Sex and the Family in Colonial India
The Making of Empire

Study of conjugal relationships between Indian women and British men in colonial India.

Durba Ghosh (Author)

9780521673792, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 January 2008

292 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.446 kg

'… Sex and the Family makes an important contribution to the investigation of racial and gender relations in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century India by reminding us of the anxiety Englishmen felt and by recovering some of the Indian women's voices.' Eighteenth-Century Studies

In 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.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Colonial companions
2. Residing with begums: William Palmer, James Achilles Kirkpatrick and their 'wives'
3. Good patriarchs, uncommon families
4. Native women, native lives
5. Household order and colonial justice
6. Servicing military families: family labour, pensions and orphans
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], General & world history [HBG], Regional studies [GTB]