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How did the experience of conquered women differ from that of conquered men?

By Anwen Iris Venn

Edited by Mark Potter and Symran Annika Saggar



The experience of conquered women from conquered men differs significantly as conquerors’

actions varied depending on gender and sex. “Conquered” will be defined by women and men

colonised by different ethnic and religious backgrounds, usually through force, in the examples of Cordoba, the Congo, and British India. This essay will discuss the ways that colonists asserted control, and how this differed for men and women.


The differing experiences of conquered men and women are extensively debated. Hunt argues that men are “a labour force” and women are treated “as reproducers”. [1] Although focusing on the conquered Congolese, her argument resonates with similar historians, such as Pick, which is the forced middle-class idea of domesticity from European imperialist societies towards colonised women. Colonial visions imply conquered women were necessary for the reproduction of labour forces, which became significant after the Congo Free State because of the population decimation. Men would primarily work. Contrastingly, many historians analysing colonised populations discuss class, race and religion rather than gender differences, as shown by Curtin. He argues, regarding imperialism, that the “Western world [...] regard the non-West as an exception to the social [...] patterns”, often racializing those conquered to make them appear inferior. [2] He makes no distinction on gender. This showcases the debate’s historiographical issues towards conquered women and men’s differing experiences as many historians classify colonised experiences by class and race, rather than by gender.


A distinction between conquered women and men’s experiences was the exploitation of sex

and using religious and racial justification to punish natives, shown by the Belgian colonisation of the Congo from the 1800s to 1900s. By 1885, colonial rule was established by

King Leopold II of Belgium personally, creating the Congo Free State. [3] When Leopold II

established the new state under his personal control, he took advantage of the Congo’s wealthy resources, especially rubber, which was needed for technological advancements like the car. [4] During this period atrocities took place and the treatment towards the natives was brutally racial as Leopold II enforced forced labour. As the Congo was exploited to meet unrealistically high quotas for exports, whenever targets were not reached extreme punishments would ensue - usually hands and feet mutilations. [5] Despite this labour and punishment extending to both genders, men primarily harvested rubber as it was seen as manual work due to tree climbing. [6] Women were often used to control men to meet their quotas; in one village, a report of fifteen women were detained by the local capita until their husbands delivered the required rubber. [7]


Some contemporary reports made distinctions between male and female punishments in the

Congo. Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote The Crime of the Congo as a denunciation of the

cruelties of the Congo Free State, focuses on punishments, especially the chicotte. He explains how it was “freely inflicted upon women and children”, which leaves the victim “flayed and fainting”, recounting a Belgian officer who discusses how, despite laws preventing more than twenty-five blows daily, they would try to make blows as vigorous as possible. [8] Doyle highlights severe punishments towards women to garner sympathy from readers, as his publication is attempting to protest this brutality. It demonstrates how the experiences of conquered women and men can differ in how they were punished, even if fundamentally they had the same message of demoralisation.


Considering the different experiences of conquered women and men in colonised Congo, Kuba, a native Congolese kingdom, showcases considerable changes to the structure to native society. Whilst the Congo Free State would become Belgian Congo due to European backlash from 1908 until 1960, this didn’t always ease the strict policies imposed on the natives. A significant difference for conquered women than for conquered men was sexual violence or concubinages. Before the Belgian conquest, the Kuba kingdom had ‘matriclans’: sections of a village where groups believed they were related by descent from a single ancestress, thus the role of women was significant and powerful. [9] After Belgian colonisation, this system was seen as sinful, as it went against traditional Christian values. [10] As a response, colonists began to have concubines, whether consensual or not, to weaken female authority. Most foreigners were young bachelors in their twenties, and nearly all of them kept a concubine or “housekeeper”. [11] Often, the white male colonisers wrote fondly towards their concubines, to the extent that a Dutch rubber trader, Vermeulen, devoted his memoirs to remembering his mistress Mulekedi and defending their devotion more than twenty-five years after her death in childbirth and despite the racial taboo. [12] Furthermore the Commission of Inquiry, c. 1904 – 1905, where out of 370 testimonies, 20 came from women, reveal that the colonial regime required direct, intimate contact with its subjects to maintain a bond of subjection. [13] Within are reports of two women, Jema and Bonyonoto, who were made mistresses to white men, and a woman named Mingo who narrates how sentries made her put hot clay into her sexual parts while making bricks. [14] The Kabu kingdom demonstrates the differing experience towards conquered men compared to women through sex, where concubines and sexual violence was crucial for the new colonised society.


