European Women and the Second British Empire

It enhances our understanding of intracultural and crosscultural relationships and raises significant questions about the complexities of the colonial phenomenon in the modern era. Journal of World HistoryProvides a powerful and important analysis foregrounding the ideological construction of whiteness in understandings of gender and sexuality. . . . Margaret Strobel manages to provide a convincing analysis of the contradictory and often challenging space occupied by European women in the project of empire. SignsStrobel is to be highly commended for an historical analysis that brings critical light to bear on the complex interactions of gender, race, and class that have shadowed both European mens and womens participation in colonialism. Women and Politics . . . a clear exposition and synthesis . . . In this useful introduction to a new field, Strobel lays out clearly the arguments on which it is built. Her book makes it possible to acquaint students with the initial array of scholarship that is already growing. She also demonstrates that rewriting an imperial history that is sensitive to gender, culture, race, sexuality, and power is an exhilarating enterprise. American Historical ReviewBased on the published accounts of travelers and officials wives, biographies and other materials, this is a lively, fastpaced account of the roles of white women in the British empire, from about 1880 to the recent past. The European women of the second British empire carved out a space for themselves amid the options made available to them by British expansion, but they too were treated as inferiorsthe inferior sex within the superior race.