Module: HST5385 From Prophecy to Revolution: Resistance and Insurgency against European Empire
By: Isabelle Grime
Statue in Guadeloupe commemorating Solitude, female slave executed for rebellion in 1802
Within the history of European empire in the 18th to 20th centuries, anti-colonial resistance was often only recorded, and later studied, with regards to mass movements and grand armed revolts. In more recent decades, significant efforts have been made to disseminate the narratives constructed by colonial officials by looking at ‘history from below’.[1] This focus on the ‘subaltern’ can give an insight into the issue of gender within colonial societies, as some scholars argue women exist at a lower degree of subalternity than men.[2] This essay will explore the disparity between the way ‘gender’ informed both the type and scale of resistance that oppressed peoples were able to pursue, most commonly due to the different spheres of influence that men and women existed within. I will attempt to demonstrate that colonised peoples resisted both within and outside of the conventions of their gender, with a particular focus on women to demonstrate the less obvious forms their resistance could take.
The physicality of the mass armed revolt was informed by masculinist stereotypes of insurgents as indigenous ‘warrior-savages’ or ‘violent fanatics’. Through the prism of gender, however, this essay attempts to illuminate how anti-colonial resistance was far more complex; encompassing psychological resistance, subversive individual behaviour as well as simple collaboration and support.
The fluidity of gender within colonial regimes is something that informed resistance; Bederman argues that beginning in the 19th century, American colonial officials believed that ‘the foremost requisite of civilisation was gender distinction’.[3] Thus, if the communities they ruled over did not fit inside their western-prescribed gender stereotypes, they were often viewed as backwards and degenerate, requiring of the American civilising influence. In this way, the subversion of gender roles by colonised peoples could be uniquely weaponised to rebel against colonial regimes. For example, the Muslim women in the Moro Province of the southern Philippines threw off the yoke of American paternalistic colonialism through something as simple as wearing trousers to constitute military uniform, so that they could fight alongside their male counterparts. This physical display of masculinity represented an abandonment of feminine mentality and character to the Americans, thus negating their natural effeminacy and ‘weakness’ which the colonists had used as a rationale for protecting them against the dangerous, and supposedly abusive, Moro men.[4]
The idea that women were often able to take on more typically masculine traits and roles in order to rise up effectively, is not isolated to the Moros; when their husbands were made absent due to the German colonists’ agricultural policy, which required men to migrate to work on farmland, women in German East Africa in the early 1900s were forced to fill the gap at the head of the household, combatting problems like wild pig infestations, famines and labour shortages.[5] Although this was not obvious or violent resistance as in the case of the Moro women, the ‘strategies of accommodation and survival’ adopted by Uzaramo women meant they resisted the social and economic dislocation incited by German colonialism, allowing them a newfound autonomy and in turn a capacity for resistance that they had not possessed when their subjugation was twofold (under both husbands and colonisers).[6] Although the women were empowered through masculine methods, such as wearing their clothes and brandishing muskets, the infringement of German colonial policy into their domestic sphere made such rebellion necessary, as it was a question of their own safety and the safety of their homes and families.[7]
Despite this, the women’s assumption of household authority was seen as a transgression of their sphere of influence by the Uzaramo men when they returned. Realising German colonial policy had removed them from their most traditional seat of power, many were driven to participate in the Maji Maji uprisings between 1905-1907, in order to restore the status quo and reverse effects of their absence.[8] Thus, the desire for localised patriarchal control of their women and households transcended any ulterior motive for independence from Germany, despite what nationalist historiographies commonly say.[9] It could be argued here that the same western ideals of civilisation which the Americans enforced in the Moro province had impacted ideas about gender in local Uzaramo populations, as working away from isolated homelands closer to German centres exposed Uzaramo men to novel ideological bases of power.[10] This is telling of the way gendered experiences of colonialism gave men and women a spectrum of causations for resistance.