The experiences of conquered women from men differed in terms of Christian values imposed on Hindu women and men in British India during the 1800s. The British Raj was established in 1858 until 1947 and ruled over the Indian Subcontinent. [15] During this time, numerous implementations by the British government deeply affected the native Indian population, such as the Widow Remarriage Act in 1856. [16] This law allowed widowed Hindu women to remarry; to leave purdah for hospital treatments; and to attend school. [17] For Hindu women, these contradicted the woman’s role in Hindu society. Thus, British reforms provoked resentment, especially from the male Hindu population, as they challenged traditions, and British rule slowly became synonymous with Christian rule, as contemporary philosopher Ahmed Khan explains how conquered Indians felt “a firm conviction that the English Government was bent on interfering with their religion”. [18] Therefore, the experiences of conquered men and women differed due to challenges towards their traditions. For Hindu women, due to expectations from British middle-class women to ‘civilise’ societies, this led to a greater mobility in education and healthcare. Thus, it could be argued that conquered Hindu women experienced some positive developments, but at the expense of well-established customs. However, for conquered men, the greater freedoms granted to women perhaps jeopardised their own position in society, consequently leading to backlash. Regardless, this was a westernising and Christian movement by the British officials so, although from a western perspective this could be seen as a favourable experience for Indian women, it was at the sacrifice of orthodox Hinduism.


The ‘Murderous Outrages Act’ was established in 1867, enabling colonial officials wide-

ranging powers to prosecute individuals identified as ‘fanatics’ in Punjab and the North-West

Frontier Province. [19] With the increase of insubordination among the Indian soldiers under the British army, exploding in the Rebellion of 1857, the rise of Christian and Muslim ‘fanaticism’ led to the British enacting these laws that enabled officials to persecute without juries in trials and to enable the idea of Muslim fanaticism to be a derivation of mental instability. [20] This was usually depicted as an issue among native men due to soldier mutinies and native-led assassinations. Furthermore, there arose cases of ‘headhunting’, a practise derived from hunting in Victorian society and racial phrenology, used as justification for beheading Indian rebels for their skulls to be used as a trophy or sample. [21] These appeared to target mainly native males, and native women were very rarely accounted as fanatics or beheaded, which is likely because these acts were based on military warfare and tactics, something that Indian women during this period were rarely involved in. As such, conquered men often faced incredibly brutal conditions due to anti-colonial rebellions, and whilst women were not excluded from these punishments and, similar to the Congo Free State, were sometimes used as hostages against insurgents, the experiences vastly differ due to the stereotyped militarisation of men against the domesticity and sexualisation enforced onto women.


Conquered men and women had differing experiences in marriage, concubinage and

conversion, but this wasn’t solely through European imperialism but also from Muslim

expansionism, shown in the 8th to 10th century Muslim conquest of the pre-dominantly Christian Iberian Peninsula. The foundations of the Muslim Umayyad dynasty were consolidated in the 8th century, and from 711 to 1031 Muslim ascendancy was seldom challenged successfully. [22] The new ruling Arab elite were quick to distinguish themselves form the locals, especially in Cordoba. Christian and Jewish locals after the conquest were subjected to new laws that dictated their lifestyles, alongside additional taxes, the jizya and kharāj, to distinguish themselves against Arabs. [23] In this regard, for these conquered people there was little distinction in their personal experiences of Islamic Cordoba in terms of gender.


The differentiation in practices of intermarriages between Muslims and non-Muslims,

according to Simon Barton, was a shrewd strategy that aimed to legitimise Muslim rule by

integrating themselves with their conquered population, as Muslim men were free to marry up to four women from the People of the Book, but women or Christian and Jewish men were not allowed the same right. [24] Christians were subjects of a land they no longer ruled, and had to unconditionally accept the marriage of Christian women to Muslim men. [25] Often, such as shown in the Siete Partidas, canons allowed a man to take a free woman or a slave as a concubine. [26] Although there was some prominent Christian leaders, such as bishop Jacob of Edessa, who tried to limit religiously mixed marriages by keeping Christian wives of Muslim men inside the church, very little could prevent this form of oppressive integration. [27] These examples showcase a differing experience for the conquered women of the Spanish Iberia in comparison to conquered men for intermarriage and concubinage, yet not as extreme as Congolese concubinage. Religion, rather than race, was used to subjugate natives in Cordoba, unlike in European imperialists. Muslim Cordoba was nearly 1000 years before the ‘Partition for Africa’, thus native experiences were not as brutal as the intentions of European colonisers. The experiences of conquered men and women were different on terms of marriage and concubinage, where women were forced into marriage with their oppressors and men couldn’t prevent this.


