Playing the Game Western Women in Arabia

by Tuson, Penelope

• ISBN13: 9781860649332
• ISBN10: 1860649335
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-12-19
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

The extraordinary Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark, Rosetta Forbes and Mary Curzon are the best known protagonists in this history and biography of the Western women who lived, worked and travelled in Arabia in the first half of the twentieth century.Largely ignored by historians, they were sometimes flamboyant and unconventional, sometimes conservative and conformist - and all of them wanted to be a part of British imperial life.Some were prepared to 'play the game', others, like the American missionaries whose stories are told here, were not and were regardedas difficult and dangerous.Playing the Game explores how they negotiated power and position in the Empire.It reveals how conventional female roles were defined by the masculine culture of imperial authority and how while at times these women actively colluded with this, at others they successfully subverted the stereotypes.

Author Biography

Penelope Tuson was Curator of Middle East Archives in the British Library's Oriental and India Office Collections.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xviii
Map	xx
Introduction: Claiming a Place: Women and Imperial Politics before the First World War	1	(16)
1 'Keeping up the Dignity of the Empire': the Viceregal Tour of the Gulf in 1903	17	(32)
2 The Wife of the Political Agent: Emily Overend Lorimer in Bahrain, 1911-12	49	(35)
3 Rival Narratives: American Missionaries in the Gulf, 1892-1914	84	(30)
4 War Work for the Empire: Western Women in Mesopotamia and the Gulf, 1914-18	114	(35)
5 Women and the ;New World Order': Anglo-American Perspectives on Colonialism, 1918-26	149	(29)
6 'Women called Wild': Travellers and Orientalists in the Inter-war Years	178	(30)
7 The 'Beach Pyjama Incident', 1933: Oil, the Arabian Gulf Air Route and the 'Opening up' of the Coast	208	(31)
Postscript: Completing the Story	239	(4)
Bibliography	243	(14)
Index	257