine Hall

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780415929066

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This reader collects together articles by key historians, literary critics and anthropologists on the cultures of colonialism in the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is divided into three sections: theoretical, emphasizing approaches; the colonisers "at home"; and "away".


Book Synopsis Cultures of Empire by : Catherine Hall

Download or read book Cultures of Empire written by Catherine Hall and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2000 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader collects together articles by key historians, literary critics and anthropologists on the cultures of colonialism in the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is divided into three sections: theoretical, emphasizing approaches; the colonisers "at home"; and "away".


Gender, Religion, and the Heathen Lands

Gender, Religion, and the Heathen Lands

Author: Maina Chawla Singh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-31

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1135653380

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Seeking to extend existing scholarship on gender and colonialism and on women and American religion, this cross-cultural study examines the work of American missionary women in South Asia at several levels. A primary concern of the study is to historicize the interventions of these women and situate them within the dual contexts of the sending society and the receiving culture. It focuses on missionaries Isabella Thoburn and Ida Scudder, who founded some of the premier women's colleges and hospitals in British colonial India. The book also draws upon the narratives and reminiscences of South Asian women, now in their seventies, who attended such institutions in the 1940s, and whose voices texture our understanding of American women's missionary work in "Other" cultures.


Book Synopsis Gender, Religion, and the Heathen Lands by : Maina Chawla Singh

Download or read book Gender, Religion, and the Heathen Lands written by Maina Chawla Singh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeking to extend existing scholarship on gender and colonialism and on women and American religion, this cross-cultural study examines the work of American missionary women in South Asia at several levels. A primary concern of the study is to historicize the interventions of these women and situate them within the dual contexts of the sending society and the receiving culture. It focuses on missionaries Isabella Thoburn and Ida Scudder, who founded some of the premier women's colleges and hospitals in British colonial India. The book also draws upon the narratives and reminiscences of South Asian women, now in their seventies, who attended such institutions in the 1940s, and whose voices texture our understanding of American women's missionary work in "Other" cultures.


French Women and the Empire

French Women and the Empire

Author: Marie-Paule Ha

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191662739

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French Women and the Empire is the first book-length investigation of colonial gender politics in Third Republic France, using Indochina as a case study. Its departure point is the interrogation of the dramatic change in the French colonialist view of the empire as an exclusively male preserve where women feared to tread. At the turn of the century, a reverse discourse emerged in the metropole, forcefully arguing that colonial female emigration was essential to " colonisation. The study begins by analysing the highly complex web of interconnected factors underlying this radical transformation in the representation of the empire from being a " into a " Then, drawing on a large body of hitherto little examined sources, the study continues by reconstructing the experiences and activities of French women in Indochina from the fin-de-siècle to the interwar era. The most significant finding from this study is that contrary to the image propagated by promotional literature of the colonial woman as essentially a bourgeois homemaker, the class and ethnic make-up of the French female population in the Asian colony was in fact remarkably heterogeneous, with a sizeable contingent of them, married or single, actively engaging in a variety of paid employment outside the home. By thus foregrounding the diversity and complexity of colonial female experiences, French Women and the Empire seeks to move the story of French women and the empire beyond the narrow confines of the imperial family romance to the wider arena of the colonial public sphere.


Book Synopsis French Women and the Empire by : Marie-Paule Ha

Download or read book French Women and the Empire written by Marie-Paule Ha and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French Women and the Empire is the first book-length investigation of colonial gender politics in Third Republic France, using Indochina as a case study. Its departure point is the interrogation of the dramatic change in the French colonialist view of the empire as an exclusively male preserve where women feared to tread. At the turn of the century, a reverse discourse emerged in the metropole, forcefully arguing that colonial female emigration was essential to " colonisation. The study begins by analysing the highly complex web of interconnected factors underlying this radical transformation in the representation of the empire from being a " into a " Then, drawing on a large body of hitherto little examined sources, the study continues by reconstructing the experiences and activities of French women in Indochina from the fin-de-siècle to the interwar era. The most significant finding from this study is that contrary to the image propagated by promotional literature of the colonial woman as essentially a bourgeois homemaker, the class and ethnic make-up of the French female population in the Asian colony was in fact remarkably heterogeneous, with a sizeable contingent of them, married or single, actively engaging in a variety of paid employment outside the home. By thus foregrounding the diversity and complexity of colonial female experiences, French Women and the Empire seeks to move the story of French women and the empire beyond the narrow confines of the imperial family romance to the wider arena of the colonial public sphere.


British Women's History

British Women's History

Author:

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9780719046520

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This is one of a series of bibliographical guides designed to meet the needs of undergraduates, postgraduates and their teachers in universities and colleges of further education. All volumes in the series share a number of common characteristics. They are selective, manageable in size, and include those books and articles which are considered most important and useful. All are editied by practising teachers of the subject in question and are based on their experience of the needs of students. The arrangement combines chronological with thematic divisions. Most of the items listed receive some descriptive comment.


Book Synopsis British Women's History by :

Download or read book British Women's History written by and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of a series of bibliographical guides designed to meet the needs of undergraduates, postgraduates and their teachers in universities and colleges of further education. All volumes in the series share a number of common characteristics. They are selective, manageable in size, and include those books and articles which are considered most important and useful. All are editied by practising teachers of the subject in question and are based on their experience of the needs of students. The arrangement combines chronological with thematic divisions. Most of the items listed receive some descriptive comment.


Women's Travel Writings in India 1777–1854

Women's Travel Writings in India 1777–1854

Author: Carl Thompson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-27

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1315473119

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The ‘memsahibs’ of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women’s travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women’s Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives – here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions – were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women’s interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women’s passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women’s writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women’s educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This volume includes 2 texts, Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (1777) and Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (1812).


Book Synopsis Women's Travel Writings in India 1777–1854 by : Carl Thompson

Download or read book Women's Travel Writings in India 1777–1854 written by Carl Thompson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ‘memsahibs’ of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women’s travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women’s Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives – here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions – were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women’s interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women’s passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women’s writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women’s educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This volume includes 2 texts, Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (1777) and Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (1812).