Female Agency and Symbolism, Complicity and Resistance

(October 23, 2003)

--two overarching categories of women’s roles in empire: action, symbolism

Action

Labor

Activism

Political influence

Family life

Symbolism

Wives and mothers

Ideologies of Empire

Nationalism

Women and Imperialism

--struggling against imperial wrongs

--participating (passively) in imperialism

--promoting imperialism

Flora Shaw (1852-1929)

--colonial writer for The Times of London (1890 to 1900)

--wife of Sir Frederick Lugard (High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria, Colonial Office official, Governor of Hong Kong)

--shaped political/imperial opinion

--Cecil Rhodes and the Jameson Raid: “The recollection of the lady was somewhat defective”

--coined the name “Nigeria”

--1901: married Lugard

--imperial work related to Nigeria, Hong Kong, Ireland

Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)

--English education

--widely admired poet

--Indian National Congress leader

            --president of Rashtriya Stree Sangha (Congress women’s party)

--non-cooperation leader: “I am here not as a woman but as a General”

--1947: first woman governor of an Indian state, Uttar Pradesh

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