One facet of colonialism uniquely experienced by women was their commodification and determination as colonial property. Of course, it was possible for both genders to be seen by officials as possessions of their colonial regime, however, subaltern women were arguably more vulnerable to this plight due to their reproductive capacity, which was in itself colonised. Its value was used as a bargaining chip not only within imperial regimes but also between them and collaborating groups, to form alliances of kinship.[11] This colonial imposition upon the female body is exemplified by an enslaved woman in the 19th century Caribbean named Solitude, who was allowed to give birth before being executed for crimes against the colonial state. Such a unique experience of oppression would arguably make for unique forms of resistance; however, there is a particular historiographical struggle to reconcile the experiences of different genders under colonial oppression. Marisa Fuentes, for example, discusses the violence of the archive itself in silencing the voices of subaltern women comparably more than the voices of subaltern men.[12] It is difficult for us to establish the extent of women’s resistance as their experiences occurred in the domestic sphere, which did not warrant the records which were kept, for example, of anti-colonial insurgency in the military spheres, dominated by men.
Historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee from the subaltern school contends that it is not easy to delve into the detail of female experiences of colonialism in British India, as things such as the sexual politics between master and servant would not have been recorded officially; although undoubtedly Indian women would have been kept as mistresses, we do not know how many and by whom, and so it is difficult to trace the lineage of their resistance to this gendered experience.[13] Fuentes recognises such omissions in her book Dispossessed Lives, and so uses other sources to determine how women’s experience of colonialism caused them to rise up. She uses the example of Molly, an enslaved woman in Barbados, whose resistance we only know of because it had a marked impact on the wider colonial society at the time. After attempting to poison white slaveowner John Denny in 1768, she was executed; later the colonial authorities were abhorred at what they saw as an act of resistance by her community when they mourned her death and buried her in line with their traditions.[14] This led to a statement being issued by the governor of Barbados whereby he ordered all future executed enslaved people to be sunk so that this violation of the laws could not reoccur.[15] Thus, we only know about Molly’s resistance because of the wider outrage it provoked, which led to official documentation; we do not know how she came into possession of the poison, nor why she was in such close proximity to a slave owner that was not actually her own.
One thing we can learn from the story of Molly is how, although women were not often able to physically revolt, they could do so psychologically. At surface level, Molly’s assassination attempt against John Denny can be viewed as a desperate attempt at violence to end her subjugation, however upon closer examination, we see how by using the intimacy she was afforded as a domestic slave to her advantage, Molly reinterpreted her status as a colonial possession. Although it resulted in her death, the control demonstrated by Molly shows an unwillingness to exist passively as a dehumanised object and instead act with the initiative of a citizen. In parallel to this, the abandonment of the stereotypically passive feminine mentality by rebel Moro women compounds the idea that psychological methods of resistance could be informed by the conventions of gender.
The example of Molly raises the issue of proximity to colonial authorities, a unique feature of the female experience of colonialism which allows for more intimate forms of resistance, such as the poisoning of a slave owner. This is not an isolated example; of the 25 enslaved imprisoned in Martinique in the 1830s, most were women convicted of similar acts of poisoning. Moreover, although Ellen Craft’s existence was the product of an act of abuse, we see another way in which intimacy between an enslaved female and a male slaveowner could be utilised to incite resistance.
Enslaved women’s proximity to male authorities, allowed most likely because, as a consequence of their gender, they were perceived as weak and unlikely to cause harm, also allowed them to gain access to colonial knowledge, spread between as an act of resistance. The role of the rumour in anti-colonial resistance cannot be underestimated. Even though most were only fragmentally rooted in truth, they often led to wider resistance, such as Bud Dajo and revolts in Cuba in 1844, incited by contributions of female domestic slaves which consisted largely of ‘noticing, hearing and observing’[16]. Thus, they could subvert the negative trope of women as natural gossips by spreading warnings and nascent plans for wider revolt.
