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Options for an Imperialist Woman: The Case of Violet Markham, 1899-1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2017

Eliza Riedi
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Extract

Recent years have seen growing interest both in the influence of the British Empire on metropolitan culture—what John M. MacKenzie described as “the centripetal effects of Empire”—and in the relationships between gender and imperialism. Early studies of European women and imperialism described the activities of women as “memsahibs,” travellers and colonists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, challenged the notion that “women lost us the Empire,” and began to analyze the roles of white women in the “man’s world” of imperial rule. More recently attention has been drawn by Vron Ware, Barbara Ramusack and Antoinette Burton to the complex relationships between British and colonized women and, by Burton especially, to the ambiguities of “imperial feminism.” Nevertheless, apart from the well-documented female emigration societies, and the isolated study of Flora Shaw, colonial editor of The Times, by Helen Callaway and Dorothy O. Helly, the considerable activities of women as imperial propagandists have received little attention. This article traces the imperial activism of Violet Markham, the daughter of a Northern industrialist and sister of a Liberal M.P. who, roused from the aimless existence of Victorian young ladyhood by the Boer War, spent much of the Edwardian era promoting the cause of the British Empire. Through a study of her imperial career it explores the options available to an imperialist woman in an era when women were barred from formal politics, and when imperial politics in particular were considered a “masculine” preserve, and considers the obstacles—practical, ideological and psychological—which confronted her.

Type
1999 Presidential Address of the North American Conference on British Studies
Information
Albion , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 59 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 2000

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References

1 MacKenzie, John M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960 (Manchester, 1984), p. 2Google Scholar. I am grateful to the relatives of Violet Markham for permission to quote from her papers and to the Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford, for permission to quote from the Milner papers; also to Alan Sykes and the editor and anonymous reviewers at Albion for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

2 See e.g. Callaway, Helen, Gender, Culture and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Urbana, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knapman, Claudia, White Women in Fiji 1835-1930: The Ruin of Empire? (Sydney, 1986)Google Scholar; Strobel, Margaret, European Women and the Second British Empire (Bloomington, 1991)Google Scholar.

3 Ware, Vron, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London, 1992), part 3Google Scholar; Ramusack, Barbara N., “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British women activists in India, 1865-1945,” and Burton, Antoinette, “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and “The Indian Woman’, 1865-1915,” both in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, ed. Chaudhuri, Nupur and Strobel, Margaret (Bloomington, 1992)Google Scholar; Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British feminism, Indian women and imperial culture, 1865-1915 (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar.

4 For which see e.g. Hammerton, A. J., Emigrant Gentlewomen (London, 1979)Google Scholar; van Helten, J. J. and Williams, Keith, “The crying need of South Africa: the emigration of single British women to the Transvaal, 1901-10,” Journal of Southern African Studies 10, 1 (October 1983): 17–38Google Scholar; Blakeley, Brian, “Women and Imperialism: the Colonial Office and Female Emigration to South Africa 1901-1910,” Albion 13, 2 (1981): 131–49Google Scholar; Blakeley, Brian, “The Society for the Oversea Settlement of British Women and the Problems of Empire Settlement, 1917-1936,” Albion 20, 3 (1988): 421–44Google Scholar; Bush, Julia, “The Right Sort of Woman: Female Emigrators and Emigration to the British Empire 1890-1910,” Women’s History Review 3, 3 (1994): 385–409.Google Scholar

5 Callaway, Helen and Helly, Dorothy O., “Crusader for Empire: Flora Shaw/Lady Lugard,” in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and ResistanceGoogle Scholar. For imperial activism in a later generation see Margery Perham and British Rule in Africa, ed. Alison Smith and Mary Bull (London, 1991).

6 Bell’s, Morag “Citizenship not charity: Violet Markham on nature, society and the state in Britain and South Africa,” in Geography and Imperialism 1820-1940, ed. Bell, Morag, Butin, Robin, and Heffernan, Michael (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar does address Markham’s imperial activism, but it is written from a primarily geographical perspective and makes almost no use of the mass of manuscript material available.

