Empress

by Miles Taylor

  43. Sayagi Rao Baroda, ‘My Ways and Days in Europe and India’, Nineteenth Century 49 (February 1901), 223–4.

  44. Her Highness the Maharani of Baroda and S. M. Mitra, The Position of Women in Indian Life (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 20–1.

  45. Stafford Northcote to General Grey, 13 October 1867, RA VIC/MAIN/N/27/76; QVJl., 7 November 1867.

  46. QVJl., 13 March 1868.

  47. QVJl., 13 August 1870; Keshub Chunder Sen in England, 2 vols (Calcutta: Brahmo Tract Society, 1881–2), ii, 123–5. See also: David Kopf, The Brahmo Sumaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 179), 261–2. For his life, see: John A. Stevens, Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet (London: Hurst, 2018).

  48. Mary Carpenter, On Female Education in India (London: W. W. Head, 1868), 8. Much has been written about Mary Carpenter and India, without noting her connections to the queen: Antoinette Burton, ‘Fearful Bodies into Disciplined Subjects: Pleasure, Romance, and the Family Drama of Colonial Reform in Mary Carpenter’s Six Months in India’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 20 (1995), 545–74; Ruth Watts, ‘Breaking the Boundaries of Victorian Imperialism or Extending a Reformed “Paternalism”? Mary Carpenter and India’, History of Education 29 (2000) 443–56; Clare Midgley, ‘Mary Carpenter and the Brahmo Samaj of India: A Transnational Perspective on Social Reform in the Age of Empire’, Women’s History Review 22 (2013), 363–85; Chieko Ichikawa, ‘Jane Eyre’s Daughters: The Feminist Missions of Mary Carpenter and Josephine Butler in India’, Women’s History Review 23 (2014), 220–38; Tim Allender, Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), ch. 3.

  49. Princess Alice hosted a visit by Mary Carpenter to Darmstadt in 1872: Alice to Queen Victoria, 13 October 1872 in Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Letters to Her Majesty the Queen (London: John Murray, 1885), 252–3. For Mary Carpenter’s visit to India in 1876, see: Journal of the National Indian Association, 63 (July 1876), 195–208.

  50. Duchess of Connaught to Queen Victoria, 4 February 1887, 18 March 1887, RA VIC/MAIN/Z/182/9; entry for 18 February 1887, Duchess of Connaught Diaries, RA VIC/ADD Add. Mss/A15/8445. ToI, 1 October 1886, 5; ibid., 3 March 1888, 3; ibid., 28 September 1888, 4. For official wives in India, see: Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), chs 6–7.

  51. ToI, 14 December 1889, 5.

  52. For Ramabai’s own appeal to the queen, see: Ramabai, ‘The Cry of Indian Women’ (1883) in Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words: Selected Works, ed. Meera Kosambi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 111. For Ramabai, see: Antoinette Burton, ‘Colonial Encounters in Late-Victorian England: Pandita Ramabai at Cheltenham and Wantage, 1883–1886’, Feminist Review, 49 (1995), 29–49; Meera Kosambi, ‘Multiple Contestations: Pandita Ramabai’s Educational and Missionary Activities in Late Nineteenth-century India and Abroad’, Women’s History Review 7 (1998), 193–208.

  53. QVJl., 13 July 1881. For the full story, see: Sean Lang, ‘Colonial Compassion and Political Calculation: The Countess of Dufferin and Her Fund’ in Poonam Bula (ed.), Contesting Colonial Authority: Medicine and Indigenous Responses in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century India (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012), 81–96.

  54. QVJl., 12 July 1883. For the ‘moral influence’ of the queen see: Mrs Grant Duff to Ponsonby, 10 May 1885, IOR Mss Eur. F234/54, fols 117–18. For princely support for the venture, especially from the Raja of Venkatagiri and the Maharaja of Vizianagram, see: Report of the Victoria Hospital for Caste and Gosha Women, Madras, for 1895 (Madras: Government Press, 1895), 20–2.

  55. QVJl., 22 October 1884.

  56. Henry Ponsonby to Adolphus Moore, 29 September 1885 (private secretary to Randolph Churchill), Randolph Churchill papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, 1/8/929. For the Fund, see: Lang, ‘Colonial Compassion’; Maneesha Lal, ‘The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The Countess of Dufferin’s Fund, 1885–1888’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (1994), 29–66; Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, ‘“Merely Birds of Passage”: Lady Hariot Dufferin’s Travel Writings and Medical Work in India, 1884–1888’, Women’s History Review 15 (2006), 443–57. For royal philanthropy in general, see: Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy (London: Yale University Press, 1995), 114–21.

  57. ‘Prospectus’, The Times, 5 October 1885, 12; Countess of Dufferin, A Record of Three Years’ Work of the National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India: August 1885 to August 1888 (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1888), 9, 16; idem., ‘The National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to India’, Asiatic Quarterly Review (April 1886), 257–74.

