Burdens of History - by Antoinette Burton (Paperback)

About the Book

Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915

Book Synopsis

In this study of British middle-class feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Antoinette Burton explores an important but neglected historical dimension of the relationship between feminism and imperialism. Demonstrating how feminists in the United Kingdom appropriated imperialistic ideology and rhetoric to justify their own right to equality, she reveals a variety of feminisms grounded in notions of moral and racial superiority. According to Burton, Victorian and Edwardian feminists such as Josephine Butler, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and Mary Carpenter believed that the native women of colonial India constituted a special 'white woman's burden.' Although there were a number of prominent Indian women in Britain as well as in India working toward some of the same goals of equality, British feminists relied on images of an enslaved and primitive 'Oriental womanhood' in need of liberation at the hands of their emancipated British 'sisters.' Burton argues that this unquestioning acceptance of Britain's imperial status and of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority created a set of imperial feminist ideologies, the legacy of which must be recognized and understood by contemporary feminists.

Review Quotes

A major reinterpretation.

Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati

An impressive work.

Philippa Levine, University of Southern California

"A major reinterpretation.

Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati"

"An impressive work.

Philippa Levine, University of Southern California"

A provocative and interesting example of historical reconstruction.

"Choice"

Burton's scrupulous study . . . has exceeded my hopes for this project.

"Nineteenth-Century Prose"

This is a serious contribution to feminist history and the history of feminism.

"Journal of Modern History"

About the Author

Antoinette Burton is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.