Opinion: The home as a “unit of civilization” in the British Empire
Note: This is an opinion piece
Colonial literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently depicted Empire not only as a political entity, but as an extension of the domestic sphere (George, 1998). The home was a ‘unit of civilization where [one could] learn their several duties’ (Steel and Gardiner, 1907, cited in Blunt and Dowling, 2006, p.153). Governance within the home was the backbone of the Empire; in George’s (1998) words, ‘the essence of housekeeping was the learning of imperial privilege’ (p.59). British women acted as imperialists in the domestic sphere (George, 1998), raising up the next generation of imperialists while making sure to keep domestic workers in their place with clear discipline. This instilling of duties within the home perpetuated racial, class, and gendered hierarchies throughout the Empire, keeping British imperials in positions of superiority. The home also served as a starting ground for wider civilizing missions of Empire; rather than incorporating colonised peoples into British society, these missions enforced an idea of colonised peoples as dependent upon imperialists, incapable of governing themselves. In this paper, I argue that relationships and roles within the home were centred on British identity or lack thereof, which kept colonised peoples from ever attaining the status of Britons in the home or the Empire at large.
In the context of the British Empire, the colonial home was first and foremost the reproduction centre of either white imperialists or shameful ‘degenerates’ (Stoler, 2010, p.62). High-ranking British men in India often took native concubines and fathered mixed-race children. The children of concubines were seen as ‘degenerates’ of the European race that could not fully conform to the British way of life (Stoler, 2010); this is evidenced by the wills of European men, which demonstrated a clear favouring of their white children over their mixed-race children in the division of inheritance (Ghosh, 2006). Many mixed-race children were forcibly removed from their mothers and placed in orphanages and schools in attempts to assimilate them (Blunt and Dowling, 2006) without ‘contaminating’ European society (Stoler, 2010). But ‘degenerates’ were not only those of mixed race. Many lower-class British men had monogamous relationships with colonised women, choosing to privately bequeath all their possessions to them without publicising the nature of their relationship (Ghosh, 2006). Such men were perceived as a threat to imperial rule; they lacked the wealth and prestige associated with honourable imperial identity and became too intimate with colonised peoples, forsaking this identity even further to the risk of social and internalised shame (Stoler, 2010). This demonstrates that the accepted mould of a British ‘imperialist’ was a white, middle-class British man who held a distinct paternalistic authority over colonised peoples.
British women, in contrast to British men, rarely had intimate relationships with non-white men. The responsibility of reproducing white imperialists who had the ‘right to rule’ (Stoler, 2010) thus fell on British mothers. Indeed, motherhood was essential to the imperial project, and the importance of women bearing strong, healthy children was widely recognised (Davin, 1997). Mothers were expected to keep their children isolated from any natives that might influence them in their cultural practices and identity (Stoler, 2010). A notable example is the education of white boys in India. Wealthy families would send their sons to Britain to be educated, so that they could not be ‘contaminated’ by native children or teachers (Buettner, 2004). By contrast, British families that could not afford British schooling enrolled their children in Indian hill schools, built for white and mixed-race children that could not be sent abroad. Though they offered a decent education, a consistent anxiety in sending a white child to these schools was the adoption of a ‘Chi-Chi’ accent, marking them as lower-class and negatively impacted a British boy’s employment opportunities (Buettner, 2004). Meanwhile, girls’ education was less prioritised, and sometimes even seen as a threat to her ability to be a mother and proliferator of the imperial race (Davin, 1997).
