Place Matters : Gendered Geography in Victorian Women's Travel Books About Southeast Asia

"Morgan has written an important and original work that presents a well-substantiated challenge to many recent studies of 'colonial discourse'."--Nancy L. Paxton, Susan Morgan's study of materials and regions, previously neglected in contemporary postcolonial studies, begins with the transforming premise that "place matters." Concepts derived from writings about one area of the world cannot simply be transposed to another area, in some sort of global theoretical move. Moreover, place in the discourse of Victorian imperialism is a matter of gendered as well as geographic terms. Taking up works by Anna Forbes and Marianne North on the Malay Archipelago, by Margaret Brooke and Harriette McDougall on Sarawak, by Isabella Bird and Emily Innes on British Malaya, by Anna Leonowens on Siam, Morgan also makes extensive use of theorists whose work on imperialism in Southeast Asia is unfamiliar to most American academics. This vivid examination of a different region and different writings emphasizes that in Victorian literature there was no monolithic imperialist location, authorial or geographic. The very notion of a ‘colony’ or an ‘imperial presence’ in Southeast Asia is problematic. Morgan is concerned with marking the intersections of particular Victorian imperial histories and constructions of subjectivity. She argues that specific places in Southeast Asia have distinctive, and differing, masculine imperial rhetorics. It is within these specific rhetorical contexts that women’s writings, including their moments of critique, can be read. "Susan Morgan's study of materials and regions previously neglected in contemporary postcolonial studies begins with the transforming premise that "place matters." Concepts derived from writings about one area of the world cannot simply be transposed to another area, in some sort of global theoretical move. Moreover, place in the discourse of Victorian imperialism is a matter of gendered as well as geographic terms. Taking up works by Anna Forbes and Marianne North on the Malay Archipelago, by Margaret Brooke and Harriette McDougall on Sarawak, by Isabella Bird and Emily Innes on British Malaya, by Anna Leonowens on Siam, Morgan also makes extensive use of theorists whose work on imperialism in Southeast Asia is unfamiliar to most American academics." "This vivid examination of a different region and different writings emphasizes that in Victorian literature there was no monolithic imperialist location, authorial or geographic. The very notion of a "colony" or an "imperial presence" in Southeast Asia is problematic. Morgan is concerned with marking the intersections of particular Victorian imperial histories and constructions of subjectivity. She argues that specific places in Southeast Asia have distinctive, and differing, masculine imperial rhetorics. It is within these specific rhetorical contexts that women's writings, including their moments of critique, can be read."--Jacket Frontmatter ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page ix) PART ONE. Relocating Chapter 1. Place Matters (page 1) Chapter 2. Port of Entry: Colonial Singapore (page 31) PART TWO. Non-British Colonies and the Naturalists Chapter 3. The Holy Land of Victorian Science: Anna Forbes, with Henry Forbes and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Eastern Archipelago (page 51) Chapter 4. Botany and Marianne North: Painting "A Garland about the Earth" (page 91) PART THREE. British Colonies: A Crown Property and a Private Property Chapter 5. The Company as the Country: On the Malay Peninsula with Isabella Bird and Emily Innes (page 135) Chapter 6. "One's Own State": Margret Brooke, Harriette McDougall, and Sarawak (page 177) PART FOUR. An Uncolonized State: Women in "The Kingdom of the Free" C hapter 7. Anna Leonowens: Women Talking in the Royal Harem of Siam (page 221) PART FIVE. Transit Lounge Chapter 8. Looking Behind and Ahead (page 269) NOTES (page 279) SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 307) INDEX (page 333)