7 Lewis, Jane, Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Stanford, 1991), p. 19.Google Scholar

8 Markham, Violet, Friendship’s Harvest (London, 1956), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

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12 Garvin, J. L., Life of Joseph Chamberlain, vol. 2 (London, 1933), p. 447Google Scholar; Chamberlain, M. E., The Scramble for Africa (London, 1974), p.70.Google Scholar

13 Markham, Return Passage, pp. 46-48.

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15 Markham, Return Passage, p. 60.

16 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 30 June 1899, Violet Markham Papers, 27/49, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics.

17 Diary, 26 July 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

18 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 12 September 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

19 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 26 September 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49; Diary, 25 September 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

20 Diary, 3 October 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

21 Diary, 25 September 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

22 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 23 August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

23 Markham, Violet R., South Africa, Past and Present (London, 1900), p. 21.Google Scholar

24 Diary, 20 July 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

25 Violet Markham to Arthur Markham, 23 June 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50.

26 Violet Markham to Arthur Markham, 27 August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50.

27 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 29 July 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

28 Violet Markham to Arthur Markham, 23 June 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50.

29 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 15 June 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

30 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 15 August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

31 Markham, Return Passage, p. 54.

32 Markham, Friendship’s Harvest, pp. 14-16; Violet Markham lo Arthur Markham, 12 June 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50.

33 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 17 July 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

34 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 27 August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

35 Diary, 13 September 1899, 30 September 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5.

36 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 8 June 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

37 Jones, Duty and Citizenship, p. 4.

38 Marlowe, John, Milner: Apostle of Empire (London, 1976), p. 81.Google Scholar

39 Violet Markham to Arthur Markham, 27 August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50.

40 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 29 July 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

41 See Lady Edward Cecil to Balfour, 26 July 1899, 23 January 1900, 9 May 1900, Balfour Papers, GD433/2/39/13, GD433/2/39/18, GD433/2/39/22, Scottish Record Office.

42 Though she did attempt to work through her brother Arthur, urging him to “let what light you can into those mugwumpish members [of the Reform Club]…& talk like an oracle to all the influential MPs” (Violet Markham to Arthur Markham, 22 July 1899, Markham Papers, 27/50).

43 Violet Markham to David Gill, 15 February 1901, Royal Geographical Society, Archives, Gill, Sir David-Lbr. Mss., Correspondence Box 3, V. Markham, 1901.

44 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 26 September 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

45 Moberly Bell, E., Flora Shaw (London, 1947)Google Scholar; Callaway, Helen and Helly, Dorothy O., “Crusader for Empire: Flora Shaw/Lady Lugard.”Google Scholar

46 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 29 July 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

47 Diary, 19 August 1899, Markham Papers 17/5; Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, Tuesday [8th?] August 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49. Nineteenth Century refused to publish the article under a nom de plume (David Gill to Violet Markham, 18 October 1899, Markham Papers, 25/31).

48 Diary, 4 October, 8 October 1899, Markham Papers, 17/5; Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 26 September 1899, Markham Papers, 27/49.

49 Derbyshire Courier, 4 November 1899.

50 Diary, 30 April 1900, Markham Papers, 17/5.

51 Markham, South Africa Past and Present, p. 8.

52 Ibid., p. 208.

53 ibid., p. 217.

54 Diary, 13 June 1900, Markham Papers, 17/5.

55 Outlook 5 (2 June 1900): 570.

56 Athenaeum 30 (19 May 1900): 623.

57 Edith Lyttelton to Markham, 13 July 1946, Markham Papers, 28/10.

58 Markham to Gill, 15 February 1901, 8 March 1901, Gill Papers. Frere’s father had been High Commissioner of South Africa 1877-80.

59 Markham, Friendship’s Harvest, pp. 14-15.

60 Markham to Gill, 16 January 1903, 15 May 1901, Gill Papers.

61 Markham to Gill, 26 July 1901, Gill Papers. She was apparently unaware of Milner’s private opinion that Kitchener’s “scorched earth” policy was a mistake (Marlowe, Milner, p. 106).

