SOAS Research Online

Abstract

My thesis explores and analyses the lived experiences of British women in the colonies of Malaya and Burma during the interwar years (1918 to 1942). Although much has been written about British women in India both before and during the Raj, those who lived, worked, and set up homes in the Southeast Asian colonies have been neglected by historians. In contrast to the lack of historical research, these women are represented in contemporary male-authored fiction, particularly by Somerset Maugham and George Orwell, where they are inevitably presented in a negative light. My intention in the thesis is to juxtapose archive and anecdotal evidence taken from women’s diaries, memoirs, personal letters, and contemporary newspaper articles and through these, to interrogate the lived experience of these women to support my hypothesis that they were strong, interesting, and committed individuals, to whom, by not questioning the derogatory stereotype created by male authors, history has done a disservice. From my research, these women emerged as multi-dimensional figures who actively negotiated divergent paths within the male dominated colonial authority, the unequal power structure of the colonised and the coloniser, and the roles they were expected to maintain within that continuum. It shows them to have been resourceful, thoughtful, and strong, with the ability to use their somewhat ambiguous ‘soft power’ in ways that frequently benefitted the subject populations while still appearing to preserve the roles the society expected of them. By giving these women their own voice, I demonstrate that they are worthy of academic interest in their own right.