Political Communities in World History - Reading Notes - Seminar 2 - How Has ‘the Political’ Been
Defined?
Empire, Gender and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century - Kathleen Wilson
What Role Did Gender Play in Motivating, Maintaining and Challenging the Eighteenth-Century British
Empire?
- Gender was used as a way to assert ones identity, and this expression of identity was ever changing
- ‘neither natural nor inevitable’ - 15
- The word Empire has acquired a different meaning, as it refers to a set of changes which empire-
building led to
- British Empire was founded on contradictory ideas of freedom and of coercion
- Empire was ‘a generator for ideas about gender, nationality, and difference’
- The global network created by the construction of Empire was a vehicle for societal change as it allowed
people, as well as their ideas about identity, to travel around the globe
- British colonisers imposed their views on gender onto those in the country they were colonising
- The way in which populations of colonies expressed their gender was a marker of which of those people
would be protected under the British rule of freedom and protection
- Colonialists aimed to regulate the cultures which they discovered, moulding them into a more familiar
looking society with, for example, more European gender systems and binaries
- British assessed the 'stage of civilisation’ which a new colony was at - 16
- Nation was seen as a way of creating a polity which instead of being constructed based on shared
physical characteristics, was based on shared customs, culture and descent, or blood
- ‘nation brought gender and sexual practice, as sources and symbols of a common inheritance, to the
forefront of social and political theories’ - 17
- ‘many Scots, Protestant Irish, Americans, Africans, Asians, and Amerindians (men and women) began to
identify with a culture ‘both distinctly British and distinctly imperial’ - 17
- Distinct difference between an imperial identity and a British identity demonstrates a flaw perhaps
in the method of state building, if the British were aiming to engulf large swaths of the world into
their own social and political structures and impose Britishness directly on to the people in colonies
so they would both believe in and want to structure their nations on these ideologies
- ‘Women were emblematic and symptomatic of such corruption, by virtue of their proclivity for excessive
consumption and their capacity to seduce men from their civic obligations. They were accordingly urged
to give up their ‘natural’ inclinations towards ‘effeminising’ luxuries to promote the stoicism and love of
country within the home that produced a manly fighting force at the front’ - 18
- Women were seen as naturally passive and oblivious, and were encouraged by imperial leaders to,
instead of indulging in consumerism, use their position in society as a platform for advancing the
ideas of stoicism and British nationalism which the Empire was trying to spread
- British colonies were ridiculed as sources of ‘luxury, effeminacy and tyranny’, with people such as
parliamentarians suggesting that the American Independence War and the ideas of abolition were
representative of a more weak and effeminate Imperial identity
- British military made an attempt to rebrand themselves after the american war, for example through the
wearing of new uniforms, in an attempt to regain the support of the people of the colonies for the
British social and political systems
- Certain groups in society, notably white men who were working in trade and commerce, were held up as
symbols of the masculinity of the Empire, whereas women, people of colour, and others whose
circumstances made them appear weaker in society were all brushed with the identity of being
effeminate
Defined?
Empire, Gender and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century - Kathleen Wilson
What Role Did Gender Play in Motivating, Maintaining and Challenging the Eighteenth-Century British
Empire?
- Gender was used as a way to assert ones identity, and this expression of identity was ever changing
- ‘neither natural nor inevitable’ - 15
- The word Empire has acquired a different meaning, as it refers to a set of changes which empire-
building led to
- British Empire was founded on contradictory ideas of freedom and of coercion
- Empire was ‘a generator for ideas about gender, nationality, and difference’
- The global network created by the construction of Empire was a vehicle for societal change as it allowed
people, as well as their ideas about identity, to travel around the globe
- British colonisers imposed their views on gender onto those in the country they were colonising
- The way in which populations of colonies expressed their gender was a marker of which of those people
would be protected under the British rule of freedom and protection
- Colonialists aimed to regulate the cultures which they discovered, moulding them into a more familiar
looking society with, for example, more European gender systems and binaries
- British assessed the 'stage of civilisation’ which a new colony was at - 16
- Nation was seen as a way of creating a polity which instead of being constructed based on shared
physical characteristics, was based on shared customs, culture and descent, or blood
- ‘nation brought gender and sexual practice, as sources and symbols of a common inheritance, to the
forefront of social and political theories’ - 17
- ‘many Scots, Protestant Irish, Americans, Africans, Asians, and Amerindians (men and women) began to
identify with a culture ‘both distinctly British and distinctly imperial’ - 17
- Distinct difference between an imperial identity and a British identity demonstrates a flaw perhaps
in the method of state building, if the British were aiming to engulf large swaths of the world into
their own social and political structures and impose Britishness directly on to the people in colonies
so they would both believe in and want to structure their nations on these ideologies
- ‘Women were emblematic and symptomatic of such corruption, by virtue of their proclivity for excessive
consumption and their capacity to seduce men from their civic obligations. They were accordingly urged
to give up their ‘natural’ inclinations towards ‘effeminising’ luxuries to promote the stoicism and love of
country within the home that produced a manly fighting force at the front’ - 18
- Women were seen as naturally passive and oblivious, and were encouraged by imperial leaders to,
instead of indulging in consumerism, use their position in society as a platform for advancing the
ideas of stoicism and British nationalism which the Empire was trying to spread
- British colonies were ridiculed as sources of ‘luxury, effeminacy and tyranny’, with people such as
parliamentarians suggesting that the American Independence War and the ideas of abolition were
representative of a more weak and effeminate Imperial identity
- British military made an attempt to rebrand themselves after the american war, for example through the
wearing of new uniforms, in an attempt to regain the support of the people of the colonies for the
British social and political systems
- Certain groups in society, notably white men who were working in trade and commerce, were held up as
symbols of the masculinity of the Empire, whereas women, people of colour, and others whose
circumstances made them appear weaker in society were all brushed with the identity of being
effeminate
