Between the 16th and 19th centuries, a few European powers came to dominate and control large swathes of the Earth, including most of Africa, South and Southeast Asia, the Americas, Siberia, and more. The British Empire at its height, for example, ruled one quarter of the world’s land. Such imperialism transformed forever the countries and cultures that were colonized. They colonized in the name of raw materials that could fuel their industrial expansion, slave laborers who could be used in the production of those raw materials, and as part of an overall power struggle among world powers. However, quite often, what imperialist powers claimed was their true mission was an altruistic one - they sought the opportunity to better people’s lives through “civilizing” them. 

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling looked back on four centuries of British imperialism and encouraged the rising American empire to do the same in a poem titled, “The White Man’s Burden.” He wrote,

Take up the White Man’s burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need

While the conquering and “civilizing” of people of color was labeled by Kipling a white man’s burden, imperialism also transformed the lives of women across the world. ​Still, the lives of women under imperialism differed greatly across the world, and we must be wary of generalizing the experiences of both colonizer and colonized women.

Political cartoon titled, “From the Cape to Cairo”

Imperialism in China

For centuries, Europeans had been working to gain greater access and control of Asian marketplaces. The decline of the Qing dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries slowly opened that door to foreign influence - though the decline itself was also simultaneously spurred by increased foreign influence. The British, in particular, had their eyes on carving up China, and they intended to use ongoing colonization in India to accomplish that goal. In a number of ways, China subsequently experienced the influx of European influence, violence, and lasting impact that was felt throughout Central and South America in the wake of discovery of the New World for centuries (and arguably still felt today). 

Drawing of the saints and protectors of numerous countries (embodied as women) with the caption “Nations of Europe! Join in the defense of your faith and your homes!” - titled, “The Yellow Peril”

To this point in history, China remained untouched by imperialism. The Chinese had a vast market for industrial goods, silver, silk, and tea that the British economy desired. The Chinese were largely self-sufficient, forcing foreign nations to come to them for trade and doing little to engage beyond their borders. When the traditional methods of infiltration did not work for the British, they employed a devastating new tactic to weaken the Chinese government and sow division - they began importing opium. 

While opium has been used for a number of medicinal purposes for millenia, its use as a recreational drug had really only emerged around the 14th century. It was one of the more profitable trade items that the Ottoman Empire supplied the West, as it was centrally produced in the Middle East. Opium was known to produce states of euphoria and numb pain, but was immensely addictive to the point that people could die not only from overdose, but from withdrawals when the drug was no longer available to them. With full knowledge of its addictive and deadly nature, the British funneled this drug into Chinese ports. 

Chinese people using opium

Opium moved from elite Chinese circles, where it had been used since the 15th century, to the population at large, which grew increasingly addicted. Chinese authorities were frustrated with Britain for their illegal smuggling, and in 1839, the emperor's own son died of an opium overdose. He sent commissioner Lin Zexu to Canton to negotiate with the British East India trading company. He wrote a pleading letter to Queen Victoria, stating, 

By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? [...] Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries -- how much less to China! 

It is unclear whether Queen Victoria ever read this letter, but it is quite clear that Chinese authorities saw this as a matter within her control.

Queen Victoria

The Chinese inevitably pushed back in the so-called Opium Wars, lasting from 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, respectively. Amid these wars, European imperialists continued to work their way into Chinese regions and markets, seeking to “plant their flag” in the resource rich area, well beyond the simple distribution of opium. They made critical trade relationships with powerful local merchants whose personal profits outweighed their concerns about foreign influence. Each of these wars also weakened the central Chinese government, making them appear to either be benefiting from foreign parties, or incapable of stopping them. 

Some of these merchants and travelers found themselves as permanent or semi-permanent settlers in China. Europeans who traveled to China were often single men who had left their families behind to either make money or spread Christianity, while European women who were there were generally missionaries’ wives. Missionary societies also set up schools for young British women to provide education to the local Chinese women. 

