The literature on the colonial period of Africa is very large, including sociological analysis opened up by Balandier’s seminal notion of “colonial situation” a generation ago1. However, the imagery and role of women in the construction and evolution of modern colonial Africa has had scant rigorous attention2. The topic deserves much greater empirical and analytical weight for various reasons.

 

 

 

 

 

3 The classic study of the European imagery of Africa on the eve of the modern colonial period is Ph (…)
2First, sexuality in the form of erotic imagery was part of the exoticism that provided an additional enticement, besides economic and strategic reasons, to have colonies: colonial “possessions” were in the collective imaginary possessions of sexual delights that could not be directly expressed in the newly rationalize, industrial setting of the second half of the nineteenth century and its ubiquitous somber Victorian ethos. Whether a “Madame Butterfly” in the Far East, or the harem courtesan in North Africa and the Middle East depicted in paintings from Ingres to Matisse, or the “Black Eve” on French colonial stamps, the “native woman” was an important lure in attracting European men from the private and public sectors to the colonies. Adventure, profits, and exotic women were the other side of the coin of the image of Africa, whose “dark side” was its unhealthy aspect making it unsafe for Europeans3.

4 The analogy with blacks can be extended further. The superiority of Western civilization in relati (…)
3In this we shall see how the African setting, in the formative years of colonization, manifested itself in the perception of a selected group of Westerners: women travelers in Africa. The rationale for devoting a chapter to such a group is as follows. First and foremost, in Victorian-industrial society women were marginal to European society in terms of the locus of economic and political power they did not vote and were in effect excluded from most professions (law, medicine, university teching), managerial positions, and occupations of high socio-economic status. One can speak, in retrospective, of a certain “institutional sexism” present which made the situation of a woman three-quarters of a century ago structurally similar to the situation of a Negro in American society until quite recently. There was prevalent the biological myth of women being of “the weaker sex”, having mental and psychological characteristics so different from men that their participation in the larger society, on an equal footing with men, was unthinkable. Women were seen as more emotional, as dependent on men, and lacking creativity… all this from “innate” biological or constitutional factors4.