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Bezig met laden... She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British women in India 1600 - 1900 (editie 2020)door Katie Hickman (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkShe-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British women in India 1600 - 1900 door Katie Hickman
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. At the beginning I was incredibly bored, to the point I almost just stopped reading. It did become more interesting and absorbing as I went on. Even then, it was hit-or-miss, and not all of the women's lives resonated with me. I also didn't feel like there was a satisfactory conclusion. ( ) This is wideranging study of the role and experience of British women in India from 1600 to 1900. It is interesting to see how different that experience was over the timeframe. The image that springs to mind is that of the imperial Raj, and yet that was not the initial experience at all. Telling the stories by their own diaries, letters and memoirs makes this a very immediate experience. the book is arranged in chronological order, with different chapters within each timeframe looking at different experience, be that individual women, or women undertaking a similar activity. The interaction of the Britich women with their Indian counterparts was especially interesting. The change in attitudes of the two parties is also portrayed, the 1st Indian uprising being far more predicatable an event when the lead up of the previous couple of hundred years is taken into account. Not that it necessarily excuses the treatment of women and children at Lucknow & Cawnpore, but it does become less inexplicable with a more rounded understanding of the situation. The author writes well and usually manages to make her material work for her, some of the women she uses are fabulous characters and she allows them to speak their mind. I also liked that at no point does she refer to the women by their first name alone, as she states in her introduciton "I know of no male historian who refers to Warren Hastings, as Warren". It's a case of double standards and she refuses to apply it. The author is also not afraid to let her thoughts and opinions show as well, some of the more personal comments and asides are very witty and don't detract from the tone of the work. This is also one of those dangerous books that has lots of cited sources, as well as other books for more details about specific areas and people. This was a worthwhile read and lives up to the intriging title. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
'Sharply observed, snappily written and thoroughly researched, She Merchants provides a fabulous panorama of a largely ignored area of social history. Katie Hickman successfully challenges the stereotype of the snobbish, matron-like memsahib by deploying a riveting gallery of powerful and often eccentric women ranging from stowaways and runaways through courtesans and society beauties to Generals' feisty wives and Viceroys' waspish sisters. It is full of surprises and new material and completely engaging from beginning to end' William Dalrymple The first British women to set foot in India did so in the very early seventeenth century, two and a half centuries before the Raj. Women made their way to India for exactly the same reasons men did - to carve out a better life for themselves. In the early days, India was a place where the slates of 'blotted pedigrees' were wiped clean; bankrupts given a chance to make good; a taste for adventure satisfied - for women. They went and worked as milliners, bakers, dress-makers, actresses, portrait painters, maids, shop-keepers, governesses, teachers, boarding house proprietors, midwives, nurses, missionaries, doctors, geologists, plant-collectors, writers, travellers, and - most surprising of all - traders. As wives, courtesans and she-merchants, these tough adventuring women were every bit as intrepid as their men, the buccaneering sea captains and traders in whose wake they followed; their voyages to India were extraordinarily daring leaps into the unknown. The history of the British in India has cast a long shadow over these women; Memsahibs, once a word of respect, is now more likely to be a byword for snobbery and even racism. And it is true: prejudice of every kind - racial, social, imperial, religious - did cloud many aspects of British involvement in India. But was not invariably the case. In this landmark book, celebrated chronicler, Katie Hickman, uncovers stories, until now hidden from history: here is Charlotte Barry, who in 1783 left London a high-class courtesan and arrived in India as Mrs William Hickey, a married 'lady'; Poll Puff who sold her apple puffs for 'upwards of thirty years, growing grey in the service'; Mrs Hudson who in 1617 was refused as a trader in indigo by the East Indian Company, and instead turned a fine penny in cloth; Julia Inglis, a survivor of the siege of Lucknow; Amelia Horne, who witnessed the death of her entire family during the Cawnpore massacres of 1857; and Flora Annie Steel, novelist and a pioneer in the struggle to bring education to purdah women. For some it was painful exile, but for many it was exhilarating. Through diaries, letters and memoirs (many still in manuscript form), this exciting book reveals the extraordinary life and times of hundreds of women who made their way across the sea and changed history. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)954.00922History and Geography Asia India and South Asia Geographic treatment, biography Temperate zonesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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