Innocents Abroad?

Abstract

This paper examines some recently published travelogues which have brought together a number of travel narratives written by Western women who travelled to South East Asia in the nineteenth century. It argues that the editors of these travelogues have glossed over the issues of race, class, gender, and power-relations during that period of Western imperialism in South East Asia in order to present a ‘sanitized’ version of white women's travels. They are further criticized for their attempt to present these ‘sanitized’ histories as part of a feminist tradition of travel, because by so doing they have ignored the fact that these women were neither feminists nor opponents of the imperialist cause. The paper argues that a true picture of women's travel history can be written only when a new category of woman is employed – a category which abandons the narrow definition of autonomous rational woman as one which was ‘empowered’ along the terms set by the politics of patriarchy and imperialism.