Another prominent instance where women could use the parameters of their gender to their advantage is depicted in Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film about the Battle of Algiers. Some have argued that the Battle of Algiers, one phase of the Algerian War, could not have lasted almost three years without the efforts of women.[17] Indeed, Pontecorvo conveys their centrality to the struggle in a scene which show three civilian women taking on the role of freedom fighters, complicit in the bombings of key public places frequented by French pied-noirs.[18] They carry the bombs in handbags; such a prominent symbol of femininity gives a uniquely female dimension to this anti-colonial resistance, exacerbated when one of the women is flirted with by a French soldier. Although she does not actively engage in flirting back, she arguably exploits the power of her sexuality to pass by the guards, unchecked and unsuspected. Prior to the women collecting the handbag-bombs, there is a relatively long scene of them preparing, which involves doing their hair and makeup, notably in a western style. This arguably gives them more power as they are less likely to be suspected by French soldiers if they appear more westernised, with its connotations of civilisation. They are the face of the operation, whereas the men are behind the scenes, rendered somewhat powerless; as although they have prepared the bombs, it is up to the women to orchestrate the attack. One of the women even has a young boy in her company, and so the added attribute of motherhood makes this heavily gendered portrayal of anti-colonial resistance even more powerful, as the risks of female involvement arguably bear more weight.
Indeed, not all resistance by women entailed violent or subversive acts. It was often possible for women to resist within the traditions of their gender, through methods such as planting crops and procuring food to fuel resistance efforts, practised by the Zaramo women during Maji Maji.[19] This reflects James Scott’s concept of every day resistance, a central theory within subaltern historiography, which focuses on the prosaic acts that went on behind the scenes and in between larger scale rebellion.[20] This notion has alternately been discussed by Hobsbawm as ‘working the system… to their minimum disadvantage’[21], which I believe connects the examples expressed throughout this essay that colonised women could subvert the stereotypes used to oppress them, such as their sexuality, assumed weakness and objectification, to successfully resist colonial rule.
Indigenous men, although they were arguably the ‘natural leaders’ of anti-colonial efforts, were the most likely collaborators with the colonisers, as they already held positions of power that could be easily made answerable to settling colonisers in return for maintaining a façade of control. In the colonial Caribbean, one method of resistance which encompassed both genders was the marronage, which consisted of enslaved men and women fleeing plantations and setting up rival ‘maroon’ societies, usually in mountainous regions. Their leadership was usually male, which helped when negotiating treaties with colonial authorities. For example, Juan de Bolas, leader of the Jamaican Maroons, posed enough of a threat to the British that they allowed his freedom and 2,500 acres of land for his followers, in return for aid in capturing other escaped slaves.[22] Bolas’s collaboration in this way depicts the gendered experience of colonialism as much more complex than the binary options of resistance and subjugation. Although women largely played an ancillary role in the act of marronage, the example of Ellen Craft is pertinent; as a light-skinned enslaved woman, she was able to dress up as a male colonial settler and pretend to be the master of her dark-skinned husband so that they could flee with no suspicion.[23]
Male subalterns were less easy to commodify than female, however that did not stop their oppressors attempting it. American colonisers desired the men of the Moro province to become assets to their military regimes, however their warlike spirit and savagery, which Americans regarded as driven by their untamed masculinity, made them less easy to assimilate into the colonial state.[24] The potential that was seen in the Moro men to become first-class fighting men, the archetypal colonial subject, was informed by their ‘visceral masculinity and frontier ruggedness’[25]. Ultimately, the failure to do this resulted in the Bud Dajo massacre of 1906, where rumours of the American’s intention to eradicate their Muslim faith, likely in order to bring them into the fold of the Christian colonial military, prompted an uprising by the Moros.[26]
For subaltern men, their masculine power, especially when expressed through ‘savagery’, was viewed by colonial authorities as the most obviously threatening form of insurgency. In many instances, gender dictated whether acts of resistance were committed alone or by a group; it was often easier for men to rise up in large numbers as they existed already in the military spheres where mass collaboration was a prerequisite, and if women wished to participate, they too had to channel this masculinity. For women, confined to more domestic spheres, acts of resistance were often committed alone. Nevertheless, this gave them unique opportunities to target resistance at higher-order colonial officials, arguably a more effective method of revolt than battle with imperial soldiers who, in reality, colonial authorities cared for little.
