Colonialism: What Girlhoods Can Tell Us

Abstract

What can girlhoods help us to see about colonialism that may not otherwise be apparent? Around the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, girls lived under colonial regimes in wildly diverse circumstances. Some were beneficiaries of colonial privileges, while others faced hardships and privations. How can we find the commonalities of colonial girlhoods when factors of freedom and bondage, possession and dispossession, class and race divided colonial girls?