62 Markham, Violet, “British and Boer Refugees in South Africa,” Empire Review 2, 10 (November 1901): 510-22, 511–13.Google Scholar

63 The Times, 3 September 1901; Markham, “British and Boer Refugees.” For the concentration camps, see Krebs, Paula M., “The Last of the Gentlemen’s Wars: Women in the Boer War Concentration Camp Controversy,” History Workshop 33 (1992): 38–56.Google Scholar

64 Markham to Gill, 22 August 1902, Gill Papers.

65 Markham to Milner, 30 July 1903, Milner Papers, 216/108, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

66 Markham to Gill, 3 December 1903, Gill Papers.

67 The Chinese Labour Ordinance was passed by the Transvaal Council in February 1904; the first 1,000 indentured labourers arrived in June and they eventually numbered some 50,000 ( Gollin, A. M., Proconsul in Politics [London, 1964], p. 63Google Scholar; O’Brien, Terence, Milner [London, 1979], p. 216)Google Scholar.

68 Markham to Gill, 3 December 1903, Gill Papers.

69 Markham to Milner, Tuesday [October 1903], Milner Papers, 216/106.

70 Milner trusted Markham sufficiently to send her a dispatch which, while emphasising the need for at least 50,000 Chinese labourers in the mines, admitted a number of facts against the case for bonded labour (e.g. that there was a surplus of “Kaffir labour” in the mines in 1905) [“Strictly Private and Confidential 20-3-05,” Markham Papers, 25/56(i)].

71 Marlowe, Milner, p. 151.

72 e.g. Milner to Markham, 12 January 1906, Markham Papers, 25/56(i), objecting to putting on paper anything “which mentions names or discusses methods of approaching persons” but approving a proposal to give Eckstein “a short statement on policy containing the reasons against changing the Transvaal Constitution, or against changing it now, both on the merits and from the point of view of the interest of the Liberal party.”

73 Markham to Lord Grey, 17 January 1906, Albert, 4th Earl Grey Papers, 207/8, Palace Green Library, Durham.

74 Markham, Violet, “Lord Durham and the Colonies,” The Times, 3 March 1906.Google Scholar

75 Markham, Violet, “Lord Durham and Colonial Self-Government,” Nineteenth Century 59 (June 1906): 914–23, 921–23.Google Scholar

76 Markham, Return Passage, p. 63.

77 Markham to Milner, 22 October 1902, Milner Papers, 215/161; Markham to Milner, 30 July 1903, Milner Papers, 216/108; Milner to Markham, 20 September 1903, Markham Papers 25/56(i).

78 Markham to Milner, 20 October 1904, Milner Papers, 216/351; Milner to Markham, 2 August 1905, Markham Papers, 25/56(i).

79 Milner to Markham, 6 April 1906, 12 April 1906, Markham Papers 25/56(i), (ii).

80 Blouet, Brian W., Halford Mackinder: A Biography (College Station, Texas, 1987), p. 140Google Scholar; Markham to Amery, 24 February 1909, Amery Papers, Box 26.

81 Diary, 23 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/4.

82 Markham to Grey, 30 April 1908, Grey Papers, 207/8.

83 Esberey, Joy E., Knight of the Holy Spirit: A Study of William Lyon Mackenzie King (Toronto, 1980), pp. 112–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The title is taken from a letter written by Markham to King (p. 72)—“I like to think of you as one of Heine’s ‘Knights of the Holy Spirit’ girt with the sword of justice, truth and purity waging war against all sin & sordidness.” Esberey argues that Markham, between 1905 and her marriage in 1915, became King’s “principal source of comfort and strength” (p. 74).

84 Dawson, R. MacGregor, William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Political Biography (London, 1958), p. 224.Google Scholar

85 Diary, 5 September 1905, Markham Papers, 27/4.

86 Markham, Friendship’s Harvest, p. 157.

87 Markham to Amery, 23 July 1906, 29 March 1906, Amery Papers, Box 26.

88 Markham to Grey, 12 July 1906, Grey Papers, 207/8. The debate in the House of Commons in March 1906 concerning the resolution to pass a vote of censure on Milner for authorising the flogging of Chinese labourers was marked by the total silence of the parliamentary Liberal Imperialists. The Outlook considered that the debate had shown ‘that Liberal Imperialism is an exhausted imposture and that not one of Lord Rosebery’s disciples in the Cabinet can be trusted to make a stand for any principle against the clamour of the pack. When we remember…the personal associations which formerly existed between them and Lord Milner we may doubt whether a more ignoble desertion has been known’ (quoted Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 89).

