Sex and the Family in Colonial India: Eight Indian Lives

In the early years of the British empire, cohabitation between Indian women and British men was commonplace and to some degree tolerated.

However, as Durba Ghosh argues in a challenge to the existing historiography, anxieties about social status, appropriate sexuality, and the question of who could be counted as 'British' or 'Indian' were constant concerns of the colonial government even at this time.

By following the stories of a number of mixed-race families, at all levels of the social scale, from high-ranking officials and noblewomen to rank-and-file soldiers and camp followers, and also the activities of indigenous female concubines, mistresses, and wives, the author offers a fascinating account of how gender, class, and race affected the cultural, social and even political mores of the period.

The book makes an original and signal contribution to scholarship on colonialism, gender, and sexuality.

Author: Durba Ghosh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 01/14/2008
Pages: 292
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.66d
ISBN: 9780521673792

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 12/18/2008 pg. 80

About the Author
Ghosh, Durba: - Durba Ghosh is Assistant Professor in History at Cornell University. She has co-edited, with Dane Kennedy, Decentering Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World (2006).

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