To Europeans, Confucian ideals that permeated Chinese society were oppressive. They began converting those values to Christianity in hopes of “civilizing” the Chinese. While they did so in the name of progress, the education the British provided reinforced gender divisions and was heavily influenced by Victorian ideals back in Britain, which were not inherently friendlier to women.

In the new British colony of Hong Kong - ceded to them in 1842 after the First Opium War - one of the major goals was to abolish the mui tsai system, which the British saw as a form of slavery that had supposedly been abolished throughout the empire. Mui tsai translates to “little sisters.” These children were bondservants from poor families who were sold by their parents to richer homes where they worked their entire lives. Sometimes, they were loved like daughters and sisters, but at other times, they were taken advantage of and neglected. Sexual abuse was also common. By adulthood, the “little sisters” would sometimes be married off to poor men or sold by their new owners into prostitution. 

Image from a book about mission work in Asia depicting a children’s refuge in China. Its caption (not shown here), reads “Nearly every well-to-do family—Christian families unfortunately included—have one or more little slave girls, and if they are well cared for no one thinks anything of it.”

The British had promised elites they wouldn’t interfere with traditions in Hong Kong, so authorities were initially reluctant to do anything about this tradition. The main argument in favor of this system continuing was the well-established practice of female infanticide, or the killing of female babies who may be deemed a financial burden on the family. The mui tsai system at least ensured female babies survived to adulthood. 

Still, British women and a few Chinese converts were appalled and began campaigning against the practice in the 1870s. Often, when Western women were trying to “save” other women, they unintentionally misinterpreted different cultures, and there are also layers of unconscious racism and belittling present in their writings. Unfortunately, they rarely saw how poverty was a root cause of many of the issues that faced women; thus, in this case, they targeted the product of poverty - the mui tsai tradition - rather than the poverty at its root that caused families to sell off their daughters in the first place. 

Chinese Resistance to Imperialism

Yet, some women saw a period of such upheaval as a time for their own change. Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist and revolutionary was born into a wealthy family in a province of northeastern China that had been known for its openness to women’s educational pursuits, and she even had the opportunity to study in Japan – leaving her husband behind with their two children. There, she was exposed to many foreign political and social ideals that she wanted to see replicated in China. She also became a noted poet in her time in Japan, writing,

Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark;

Our women’s world is sunk so deep, who can help us?Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas,Cut off from my family I leave my native land.Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits.Alas, this delicate kerchief hereIs half stained with blood, and half with tears.

Her awareness and frustration with women’s roles in society was on full display.

Returning in the early 1900s, she named herself the “Female Knight-Errant of Jian Lake,” and joined in a number of revolutionary activities bent on unseating the Qing dynasty. She believed that such a revolution could not only improve the lives of women but could also be led by women. While still in Japan she had crafted an essay titled “A Respectful Proclamation to China’s 200 Million Women Comrades,” in which she wrote,

I would now bind twice then thousand times ten thousand women in single indivisibility under our guidance; would at dawn and dusk penetrate women’s realm throughout the country discussing general control in women’s affairs; would provide women with dashing waves of independence in life’s course. I would now rouse women’s essence, spirit, to rise as birds in flight over fields, leaving swiftly earths dust, that they may speedily cross the frontier into the great world of light and brilliance. I desire that they be leaders, awakened lions, advance messengers of learning and intelligence; that they may serve as rafts crossing cloudy ferries; as lamps in dark chambers. That they may let shine, from the center of women’s realm in our country, bright light resplendent, glittering rare in the beauty of its color; that on the whole earth globe, they startle the hearts, snatch the eyes of men, causing all to applaud, rejoice.

On behalf of revolutionary causes, she became known as an impassioned speaker, for dressing more like a man as an act of resistance to government norms, as well as for studying martial arts.

She also became a teacher at a school designed to train revolutionaries in 1907. The school’s co-founder was caught and executed for his role in an assassination plot, which then brought suspicion down on the school and Jin. While she denied a role in the assassination plot, her writings and speeches were used as evidence of her revolutionary intent, and she was beheaded at the age of 31. However, her influence could still be felt as women remained central to revolutionary activity in her wake. 