  58. Countess of Dufferin to Queen Victoria, 7 August 1885, 14 August 1885, 6 October 1885, RA VIC/MAIN/M/59/17–18, 23; Dufferin, A Record of Three Years’ Work, 57–8.

  59. ‘Minutes of the Proceedings of the Central Committee’, 23 December 1886, 18 January 1888, Dufferin papers, PRONI, D1071/J/G/1A/2.

  60. British Medical Journal, 11 July 1896, 89. cf. John Bradley (ed.), Lady Curzon’s India: Letters of a Vicereine (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), 28. For the UK organisation, see: The Times, 15 May 1890, 5; National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India, circular (n.d., c. 1890), Dufferin papers, PRONI, D1071 J/G/4A/3.

  61. For criticism: British Medical Journal, 14 December 1895, 1527, 7 July 1900, 41, 17 August 1901, 423–4.

  62. ToI, 3 February 1888, 6; Dufferin, A Record of Three Years’ Work, 35. See also the address sent to Lady Dufferin ‘On Behalf of the Benares Women’ (6 April 1886), which is more of a paen to the empress: Dufferin papers, PRONI, D1071/J/D/7.

  63. Countess of Dufferin to Queen Victoria, n.d. 1886, RA VIC/MAIN/M/60/4.

  64. Kipling, ‘For the Women’ (1885) in Early Verse by Rudyard Kipling, 1879–1889: Unpublished, Uncollected, and Rarely Collected Poems, ed. Andrew Rutherford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 363. For the insistence on respecting purdah: ‘Minutes of the Proceedings of the Central Committee’ (27 April 1888), 3, Dufferin papers, PRONI, D1071/J/G/1A/2.

  65. Malabari, ‘True and False Sati and Free and Enforced Widowhood’ (1886), ‘The Queen’s Own Wards’ (1887) in Dayaram Gidumal, Life and Life-work of Behramji M. Malabari (Bombay: Educations, 1888), 162, 220. On Malabari, see: Gráinne Goodwin, ‘A Trustworthy Interpreter Between Rulers and Ruled: Behramji Malabari, Colonial and Cultural Interpreter in Nineteenth-century British India’, Social History 38 (2013), 1–25. Queen Victoria’s mother was widowed in 1814, marrying again four years later.

  66. Bhownagree to Adelaide Manning, 23 August 1887, Cambridge University Library, Add. Ms. 6379/19. For the Rukhmabhai case, see: Antoinette Burton, ‘From Child Bride to “Hindoo Lady”: Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Responsibility in Imperial Britain’, American Historical Review 103 (1998), 1119–46; Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 1.

  67. Ponsonby to Wodehouse, 15 December 1892, 17 December 1892, 18 December 1892, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng c. 4316, fols 40–44. For the 1890 campaign, see: Malabari, An Appeal from the Daughters of India (London: Farmer & Sons, 1890), 20; Story of Widow Remarriage: Being the Experiences of Madhowdas Rugnathdas, Merchant of Bombay (Bombay: S. K. Khambataj, 1890); Jennie Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1900), 197.

  68. For the background, see: Janaki Nair, ‘Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian Women in Englishwomen’s Writings, 1813–1940’, Journal of Women’s History 2 (1990), 8–34; Karen E. Smith, ‘Women in Cultural Captivity: British Women and the Zenana Mission’, Baptist History and Heritage 41 (2006), 30–41; Rhonda Semple, ‘Ruth, Miss Mackintosh, and Ada and Rose Marris: Biblewomen, Zenana Workers and Missionaries in Nineteenth-century British Missio
ns to North India’, Women’s History Review 17 (2008), 561–74.

  69. India’s Women (Church of England Zenana Missionary Society), 17 (May 1897). Cf. Mrs Malcolm Ross, Scattered Seeds; Or, Five Years’ Zenana Work in Poona (Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons, 1880), 31–2; Helen Lloyd, Hindu Women: With Glimpses into their Life and Zenanas (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1882), 43.

  70. Telugu Zenana Magazine (March 1900) (QLB, Madras). For the background, see: Deborah Ann Logan, The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, 1901–1938: From Raj to Swaraj (Lanham: Lehigh University Press, 2017), 14–15.

  71. Missionary Herald, 1 April 1887, 121–4. Another organisation, the ‘Helping Hands Zenana Association’, welcomed an Urdu life of the queen published for the jubilee by the American mission in Lucknow: Indian Jewels, 4 (December 1888), 161–2. In the spring of 1897, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society reprinted a series of leaflets and articles about the queen and her reign for distribution in India: Publications Committee Minutes, 24 March 1897, 26 May 1897, 104, 110, CEZMS papers, Church Missionary Society Archive, University of Birmingham, CEZ/G/C4.

