Ribbons Among the Rajahs

A History of British Women in India Before the Raj

From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, British women started traveling in any numbers to the East Indies, mostly to accompany husbands, brothers or fathers. Very little about them is recorded from the earlier years, about the remarkable journeys that they made and what drove them to travel those huge distances. Some kept journals, others wrote letters, and for the first time Patrick Wheeler tells their story in this fascinating and colorful history, exploring the little-known lives of these women and their experiences of life in India before the Raj.

With a perceptive approach, Ribbons Among the Rajahs considers all aspects of women's lives in India, from the original discomfort of traversing the globe and the complexities of arrival through to creating a home in a tight-knight settlement community. It considers, too, the effects of the subservience of women to the needs of men and argues for the greater fusion of European cultures that existed prior to imperial times.