Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of EmpireIn the early years of the British empire, cohabitation between Indian women and British men was commonplace and to some degree tolerated. However, as Durba Ghosh argues in a challenge to the existing historiography, anxieties about social status, appropriate sexuality, and the question of who could be counted as 'British' or 'Indian' were constant concerns of the colonial government even at this time. By following the stories of a number of mixed-race families, at all levels of the social scale, from high-ranking officials and noblewomen to rank-and-file soldiers and camp followers, and also the activities of indigenous female concubines, mistresses and wives, the author offers a fascinating account of how gender, class and race affected the cultural, social and even political mores of the period. The book makes an original and signal contribution to scholarship on colonialism, gender and sexuality. |
Contents
Acknowledgments page ix | 3 |
Colonial companions | 35 |
William Palmer | 69 |
Good patriarchs uncommon families | 107 |
Native women native lives | 133 |
Household order and colonial justice | 170 |
family labor | 206 |
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Common terms and phrases
accounts Anglo-Indian Ann Stoler anxieties archives argued army Awadh Baugwan Khonwar became Beebee Begum Samru Bengal Bibee bibi Boigne Britain British India Calcutta Cambridge University Press century Chatterjee Claude Martin Clive's cohabited colonial companions Colonial India colonial society Company's concubinage conjugal court cultural daughter Delhi domestic early colonial East India Company eighteenth eighteenth-century Empire England English Englishmen Eurasian European soldiers Faiz Baksh female companions Gender girl granted Halima History household Hyderabad Ibid Illegitimacy Imperial Indian subcontinent indigenous interracial James John Khair-un-nissa Kirkpatrick lived London Maratha marriage married military department Military Orphan Society miscegenation mixed-race mixed-race children mother Mughal Muslim names narrative native women negotiating Oriental Oxford University Press painting Pearse Peerun pension Persian political portrait practices Race racial regiment relationships resident Routledge Sardhana servants sexual Sicca slave social status Subaltern Studies subjects Tilly Kettle various widows William Palmer wives woman wrote Zeenut