Memsahibs

British Women in Colonial India

Ipshita Nath

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781787387089
• eBook ISBN: 9781787388789
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores.

The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging with political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression.

From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on the Cover Image
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of British-Indian terms
• Timeline of Memsahibs’ Years in India
• Prologue
• 1. “Days All Gold and Nights All Silver”: Journey to the ‘Land of the Open Door’
• 2. “My Ignorance of Most Things Useful Was a Disgrace”:  Becoming a Memsahib
• 3. “There Is No Solitude Like the Solitude of a Civilian’s  Lady”: Nostalgia, Boredom, Marital Strife, and  ‘Going Native’
• 4. “I Never Felt, or Indeed Was, So Dirty in My Life”:  Dacoits, Doolies, and Dak-Bungalows
• 5. “This Countree Veree Jungley, Mees Sahib!”: Camping,  Hunting, and the Great Outdoors
• 6. “Woe Is Me That I Sojourn in This Land of Pestilence”:  Dirt, Disease, and Doctorly Memsahibs
• 7. “The ‘Simla Woman’ Is Frivolous”: Hills, Sunsets, and  Scandals
• 8. Missie Babas and Baba Logs: The Junior Imperialists, Their  Mothers, and Their Ayahs
• 9. “Naked and Bleeding, Insulted and Abused”: The Indian  Rebellion of 1857
• 10. “We Are Not Wanted in India”: Going Back ‘Home’,  or Staying On?
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover