Through key topics and episodes across British Empire history, Woollacott examines how gender ideologies and practices affected both sexes and saturated imperial politics and culture. Contains: Women and unfree labour in the 18th and 19th centuries: slavery, convict transportation, emancipation and indentured labour: Narratives of interracial sexual assault and crises of imperial rule: Masculinities, imperial adventuring and wars: Gender and everyday life in colonial regimes: Women in anti-colonial and nationalist movements: Gender and empire in the metropole.
Description of nineteenth-century woman in all her guises: as mother, wife, lover, revolutionary, coloniser, worker, feminist and how individuals took on these roles. Themes like nationalism, imperial expansion, labour protest and world war are re-evaluated from women's perspective. Contains also accounts of individual women and their experiences of war, work, love and politics.