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Gender and Empire, edited by Philippa Levine; pp. xiv + 306. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, £37.00, $55.00.
In an article entitled "Beyond Complicity versus Resistance: Recent Work on Gender and European Imperialism" for the Journal of Social History (1995), Malia Formes called for an end to oversimplified categories of male/female, colonized/colonizer, victim/villain, and resistance/ complicity in studies of imperialism. She pointed out what may now seem an obvious idea, namely that historians of gender and of empire are both concerned with power-its formulation and articulation. Now, a decade later, Formes's call has been definitively answered with the most recent volume in the Oxford History of the British Empire series.
Gender and Empire is a much-needed overview of more than twenty years of scholarship on the topic. Bringing together some of the of most accomplished scholars of the history of gender and imperialism, this book provides insight into the contribution gender analysis makes to the study of empire. All the authors have published extensively on the subject, and all have been innovators in asking imperial historians to put gender at the center of their inquiry, rather than on the margins. As editor Philippa Levine notes in her introduction, the authors argue that "the very idea as well as the building of empires themselves cannot be understood without employing a gendered perspective" (1) .
Organized around three broadly chronological chapters and nine thematic essays, the book aims for both coverage and depth. The authors have succeeded in providing a...