Empress Dowager Cixi

Imperialism in China helped create the rise and fall of China’s second empress and the end of the Chinese empire. Cixi came to power as the favored concubine of the emperor. When he died in 1861, Cixi's five-year-old son was his only male heir and became the emperor, making her regent as the “empress dowager.” Her son ruled independently for only two years before he died and Cixi became regent again for her three-year-old nephew. ​

Like many other women who have held immense power, Cixi was mired in controversy. She was described by some as the “Dragon Lady,” murdering and whoring to keep her power, but most modern scholars see her as a complicated woman who had to navigate the challenges of female power while the empire was being attacked by imperial nations. They also recognize that source records of Cixi describe her in vastly different ways - all undoubtedly painted by the writer’s biases - as everything from a caring, warm, patriotic leader in an insurmountable situation, to a cold, conniving, opportunist despot and Western sympathizer.

Empress Dowager Cixi

Before and during her reign, the number of missionaries in China continued to grow. Due to pressure on government officials, some laws and taxes didn’t apply to them, which created animosity between them and the Chinese population. They preached fundamentalist Christianity to a mostly hostile Chinese population, and their own records show that after 35 years they had secured only 13,000 converts. Yet, the missionaries still saw preferential treatment from the government and increasingly, Chinese peasants noted that their converts were also seeing the the benefits of such a relationship, while those who remained faithful to Chinese beliefs were not. 

Tension mounted around missionaries, and in 1900, rebels known as the “Boxers” murdered two German priests as the start of a rapidly widespread movement to remove foreign influence by force. It began in rural areas and gradually moved toward trading capitals. Girls who joined the movement were called “Shining Red Lanterns” because of the bright red outfits that they wore. They trained at night to avoid being seen and sang songs against missionary imperialism. One went, “Learn to be a Boxer, Study Red Lantern. Kill all the foreign devils and make churches burn.”  

Red Lanterns protecting the Boxers in battle

Christian families and converts in China were murdered as the Boxers swept through the countryside. In response, the Eight Nation Alliance formed, seeing troops and supplies from Britain, Russia, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, the United States, and Austria-Hungary. These Western armies moved quickly to defend the Europeans trapped in China and reassert control. At first, Empress Dowager Cixi sent the Chinese armies to fight the Boxers, treating them as rebels or insurrectionists. However, when they closed in on Westerners in Peking, she switched sides, incorporating the Boxers into her armed forces. 

Foreign forces at Peking held out against the Chinese siege for two months until eventually they were reinforced. Once they had broken free, the tide rapidly turned. While the Boxers had popular support among portions of the population, many Chinese provinces - particularly in coastal regions that relied on foreign trade - seemed to stay neutral or ignore Cixi’s orders for support in favor of the Europeans. The Alliance’s armies swept to the capital, pillaging and even raping Chinese women as they went. 

As the capital fell in 1901, Cixi fled the palace disguised as a peasant with bullets flying around her. She was forced to accept humiliating terms that divided China into spheres of influence between imperial nations of the Alliance, and their own imperial power would never recover. She died of a stroke in 1908, claiming at the end of her life that she had never had a day without anxiety. She ruled China for almost 50 years, a formidable woman whose skills held together a bankrupt and declining empire. With her passing, imperial China fell apart.

Imperialism in Africa

While the African slave trade had gradually been abolished by European powers, their grip on the continent had not faded. Raw materials and resources were still being routinely pulled from the country for imperialist countries’ wealth, and the competition for international dominance remained strong - as did their claims of the motivation to “civilize”. In search of raw materials which could fuel industrializing Europe, Britain and France, in particular, sought to control labor and land across much of Sub-Saharan Africa. This had long-term environmental impacts, and led to the massacring of African people. 

In 1870, around 10% of the country was in European hands, but they knew that this was only the beginning. Deep-seated racial prejudice meant that few European powers and leaders were overly concerned with the fate of the African people. Instead, their increasing concern was war among one another. Colonization had propelled the European nations into numerous wars with one another, and the ongoing “Scramble for Africa” posed innumerable possibilities for future wars. Thus, in 1884, a conference was called in Berlin, where representatives from the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal determined how they would divide Africa among themselves without the need for warfare. Not a single African leader was invited to this conference in Berlin, and only two of the delegates had even been to the continent. 

