War & Colonialism

Question 1

what did the Ottoman Grand Vizier and interior minister Pasha receive on December 31st 1917?

Answer 1

a telegram signed by ten peasant women from the Black Sea coast, wives & mothers of soldiers on military duty. complained about poverty and hunger from the harsh wartime policies of the ottoman state.

Question 2

Examples of social disruption in the Ottoman Empire during WW1

Answer 2

• women took over men’s jobs alongside domestic duties in rural settings

economic privatisation meant women of all social classes were forced to take on work

state introduced separation allowance as financial support, having removed many clauses that meant sole breadwinners were exempt from military service.

Question 3

What was the context of Les Femmes Tondues?

Answer 3

France liberated 1944

those seen to have collaborated with occupiers purged & punished

women punished for sexual ‘misconduct’ with germans

had heads shaved in public - ‘shorn women’

form of ritual shaming

Question 4

what was the ‘crime’ women were being punished for, according to Claire Duchen’s analysis?

Answer 4

• working with German authorities or being associated with them.
• engaging in collaborationist activities
• sexual misconduct - consorting with the occupier, sleeping with them, bearing their child

Question 5

What did these punishments serve as for the French?

Answer 5

served to scapegoat women and compensate for the humiliation experienced by French males at the hands of the Germans.

Question 6

how was women’s collaboration understood differently from men’s collaboration (Clair Duchen)

Answer 6

targeted not only for their alleged transgressions against codes of patriotism but also against codes of feminine behaviour

women seen as embodying nations body, any violation to their bodies was perceived as a threat to the integrity of the nation itself

men by contrast associated with political, economic, and ideological collaborationist activities due to their dominant societal roles.

Question 7

why was having their hair cut seen as an appropriate punishment for women? (Claire Duchen)

Answer 7

feminist analysis

multiple purposes:
- symbolic rape, sexual violence of war and power dynamics involved.

• symbolically stripped of their identity and Frenchness, marking them as outsiders and unworthy
• served as a means of symbolic reconstruction of ‘family france’ essential for the nation’s reconstruction after the war.

Question 8

How were these acts of punishment represented and understood by outsiders? (Claire Duchen)

Answer 8

• form of scapegoating
• witch hunts
• public humiliation

crowds derived enjoyment from public shaming, underlying ambivalence, discomfort among witnesses.

photographs taken during these events play into the narrative France wishes to construct about itself, reinforcing gender sterotypes and notions of national identity.

Question 9

How did British colonial officals perceive the 1929 Women’s War?

Answer 9

viewed it as a threat to their authority and economic interests, seeing women’s actions as targeted attacks on colonial infrastructure.

Question 10

to what extent are the reflections of the Women’s War gendered in the sources?

Answer 10

highly gendered, focusing on Nigerian women’s agency in challenging colonial restriction on their societal and economic roles.

Question 11

How do the primary source creators remember the Women’s War?

Answer 11

remember the women’s war as a significant moment of resistance against British colonial rule, highlighting women’s strategic and collective identity

Question 12

how useful are the primary source extracts in understanding Nigerian women’s negotiation of colonial rule?

Answer 12

valuable insights into Nigerian women’s tactics, motivations, and challenged in resisting colonial rule, providing a nuanced understanding of their agency and struggles.

Question 13

Another term for the 1929 Women’s War

Answer 13

Ogu Umanwaanyi

Question 14

What were the two main objectives of the Ogu Umanwaanyi?

Answer 14

1. Negotiating the shifting gender dynamics bought on by the onset of British Colonial Rule
2. Challenged the colonial government which sought to restrict women’s involvement in society and the economy

Question 15

Name of historian who speak about the Ogu Umanwaanyi

Answer 15

Barbara Cooper

Question 16

What protests does Barbara highlight that the women carried out in Nigeria?

Answer 16

protesting taxation, treatment by authorities, and British occupation/authority (the political and economic position of women)

Question 17

What methods did these women use?

Answer 17

sit-ons, song & Dance (provocative lyrics, naked, or in tight clothing), destroying economic/colonial buildings, removing caps from local colonial officials

Question 18

What changes did the colonial authority bring into Nigeria?

Answer 18

1. Capitalist mode - drove women out of production, bought in gender hierarchies coterminous with class relations, women becoming the underclass
2. cash economy - changed the physical marketplace & trade, increased regulation and taxation
3. Political change: concentration of political power to men, growing exclusion of women from control of land, labour, and productive surplus
4. Social change: marriage.

Question 19

Wail S. Hassan

Answer 19

normative masculine asserts itself in colonial discourse, which casts Europe in a masculine role of dominating a feminised orient. at the same time, racial discourse represents African men as hyper masculine

Question 20

What was introduced alongside colonial rule?

Answer 20

hierarchal structure between masculine and feminine was introduced, a structure in which they considered themselves to represent the superior, masculine side of the binary, whereas the colonised were seen as their effeminate subjects.

Question 21

Durba Ghosh

Answer 21

concerned with the ways in which colonialism reconstructed gender dynamics of both the colonising and colonised societies

Question 22

when did gender/colonialism scholarship emerge?

Answer 22

1980&90s