  72. India’s Women, 21 (March 1901), 49–51.

  73. Countess of Dufferin to Queen Victoria, 19 February 1885, RA VIC/MAIN/M/59/6; Duchess of Connaught to Queen Victoria, 18 March 1887, RA VIC/MAIN/Z/182/22.

  74. The Times, 15 April 1891, 11; The Duke of Connaught and the Bible Society (London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1893).

  75. ‘Annual Breakfast Meeting’ (30 April 1890), Our Indian Sisters (Baptist Missionary Society Ladies’ Zenana Mission), n.s., 3, July 1890, 33–9.

  76. Elizabeth W. Andrew and Katherine C. Bushnell, The Queen’s Daughters in India (London: Morgan & Scott, 1898), 57–62, 86. For Bushnell and her campaign in India, see: Kristin Kobes du Mez, A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 67–71.

  77. An Urdu book described the queen’s philanthropy alongside that of Elizabeth Fry and Princess Alice: Saiyid Ahmad, Akhlaq un Nisa/Manners of Woman (Delhi: Akmal-ul-Matabi Press, 1891), QLB (North-West Provinces).

  10 Patriot Queen

  1. QVJl., 12 February, 14 February 1872.

  2. W. W. Hunter, The Indian Musulmans: Are they Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen?, 2nd edn (London: Trubner & Co., 1872), 114, 117; cf. M. Mohar Ali, ‘Hunter’s Indian Mussulmans: A Re-examination of its Background’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 112 (1980), 30–1.

  3. QVJl., 11 May 1872, 3 August 1872; ‘Major Burne’s Statement of Service, with Appendices’ (privately printed, 1879), 72, IOR Mss Eur. D351/1.

  4. Paul Thomas Murphy, Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, Modernisation and the Monarchy (London: Pegasus, 2012).

  5. ‘Petition to the House of Commons, etc.’, (n.d., c. June 1859), British India Association papers, NMML, Delhi; Ram Gopal Sanyal, The Life of the Hon’ble. Rai Kristo Das Pal Bahadur, C. I. E. (Calcutta: Ram Coomar Dey, 1886), 10, 110–12.

  6. Naoroji, ‘England’s Duties to India’, Journal of the East India Association, i (2 May 1867), 31–2 (Naoroji). For Naoroji and the East India Association, see: S. R. Mehotra and Dinyar Patel (eds), Dadabhai Naoroji: Selected Private Papers (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), xvii–xix.

  7. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed 1986); cf. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Its Discontents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), ch. 1.

  8. Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), chs 5–6; Jim Masselos, Towards Nationalism: Group Affiliations and the Politics of Public Associations in Nineteenth Century Western India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1974). For revisionist approaches to the ideology of early Indian nationalism, see: Sanjay Seth, ‘Rewriting Histories of Nationalism: The Politics of Moderate Nationalism in India, 1870–1905’, American Historical Review 104 (1999), 95–116; C. A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  9. The original petition is at: IOR Mss Eur. A/1/94. For the discussion in Parliament, see: HC Debs, 206 (13 June 1871), 2023–42.

  10. Naoroji, To the Electors of the Holborn Division of Finsbury (London: Foulger & Co., 1886), 1.

  11. Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 1 (1878), 22–46; ibid., 2 (1880), 132–3.

  12. Bengalee, 6 January 1877, 4.

  13. Syed Ahmed Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt [1873] (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 49; Syed Ahmed Khan to John Kaye, 14 December 1869, in M. I. Pani Pati (ed.), Letters to and from Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (Lahore: Board for Advancement of Literature, 1993), 81–4; M. Mohar Ali, ‘Hunter’s Indian Mussulmans’.

  14. Hunter, Indian Mussulmans; Syed Ahmed Khan, Dr Hunter’s ‘Our Indian Mussulmans – are they Bound in Conscience to Revolt against the Queen?’ (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1872), 75–6, 104.

  15. Abstract of Proceedings of the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta at a Meeting Held on . . . the 23rd November, 1870 etc. (Calcutta: Mahomedan Literary Society, 1871), 7–8, 12, 14–15.

  16. Syed Ahmed Khan to Captain Evelyn Baring, 5 August 1872, Syed Ahmed Khan to Col. J. C. Ardagh, 11 May 1894, in A. A. Siddiqi (ed.), Sir Syed’s Correspondence (Aligarh: AMU Press, 1990), 11, 186–91; Syed Ahmed Khan to Major T. Cadell, 10 February 1876, in S. Muhammed (ed.), Sir Syed’s Correspondence: Selected Documents from the Sir Syed Academy Archives (Aligarh: AMU Press, 1995), 6–7. For some of the background, see: A. R. Khan, The All-India Muslim Educational Conference: Its Contribution to the Cultural Development of Muslims, 1886–1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), chs 1–2.