In conclusion, the main factor that differed the experience for conquered women against

conquered men was sex. Whilst both genders were often subjected to similar punishments, such as hand mutilations in the Congo, conquerors made a firm distinction over native females and males, shown by intermarriages in Cordoba. Men were seen as militarised labourers, whilst women were seen as reproducers, thus differing their experiences, even if this differed depending on European imperialism or Muslim expansionism.


Notes


[1] Nancy Rose Hunt, Domesticity and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura’s Foyer Social (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 451.


[2] Philip D. Curtin, Imperialism (London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1971), p. xiii.


[3] Paul Gifford, France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 221 – 260.


[4] Jan Vansina, Being Colonised: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880 – 1960 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), pp. 65 – 97.


[5] Martin Ewans, European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopald II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 104 – 115.


[6] Vansina, Being Colonised, p. 62.


[7] Vansina, Being Colonised, pp. 120 – 145.


[8] Arthur Conan Doyle, The Crime of the Congo (London: Hutchinson, 1909), pp. 177 – 184.


[9] Vansina, Being Colonised, pp. 48 – 62.


[10] Vansina, Being Colonised., pp. 40 – 65.


[11] Vansina, Being Colonised pp. 56 – 57.


[12] Vansina, Being Colonised pp. 57.


[13] Charlotte Mertens, (2018) “When Archives Speak Back: Sexual Violence in the Congo Free State”, The London School of Economics and Political Science <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/07/18/when-archives-speak-back-sexual-violence-in-the-congo-free-state> [Accessed 2 December, 2019].


[14] Charlotte Mertens, (2018) “When Archives Speak Back: Sexual Violence in the Congo Free State”,The London School of Economics and Political Science <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/07/18/when-archives-speak-back-sexual-violence-in-the-congo-free-state> [Accessed 2 December, 2019].


[15] David Gilmour, The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience (London: Penguin UK, 2018), pp. introduction.


[16] Kim A. Wagner, The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 54.


[17] Wagner, The Skull of Alum Bheg, p.54


[18] Wagner, The Skull of Alum Bheg, p.54


[19] Mark Condos, “License to Kill: The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in Colonial India, 1867 – 1925.”, Modern Asian Studies, 50/2 (2016), pp. 476 – 517.


[20] Mark Condos, “Fanaticism’ and the Politics of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of British India.”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58/3 (2016), pp. 717-745.


[21] Simon J. Harrison, “Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military: keeping the Enemy Dead in British Frontier Warfare.”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50/1 (2008), pp. 285-303.


[22] Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp.91 – 115.


[23] Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), pp. 38 – 40.


[24] Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), p. 17.


[25] Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam, pp. 59 – 62.


[26] Barton, Conquerors, Brides and Concubines, p. 59.


[27] Barton, Conquerors, Brides and Concubines, pp 59 – 62.


Bibliography


Barton, Simon. Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power

in Medieval Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015


Condos, Mark. “Fanaticism and the Politics of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of

British India.”. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 58/3 2016


Condos, Mark. “License to Kill: The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in

Colonial India, 1867 – 1925.” Modern Asian Studies. 50/2 2016


Curtin, Philip D. Imperialism. London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1971


Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Crime of the Congo. London: Hutchinson, 1909


Ewans, Martin. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State

and Its Aftermath. Abindon: Routledge, 2017


Gifford, Paul. France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1971


Gilmour, David. The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience. London:

Penguin UK, 2018


Hunt, Nancy Rose. Domesticity and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura’s Foyer Special. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990


Mertens, Charlotte (2018) “When Archives Speak Back: Sexual Violence in the Congo Free

State”. The London School of Economics and Political Science <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/07/18/when-archives-speak-back-sexual-violence-in-the-congo-free-state> [Accessed 2 December, 2019]


Sahner, Christian C. Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of

the Muslim World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018


Vansina, Jan. Being Colonised: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880 – 1960. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010


Wagner, Kim A. The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2018

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