Imperiled Women and Chivalrous Men in Colonial India, 1757–1857

Abstract

This essay examines some landmark moments in a hundred year period with a view to uncovering the relationship between the trope of the imperiled woman and the consolidation of British colonial power. It takes the narrative of the Black Hole incident with its emphatic centralization of native brutality as the putative origin of British imperial power in India, follows the gendering of this central notion of native brutality in debates around the tradition and practice of Sati in colonial India, and then discusses the historical narratives about the 1857 Mutiny which embellish the notion of gender-specific native brutality.