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Article: "Fair ones of a purer caste": white women and colonialism in nineteenth-century British Columbia. (Canada)
- Article from:
- Feminist Studies
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Feminist Studies, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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At a meeting of the Columbia Mission held at the London Tavern in 1861, Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, called attention to the perilous state of a distant imperial possession, British Columbia. There, he said, "the most reckless of your population" were living side by side with various representatives of "all the evils of heathendom." Worst of all, however, was "the absence of woman's company." Without woman's restraining influence, Wilberforce warned, the young colony risked becoming a disgrace to the English race itself.(1) In both metropole and periphery, white women held a special place in nineteenth-century discourses of colonialism. This article examines ...