89 Markham to Grey, 12 July 1906, Grey Papers, 207/8. A Liberal Colonial Club leaflet enclosed with this letter added that the Club would also make ‘Progressive Social Legislation’ in the self-governing colonies a special subject of interest, and listed Lord Brassey, Ronald Munro-Ferguson, Edmund Garrett, Robert Perks and Sidney Webb among those who had already joined the Club.

90 Markham to Grey, 14 December 1906, Grey Papers, 207/8.

91 Markham to Grey, 6 December 1906, Grey Papers, 207/8.

92 Markham to Grey, 7 March 1907, Grey Papers, 207/8.

93 Victoria League minutes, 2 April 1901.

94 Victoria League executive minutes, 3 June 1904.

95 Mills, J. Saxon Sir Edward Cook KBE: A Biography (London, 1921), p. 243.Google Scholar

96 Jones, Duty and Citizenship, pp. 4-5, p. 30.

97 Markham, Return Passage, pp. 65-67; Jones, Duty and Citizenship, pp. 33-34.

98 Lewis, Women and Social Action, p. 263.

99 Extract from letter from Markham to Grey, enclosed in Grey to Howick 11 January 1909, Grey Papers, 203/3.

100 Davin, Anna, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop 5 (1978): 9–65.Google Scholar

101 Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” pp. 15-16, 26-27.

102 For which see Semmel, Bernard, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought 1895-1914 (London, 1960), pp. 62–63Google Scholar, and Searle, G. R., The Quest for National Efficiency (Berkeley, 1971), pp. 107–38.Google Scholar

103 Founded in 1907, the widely-imitated St. Paneras School for Mothers provided meals for expectant and nursing mothers, medical consultations, lessons in “mothercraft” and housewifery, and a “provident maternity club.” See Davin, , “Imperialism and motherhood,” 38–43Google Scholar; Dwork, Deborah, War is Good for Babies and other young children (London, 1987), pp. 147–54.Google Scholar

104 Markham, Violet R., “The True Foundations of Empire: the Home and the Workshop,” Nineteenth Century 58 (October 1905): 570–82.Google Scholar

105 V.L. executive minutes, 2 March 1905.

106 V.L. Annual Report 1904-05, p. 22; V.L. executive minutes, 13 July 1905. Pember Reeves was later the author of the Fabian Tract Round About a Pound a Week (1913).

107 Diary, 28 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/4.

108 Diary, 8 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/4.

109 Diary, 16 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/4.

110 The Factory and Shop Acts of the British Dominions: A Handbook compiled by Miss Violet Markham; together with a General View of the English Law; and a Preface by Mrs H. J. Tennant [issued by the Industrial Subcommittee of the Victoria League] (London, 1908).

111 Contemporary Review 93 (February 1908, Literary Supplement): 20-21.

112 Markham to Grey, 4 February 1912, Grey Papers, 207/8.

113 V.L. Monthly Notes, 15 June 1914, pp. 42-50; V.L. Annual Report 1914-15, pp. 4-7.

114 Frank, Katherine, A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley (London, 1987), p. 209, p. 232Google Scholar. Kingsley was given to insisting, for example, that “every bit of solid, good work I have done has been through a man” (p. xiv).

115 Brooke-Hunt, who had organised Soldiers’ Institutes in South Africa, offered “a few more pictures of the war, which I want to depict as coming from a woman to women especially, and therefore representing those points of view on which, as it seems to me, women may care to rest their eyes and linger” (A Woman’s Memories of the War [London, 1901], p. 3). There were advantages to this approach: in a review article hostile to any female interference with military affairs, the Saturday Review singled out Brooke-Hunt as one who had done “what she conceived to be her duty” in an efficient and patriotic manner (92 [20 July 1901]: 80-81.

116 Garvin to Markham, 8 December 1906, Markham Papers, 26/28.

117 Spectator 85 (20 October 1900): 532.

118 Bush, Julia, “Lady Imperialists and the Cause of British South Africa” (paper presented at the South Africa 1895-1921: Test of Empire Conference, Oxford, March 1996)Google Scholar.

119 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 22 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/58.