European possessions in Africa after the Berlin Conference

The treatment of the African population by colonial forces was invariably oppressive and often violent. Perhaps the most gruesome example of European treatment of African people was by King Leopold II of Belgium - Queen Victoria’s cousin - in his treatment of the Congolese. The Kingdom of Kongo was a country he claimed as his personal possession, and he used slave labor to extract rubber and other resources. People who did not produce enough rubber were mutilated or killed. An estimated ten million Congolese perished under his rule of the “Congo Free State,” which lasted from 1885-1908, most from disease and mistreatment.

Images of mutilated Congolese 

Leopold’s treatment of the African people did not go unnoticed. A British consul in Africa performed an investigation, and George Washington Williams, an African American journalist, writer, and member of the Ohio House of Assembly, also visited in the 1880s and documented the abuses in an open letter to Leopold in 1890 which helped coin the term “crime against humanity.” Alice Seeley Harris, an English missionary and documentary photographer in the early 1900s took photos to document the atrocities, and sent her photos to anti-slavery publications around the world. The political fallout resulted in Leopold relinquishing personal control over the situation, though Belgium remained as the colonial power.  

Even where violence was not so overwhelming, the onslaught of colonization changed women’s status dramatically. In West Africa, women farmed their own fields, participated in local trade and markets, had economic independence, and had social status as mothers and senior wives. Colonialists did not respect these gendered rights, forcing Western standards upon the African population instead. Under colonial rule, African men and women began to live separate lives and develop different cultures; men working for a wage or cash-crop agriculture, women for sustenance. As a result, women saw some greater control over their households in their husbands’ absence, though this did not equate to great respect or autonomy with colonial overseers. 

Imperialism in India 

Several European nations had tried to colonize India in prior centuries, but the dominant force that came to replace the weak Mughal Empire by the mid-19th century was the Honourable East India Company, a private joint stock company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I. From its days as the favored market of the uniquely powerful British East India company, India became known as “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. India became the archetypical colonized nation, and one whose freedom had particularly harsh consequences for women. 

One way the British justified their colonizing across the globe, but especially in India, was by propagating the idea that they were saving native women from oppression and subjugation that they suffered at the hands of native men. The British claimed that by converting native populations to Christianity, ending traditional practices, and teaching them the British way of life, they would drastically improve the lives of women. While many of the laws they imposed may seem progressive, they fed into the British colonial propaganda that Indians were evil savages and that colonialism was necessary to civilize them and save their very souls. Thus, British officials and missionaries purposefully exaggerated the purpose and prevalence of certain traditions for their own political ends.  In India, for example, the British emphasized certain practices, including child marriage and sati as examples of these barbaric patriarchal traditions. Child marriage could easily scandalize the average Victorian Era European, but sati would evoke much stronger emotion. 

A painting depicting sati

Sati refers to the act of a widow voluntarily - or not, as the British claimed - throwing herself onto her late husband’s funeral pyre, being cremated alongside him. Sati stems from ancient Hindu theology, but was not widely practiced across India or condoned by all Hindus. Yet, the British exaggerated its prominence and passed laws banning the practice in an attempt to prove their defense of native women across the board. They also passed laws against child marriage and raised the age of consent in India from 12 to 16. In South India, the British also put an end to the devadasi tradition, in which young girls were committed to a temple to serve as servants of the temple’s goddess, although often ended up serving as prostitutes for the priests and men of their villages. 

Painting depicting devadasi dancing

The British ignored the hypocrisy of imposing such laws, when many of their own laws degraded women. In Victorian Britain, laws such as the Contagious Diseases Act (which was also passed in India) demonized prostitutes and blamed women for the prevalence of sexually-transmitted diseases amongst British soldiers across the globe. Working-class British girls were not married off as children, but were forced to work from the age of seven or eight, or face life in the poor house. Upper class women were encouraged to serve only as mothers and wives and were discouraged from receiving an education beyond Bible study. While waging wars in the name of protecting Indian women, Britain attacked suffragettes and force fed them in British prisons for daring to ask for the right to vote. British women were considered property of their husbands and had limited legal rights of any kind, including custody of their children.