  17. G .F. I. Graham, The Life and Work of Syed Ahmed Khan, C. S. I (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1885), 171–80.

  18. ‘List of Loyal Addresses’, IOR Mss Eur. G55/44, 48

  19. Sir James Fergusson, the governor of Bombay, advised against accepting an address from the Poona Sabha on the grounds that it was being sent directly to London, without going via the Government of Bombay: Fergusson to Lord Hartington, 24 March 1882, IOR Mss Eur. E214/3, fols 169–71.

  20. ‘Ripon our father’ (in Tamil).

  21. QVJl., 26 April 1880; Tony Denholm, ‘Robinson, George Frederick Samuel, First Marquess of Ripon (1827–1909)’, ODNB.

  22. Ram Chandra Palit (ed.) Speeches and Published Resolutions of Lord Ripon, etc. (Calcutta: J. W. Thomas, 1882), 83, 86, 91.

  23. Sarvepalli Gopal, The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, 1880–1884 (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), chs 5–7, 14.

  24. Ibid., ch. 8.

  25. R. C. J. Cocks, ‘Ilbert, Sir Courtenay Peregrine (1841–1924)’, ODNB; Mary Bennett, The Ilberts in India, 1882–1886: An Imperial Miniature (London: BACSA, 1995). For the controversy, see: Edwin Hirschmann, ‘White Mutiny’: The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India and the Genesis of the Indian National Congress (New Delhi: Heritage, 1980); Chandrika Kaul, ‘England and India: The Ilbert bill, 1883. A Case Study of the Metropolitan Press’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 30 (1993), 413–36.

  26. ‘Further Papers on the Proposed Alteration of the Provisions of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1884), Cd. 3877, p. 509 (‘guarded’); ‘Further Papers and Correspondence on the Subject of the Proposed Alteration of the Provisions of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure, etc.’, Parl. Papers (1884), Cd. 3952, 465–6, 543, 546 (‘specious sophism’).

  27. Som Prakash, 18 June 1883, NNR (Bengal), IOR L/5/9, p. 331. For the ladies’ petition, see: ‘Further Papers on the . . . Indian Code of Criminal Procedure’, 461; cf. ToI, 6 April 1883, 3, 5 June 1883, 5.

  28. Alok, 7 September 1883, NNR (Bengal), IOR L/5/9, p. 584; R. Krishna Singh, Lord Ripon’s Policy. Observations on the Criminal Jurisdiction Bill (Bangalore: Caxton Press, 1883), 28.

  29. James Fit
zjames Stephen, The Ilbert Bill (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883), 29, 39.

  30. The Times, 30 March 1883, 10; ‘An Englishman’, Lord Ripon’s Policy in India: An Appeal to the People of England (London: National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, 1883).

  31. William Summers, The Ilbert Bill (Manchester: National Reform Union, 1883).

  32. Surprisingly, Ilbert received support from Henry Maine: Maine to Ilbert, 26 April 1883, IOR Mss Eur. D554/15, fols 16–19.

  33. ‘Further Papers and Correspondence on . . . the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure’, 113, 117, 145.

  34. Ponsonby to Ripon, 28 April 1883, BL, Add. Ms. 43, 350, fols 137–8; Queen Victoria to Ripon, 7 June 1883, ibid., fols 139–42, Queen Victoria to Ripon, 16 August 1883, ibid., fols 143–6.

  35. Queen Victoria to Ripon, 11 October 1883, ibid., 43, 530, fols 147–8; Ponsonby to [William] Maitland, 25 October 1883, Kimberley papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Eng. 4205, fols 61–4, Ponsonby to [Robert] Bickerstreth, 1 November 1883, ibid., fols 73–4.

  36. Ripon to Kimberley, 8 December 1883, BL, B.P. 7/3, vol. 4, no. 78a; ToI, 12 March 1883, 6, 31 December 1883, 4.

  37. Quarterly Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, 4 (July 1883), 1–3; The Public Meeting in Honour of Lord Ripon on his Retirement from the Viceroyalty, etc. (Bombay: Bombay Gazette, 1884); India’s Farewell to Lord Ripon (n.p., n.d., c. 1885), 2.

  38. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, India under Lord Ripon (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909), 325; QVJl., 5 March 1885.

  39. For the early years of the INC, see: Anthony Parel, ‘Hume, Dufferin and the Origins of the Indian Congress’, Journal of Indian History, 42 (1964), 707–25; John R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); S. R. Mehrotra, A History of the Indian National Congress, vol. 1: 1885–1918 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1995), ch. 1; Amitabha Mukerjee, ‘Genesis of the Indian National Congress’ in N. R. Ray (ed.), A Centenary History of the Indian National Congress, vol. 1: 1885–1919 (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2011), 81–115.