120 Grey to Markham (copy), 30 June 1908, Grey Papers, 207/8.

121 Which amalgamated in January 1911 with the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage to form the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage.

122 Truth 74 (19 November 1913, Literary Supplement): xii.

123 This was the keynote of her speech at the Albert Hall meeting (extensively reported by the anti-suffrage Times, 29 February 1912). For the activities of women in local government and the difficulties faced by them see Hollis, Patricia, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865-1914 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.

124 Markham to Cromer, 10 December 1913, Cromer papers, FO633/22/207, Public Record Office.

125 Lewis, Women and Social Action, p. 293. Explaining her defection from the anti-suffrage cause in 1916 Markham told Cromer that “the man as worker, the woman as home maker remains myideal of society. But in this difficult world one has to take the facts as they are…little though I like it women are going to play an ever larger part in industry and public life” (Markham to Cromer, 2 November 1916, quoted Jones, Duty and Citizenship, p. 81). Markham’s conversion on the suffrage issue was also influenced by her admiration of the patriotism and efficiency demonstrated by women’s wartime work. Perhaps, too, as Helen Jones suggests, Markham, after her frustrating wartime experiences in the toils of the Women’s Section of the National Service Department, “a job which was to end in acrimonious mudslinging with its Minister, Neville Chamberlain, as well as with the Ministry of Labour,” was significantly less inclined to credit the innate superiority of the male sex! (Jones, Duty and Citizenship, pp. 18-19, p. 59). Certainly the efficiency of her female wartime colleagues should have caused her no surprise, for she had worked with many of them already in the Victoria League and elsewhere. As Lewis points out, Markham was also conscious that her distinction between local and national government had become an anomaly as social policies increasingly became matters of high politics (Women and Social Action, p. 8).

126 Markham, Violet R., “A Proposed Woman’s Council,” National Review 55 (1910): 1029–38, 1033-35.Google Scholar

127 Ibid., p. 1035.

128 Markham to Grey, 7 February 1912, Grey Papers, 207/8.

129 “Votes are to swords exactly what bank notes are to gold,” said the anti-suffragist Smith, F. E., “the one is effective only because the other is believed to be behind it” (quoted in Harrison, Brian, Separate Spheres: the Opposition to Women’s Suffrage in Britain [London, 1978], p. 73)Google Scholar.

130 Markham, , “Proposed Woman’s Council,” pp. 1034–36.Google Scholar

131 Burton, Burdens of History, p. 7.

132 Burton, “The White Woman’s Burden.”

133 Burton, Antoinette, “The Feminist Quest for Identity: British Imperial Suffragism and ‘Global Sisterhood’, 1900-1915,” Journal of Women’s History 3, 2 (Fall 1991): 46–81, 57–58Google Scholar. Feminists also argued that British women’s responsibility for “racial motherhood”—the reproduction of the Anglo-Saxon race—in itself warranted full citizenship (Burton, Burdens of History, pp. 48-51).

134 Harrison, Separate Spheres, pp. 75-76.

135 Quoted ibid., p. 75.

136 SirWright, Almroth E., The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage (London, 1913), p. 33.Google Scholar

137 Markham to Cromer, 12 August 1910, Cromer Papers, F0633/19/58-59. His first letter to her is quoted in its entirety in Return Passage, pp. 250-53.

138 Quoted in Jones, Duty and Citizenship, p. 27.

139 When she made an unlikely but happy marriage to James Carruthers, a regular army officer whom she had met in South Africa in 1912.

140 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 30 August 1905, Markham Papers, 27/58.

141 Violet Markham to Rosa Markham, 27 October 1905, Markham Papers, 27/58. When Markham visited Canada briefly in 1907 she returned to find her mother suffering from “a complete nervous breakdown with heart failure…if I had not been in Canada she would never have broken down” (Markham to Amery, 25 October 1907, Amery Papers, Box 26). From 1907 until her death in 1912 Rosa Markham was intermittently extremely ill and never wholly well. In 1908 Violet Markham made a conscious decision to devote herself to her mother (Markham to Grey, 30 April 1908, Grey Papers, 207/8), a decision that severely curtailed her public life.

142 Markham to Milner, 25 March 1904, Milner Papers, 216/347.