It is fitting to note that while attempting to ‘uplift’ and ‘liberate’ Hindu and Muslim women in India, British women felt little control or power over their own lives. This is ironic because one of the most powerful people in the world, Queen Victoria, sat on the throne of England for 63 years, ruling between 1837-1901. By 1877, Queen Victoria became Empress of India - a country she would never step foot in - sending a clear message to the world that British women had a key part to play in the expansion of the British Empire, even if it was primarily done by men said to be acting in their name. 

British Women in India 

As in many areas under European imperialism, women played a key role in colonization of India in practical ways as missionaries, wives of merchants, mercenaries and civil servants. In 1911, there were 1,236 European women in religious work throughout the country, compared to 1,943 men. The Victorian women in India were not faint-hearted. They were held to high standards by the social rules of etiquette and the cultural norm of the day. Despite oppressive heat and humidity, British citizens were expected to dress formally and wear restricting corsets and heavy dresses that made the heat and humidity of India unbearable. 

After the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, an increase in Western women migrants and visitors to the subcontinent changed the nature of colonization. More white male colonizers took fewer local indigenous women as wives and more white women entered into the private domestic sphere as mistresses, missionaries, and teachers in the Indian spaces. This may have led to an increase in racial tension, as the boundary between colonizers and colonized hardened. As in other colonial contexts, white imperialists’ racist fears were fueled by worries about mixed 

marriage and the collapse of racial hierarchies in governance, commerce, and social status. White supremacists needed to maintain the false notion of racial superiority to maintain the social, political, and economic stratification that imperialism required.

Many journals and letters from British women in this period were full of resentment and hostility towards a foreign and strange country, its people, customs, and culture. Often British women describe India as a dangerous country and its people as alien and incomprehensible. British women often promoted and perpetuated imperialist propaganda that stated Indian women needed their help and liberation. Such women mobilized resources and networks to raise funds and spread literature about the benefits of expanding their empire. They also gave special lectures on the “oppressed women of India” in England to concerned subjects of the empire.

Two young women grinding wheat in India

Although initially, many went to India to accompany their husbands who were posted overseas, increasingly, British women went independently in the late 19th and early 20th century to work as nurses, teachers, social workers, or missionaries. British women also traveled abroad in limited numbers to perform social work in India. These women often held cultural and racial prejudices against the people of India and devoted themselves not only to evangelizing, converting, and civilizing native women, but also to westernizing Indian women by encouraging them to dress, speak, cook, eat, keep house, and carry themselves like ‘proper’ Victorian ladies. Some missionaries even held motherhood camps so Indians could learn to bathe, feed, and diaper their babies like British mothers did.

Religious prejudices that deemed Islam and Hinduism as inferior faiths also caused the British to be less tolerant. They rarely learned Indian languages, went into Indian spaces such as markets, mosques, temples, weddings or festivals, or befriended native people. British women had limited access to the public sphere where men held control of commerce, governance, and formal education of native Indians. Most of their contact with native people was with servants who raised their children, cleaned their houses, and cooked their meals. 

Josephine Butler

Even women who tried their best to improve the lot of Indian women were often conservative in their approach to imperialism. For example, Josephine Butler, who worked tirelessly to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act in India and fight for women’s suffrage and education, did not join her friends in speaking out against British imperialism. She wrote that because of the work Britain had undertaken in making slavery illegal, "[w]ith all her faults, looked at from God's point of view, England is the best, and the least guilty of the nations.” ​

Active Participants and Protestors 

While colonialism subordinated all colonized women, the latter experienced colonialism in a variety of ways, in part, according to their class and status position. Some colonized women were active participants in imperialism while still being subject to exploitation by colonial regimes of power. At other times, women were collaborators or beneficiaries. 