Further than simply protecting the identity of their children, British women also entrenched racial hierarchies throughout the Empire as imperialists of the domestic sphere (George, 1998). Increased emigration of women to the colonies led to a greater increase in the importation of metropolitan goods associated with European life, distinguishing ‘civilized’ Europeans from ‘uncivilized’ natives (Stoler, 2010). But the status associated with consumption of metropolitan goods was perhaps more important than the goods themselves; the middle-class family had the luxury of consuming goods while lower classes sold their labour to survive (Lorimer, 1978). Colonial British women thus employed non-white domestic servants in large numbers (Dussart, 2014). These employer-servant relationships imposed a ‘hierarchical labour process that accentuated the difference between [colonial employers] and their workers’ (Hansen, 1989, cited in Haskins and Lowrie, p.7). Despite being seen as delicate consumers, colonial British women were ‘benevolent partners in the imperial mission’ (George, 1998, p.52), running their households and disciplining their domestic servants as ‘memsahibs’ (‘madame boss’) (George, 1998). This memsahib persona often took the role of stern maternal figure, disciplining domestic servants in much the same way as she would a child (ibid.). For example, some servants were often rewarded with clothing for excellent work (Lowrie and Martinez, 2009); others were physically chastised for disobeying or displeasing their employer (Dussart, 2014). The British woman ‘replicated the empire on a domestic scale: a benevolent, much supervised terrain where discipline and punishment is meted out with an unwavering hand’ (George, 1998, p.57), and perpetuated a narrative in which non-white people were dependent upon the paternalistic governance of the Empire.
The colonial home did not only reproduce imperial hierarchies internally but served as a unit of measurement for civilization externally. As noted previously, the importation of European life to the colonies served to distinguish the ‘civilized’ from the ‘uncivilized’ (Stoler, 2010). British protectorates in Australian colonies were expected to set an example of civilization through domestic life (Lester, 2014), and native homes throughout the Empire were rated by how ‘European’ they seemed, particularly in matters of privacy (George, 1998). For example, children and parents in Indian homes often slept in the same room; British women, without attempting to understand such a practice, perceived this as a lack of boundaries associated with a primitive way of life (ibid.). Even gender dynamics within a household were used to distinguish British identity. British masculinity was characterised by civility, prestige, and self-control, while Aboriginal men were simultaneously recognised as physically strong outdoorsmen and loyal servants in an inferior station (Lowrie and Martinez, 2009). Likewise, imperial women set the standard of ‘true womanhood’, and perceived Indian women who practiced culturally appropriate customs, such as serving men first, as lacking dignity and participating in their own devaluation (George, 1998). However, British identity was bred and preserved, as seen in childrearing practices in the colonial home; it could not be learned and acquired. Thus, though native people were judged by how ‘European’ they acted, they could never attain true British identity because they were not of British lineage.
As home was the standard for civilization in the colonies, it was also the vehicle for civilizing missions. The home was often a place where imperial work in the political sphere overlapped with domestic life and would be the main centre of interaction between British women and native peoples (George, 1998). The home became a centre for domesticating and educating servants and other native peoples. Colonial British women were expected to take up the ‘burden’ of their ‘Eastern sisters’ (George, 1998, p.64), making native women ‘the hobby of their lives’ (Diver, p.79). This included caring for the sick and giving sanitation advice, as well as spreading European civilization through examples of childrearing (Procida, 1997 and George, 1998). It must be noted, however, that many attempts at cultivating European civilization were met with resistance; native people were not as infantilised and docile as British colonisers assumed. Domestic servants challenged their employers in court (Dussart, 2014); Indian women often refused to adopt European medicinal practices or cultural customs (George, 1998); Aboriginal houseboys appropriated possessions of Britons as an act of defiance and resistance to British authority (Lowrie and Martinez, 2009). Unfortunately, this intransigence often confirmed a bias that native people could not ‘learn’ how to be British, further entrenching racial hierarchies and paternalistic mindsets.
In conclusion, the home was a unit of civilization insofar as it reproduced and replicated the Empire at large. British women especially acted as imperialists in the domestic sphere, imposing a standard of British identity by which everyone in the home was measured. British mothers bred and protected the imperial identities of their children, instilling the qualities that gave them the ‘right to rule’ (Stoler, 2010) in the colonies. These women also represented the Empire in civilizing missions inside and outside the home and secured their place as imperialists by accentuating differences between themselves and colonised peoples. Domestic servants were treated as helpless children who needed a parental figure to discipline and educate them, and were rarely granted full autonomy. British customs produced in the domestic sphere became a measurement of status, and the hierarchical roles within the home demonstrated to non-white people that the Empire was only ‘secured for the English occupant’ (George, 1998, p.57).
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