In conclusion, this essay has aimed to use gender as a lens through which to deconstruct the traditional narratives that anti-colonial resistance was a predominantly male enterprise supported by an ungendered subaltern collective.[27] Different gendered experiences ultimately allowed for a multiplicity of frameworks for anti-colonial resistance.
Notes: [1] J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985) pp.xv-xvii. [2] K. Currie, ‘Gender, Subaltern Studies and the Invisibility of Women’, Journal of Social Sciences, 2:1 (1998) pp.1-8. [3] G. Bederman, Manliness and civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) p.25. [4] M. Hawkins, ‘Managing a Massacre: Savagery, Civility and Gender in Moro Province in the Wake of Bud Dajo’, Journal of Philippine Studies, 59:1 (2011), p.99. [5] T. Sunseri, ‘Famine and Wild Pigs: Gender Struggles and the Outbreak of the Majimaji War in Uzaramo (Tanzania)’, The Journal of African History, 38:2 (1997), p.242 [6] Ibid. [7] A. Finch, ‘“What Looks Like a Revolution”: Enslaved Women and the Gendered Terrain of Slave Insurgencies in Cuba, 1843–1844’, Journal of Women’s History, 26:1 (2014), p.113. [8] Sunseri, p.259. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid, p.258. [11] Ibid, p.248 [12] M. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp.1-12. [13] R. Mukherjee, ‘The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857: Reply’, Past and Present, 128 (1994), p.183. [14] Fuentes, pp.100-123. [15] Ibid. [16] Finch, p.126. [17] M. Flood, ‘Women resisting terror: imaginaries of violence in Algeria (1966–2002)’, The Journal of North African Studies, 22:1 (2017), pp.109-131. [18] The Battle of Algiers (1966) [DVD], G. Pontecorvo, Italy, Casbah Film [viewed 11/12/2019] [19] Sunseri, p.256. [20] Scott, pp.xv-xvii. [21] E. Hobsbawm, ‘Peasants and Politics’, Journal of Peasant Studies 1:1 (1973), pp.3-22. [22] A. Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), p.38. [23] Y. Barrigan, ‘Christmas and Resistance to Slavery in the Americas’, Black Perspectives [online], 2016, https://www.aaihs.org/christmas-and-resistance-to-slavery-in-the-americas/ (accessed 14/12/19) [24] Hawkins, pp.87-88. [25] Ibid, p.94. [26] Ibid, p.83. [27] Finch, p.113. Bibliography Barrigan, Y., ‘Christmas and Resistance to Slavery in the Americas’, Black Perspectives [online], 2016, https://www.aaihs.org/christmas-and-resistance-to-slavery-in-the-americas/
Bederman, G., Manliness and civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Currie, K., ‘Gender, Subaltern Studies and the Invisibility of Women’, Journal of Social Sciences, 2:1 (1998).
Finch, A., ‘“What Looks Like a Revolution”: Enslaved Women and the Gendered Terrain of Slave Insurgencies in Cuba, 1843–1844’, Journal of Women’s History, 26:1 (2014).
Flood, M., ‘Women resisting terror: imaginaries of violence in Algeria (1966–2002)’, The Journal of North African Studies, 22:1 (2017).
Fuentes, M., Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
Hawkins, M., ‘Managing a Massacre: Savagery, Civility and Gender in Moro Province in the Wake of Bud Dajo’, Journal of Philippine Studies, 59:1 (2011).
Hobsbawm, E., ‘Peasants and Politics’, Journal of Peasant Studies 1:1 (1973).
Mukherjee, R., ‘The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857: Reply’, Past and Present, 128 (1994).
Scott, J., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985).
Sunseri, T., ‘Famine and Wild Pigs: Gender Struggles and the Outbreak of the Majimaji War in Uzaramo (Tanzania)’, The Journal of African History, 38:2 (1997).
Taylor, A., American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).
The Battle of Algiers (1966) [DVD], G. Pontecorvo, Italy, Casbah Film
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