Some scholars have also noted that elite women in colonial contexts sometimes benefitted from new educational models that promoted literacy, collectivization, and engagement with men. Women were often able to use their new skills to write petitions, create journals, publish opinions, and challenge authorities, both native and foreign. Elite colonial women sometimes took opportunities afforded to them by foreign intervention to organize political committees, social affinity groups, and/or auxiliaries of male organizations. Even though they could not vote or run for office, they could mobilize, organize, and educate one another as they sought solidarity and influence in their respective arenas. For many traditional women, the experience of having a voice in the public sphere, where male power was consolidated in commerce and formal politics, was revolutionary.

In India and Britain, women also played a part in the nationalist movement and fought alongside their male counterparts for India’s freedom. Jind Kaur, mother of the last Sikh emperor, became so troublesome for the British that they had her imprisoned, barred from communication with her son, exiled, and still she caused so much trouble that they finally had to allow her to resume contact with her son to prevent an international incident. Her granddaughter Sophia Duleep Singh, who, despite being raised in Britain at the court of Queen Victoria, spent her life fighting for Indian independence and the rights of women both in Britain and in India. Women such as Sarojini Naidu and Ismat Chughtai wrote pamphlets and poems advocating for an end to British rule and in favor of women’s political enfranchisement. Naidu wrote of "the influence of women in bringing about political and spiritual unity" throughout India’s history and how there would be nothing truly more traditional that returning women to the political sphere. Others, such as Ruttie Jinnah and Kasturba Gandhi took to the political sphere to influence the eventual freedom that their husbands would get the credit for.

Jind Kaur

From the earliest days of imperialism, Indian women such as Gulab Kaur led armies against invading forces. ​Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, was a leader in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In just her twenties, she was a widow to the late ruler and used her position to support the rebellion. When the British decided to annex her state of Jhansi and attempted to bribe her to leave with a chest of money, she instead joined - and then led - the Indian rebels. While this rebellion was short-lived, Lakshmibai's troops defended Jhansi for more than a year, and even massacred a garrison of British soldiers, their wives, and children. Throughout this rebellion, she fought dressed as a man and wielding a saber, but her rebellion was defeated in 1858, and she died in battle. After her death, her body was burned in a huge ceremony, and she is remembered as a hero of India. 

Lakshmibai

Some British women traveled to India to provide support and solidarity to those fighting for independence. Perhaps the most well known of these was Annie Besant, who helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India and dominion status within the British Empire. This led to her election as president of the Indian National Congress in late 1917. She was not the only British woman to side with India against the empire. Freida Bedi moved to India with her Indian husband and dedicated her life to writing and protesting against British rule, even being arrested several times for anti-English agitation. Madeline Slade, who became known as Merabehn, left her home in England to live and work alongside Mahatma Gandhi, though she has since been lost in his shadow along with myriad other female freedom fighters.

Conclusion

Despite the best efforts of those fighting for “Home Rule,” India did not gain its independence until 1947 - and their suffering did not end there. The subsequent Partition of India and creation of Pakistan in that year resulted in the colony being divided and the population of India split into two countries, organized broadly into Hindu and Muslim groups. 

This resulted in one of the biggest forced migrations in human history, with more than ten million people moving between India and Pakistan. In this process, 1.5 million people died from inter-religious violence, disease, starvation, and exhaustion. Women bore the brunt of the Partition. Tens of thousands of women from all religious communities were kidnapped, murdered, mutilated, and raped by “enemy” communities. Many, including children, were forced into marriages and many committed suicide rather than face the prospect of rape or mutilation at the hands of men. The British launched a campaign to “recover” these stolen women, but many did not wish to return to communities that were likely to reject them if their honor had been compromised or if they had made a new home in their new country. Today, the plight of South Asian women during partition remains virtually unknown beyond the Indian subcontinent, despite being one of the darkest examples of women’s lives under imperialism. 

Thus, the pain and scars of imperialism are not erased by independence and emancipation. For that reason, the roles that people played - both in favor and opposition to imperialism - should not go unnoticed or forgotten. Why had women played these active roles in colonization, and how did women find themselves at the forefront of resistance? How would women in these colonial societies respond? And what role would they play in colonial resistance?