Female emancipation in an imperial frame: English women and the campaign against sati (widow-burning) in India, 1813-30

Abstract

This article explores English women's important contributions to the campaign against sati (widow-burning) in India. It investigates how they attempted to eradicate sati through supporting missionary activity and female education in India, and through petitioning Parliament in Britain. English women's involvement in this campaign, which was contemporaneous with their involvement in the anti-slavery movement, has hitherto been ignored by historians. The research presented in this article offers new perspectives on the meaning of female emancipation within an evangelical and imperial framework. Taken alongside work on the anti-slavery movement, it adds to ourunderstanding of early nineteenth-century female philanthropy throughclarifying the imperial dimensions of 'women's mission to women'. It alsooffers new insights into women's relationship to politics in the period, and into the origins of 'imperial feminism'.