Playing the Game

Western Women in Arabia

Penelope Tuson

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781860649332
• eBook ISBN: 9780857715708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The lives of the Western women who lived, worked and travelled in Arabia in the first half of the 20th century have been largely ignored by historians. Penelope Tuson tells the stories of these women. Sometimes flamboyant and unconventional, sometimes conservative and conformist, all of them wanted in some way to be a part of British imperial life. Some were prepared to "play the game", others were not and could even be regarded as difficult and dangerous. "Playing the Game" explores how these women negotiated power and position in the Empire and how conventional female roles were defined by the masculine perspecitves and hierarchies of imperial authority, often with the collusion of the women themselves actively, but also sometimes despite their attempts to subvert the stereotypes.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Claiming a Place: Women and Imperial Politics before the First World War
• 1 ‘Keeping up the Dignity of the Empire’: The Viceregal Tour of the Gulf in 1903
• 2 The Wife of the Political Agent: Emily Overend Lorimer in Bahrain, 1911–12
• 3 Rival Narratives: American Missionaries in the Gulf, 1892–1914
• 4 War Work for the Empire: Western Women in Mesopotamia and the Gulf, 1914–18
• 5 Women and the ‘New World Order’: Anglo-American Perspectives on Colonialism, 1918–26
• 6 ‘Women called Wild’: Travellers and Orientalists in the Inter-war Years
• 7 The ‘Beach Pyjama Incident’, 1933: Oil, the Arabian Gulf Air Route and the ‘Opening up’ of the Coast
• Postscript: Completing the Story
• Bibliography
• Index