White women and men of colour: Miscegenation fears in Britain after the great war

Gender and History

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2005, Pages

  Bland, Lucy ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL RELATIONS; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; POST-WAR; PUBLIC ATTITUDE; RACE; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 27744516818     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0953-5233.2005.00371.x     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (237)

1. The Times, 14 June 1919, p. 8. The letter is from Ralph Williams, a former British colonial administrator, who had worked in Bechuanaland and been governor of the Windward Islands.
2. One of the few studies of miscegenation in interwar Britain is Laura Tabili's excellent '"Women of a Very Low Type"; Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds) Gender and Class in Modem Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-90.
3. Robert Young, Colonial Desire; Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 144-6.
4. Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1995).
5. Fernando Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1974), ch. 9;
6. Jennifer DeVere Brody, Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
7. Rosina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002) ch. 6;
8. David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-18 (London: Macmillan, 1999).
9. Richard Smith 'Engendering Race: Jamaica, Masculinity and the Great War', unpublished PhD thesis (University of North London, 2000), p. 38.
10. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London; Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 311-12;
11. Glenford Howe, Race, War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (London: James Curray, 2002), ch. 11 and postscript;
12. Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
13. Rosina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 192-5.
14. Alfred Draper, The Amritsar Massacre: Twilight of the Raj (London: Buchan & Enright, 1985).
15. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London; Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 294-5;
16. Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 29.
17. Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca; Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 9.
18. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to women over thirty who were on the local government register or were graduates; non-graduate women who lived in property that they did not rent or own, e. g. their parents' or employer's house, were not eligible. For discussion of the winning of the 1918 Act, see Ray Strachey, The Cause (1928; repr. London: Virago, 1978), ch. 19;
19. Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days (London: Routledge, 1996), chapter 10.
20. In George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (London: Longman, 2002), p. 66.
21. George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (London; Longman, 2002), pp. 32, 65.
22. For women's experience of the war, see Angela Woollacott, On Her their Lives Depend: Munition Workers in the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);
23. Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War One (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998);
24. Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1999);
25. Nicoletta F. Gullace, 'The Blood of Our Sons': Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
26. The system of concubinage was less equitable than this might suggest, the woman also acting in the capacity of servant. Ann Laura Stoler, 'Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power', in Michaela di Leonardo (ed.), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1991), pp. 51-101, here p. 59.
27. In the eighteenth century however, marital relations between British and Indians were much more socially accepted. See William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India (London: Flamingo, 2003).
28. Ann Laura Stoler, 'Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power', in Michaela di Leonardo (ed.), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California, 1991), pp. 51-101, here pp. 64-7.
29. The Rhodesian Advertiser for example noted in 1895: 'for want of a class of females suitable for the wives of our artisans much intermixture of colour goes on - a fact to be deplored'. In Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987). Thanks to Anna Crozier for referring me to this book.
30. Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), p. 177;
31. Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 5.
32. The Immorality and Indecency Suppression Ordinance, no. 1, 1916: Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 2890-1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), p. 242,
33. Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 5.
34. Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 177.
35. See Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality (Manchester; Manchester University Press, 1990), ch. 7.
36. Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919-1945 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 88;
37. and see Public Record Office, London: CO/850/47/4.
38. Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919-1945 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 141-2;
39. Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 2nd edition 1990), p. 69.
40. Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 213;
41. Fernando Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1974), ch. 4 and 5;
42. James F. Brooks, Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).
43. Peggy Pascoe, 'Miscegenation Law, Court Cases and the Ideologies of "Race" in Twentieth Century America', in Martha Hodes (ed.), Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 267-78;
44. and see the wonderful book by Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizonne, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White (New York; W. W. Norton, 2001).
45. Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 3;
46. Fernando Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1974), pp. 25-31.
47. And it was only in the year 2000 that the Bob Jones University in South Carolina lifted its ban on interracial dating. Gary Younge, 'Dancing to an Old Southern Segregationist Tune', The Guardian, 3 May 2003.
48. See Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 2000).
49. The Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance of 1903. Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
50. Amirah Inglis, The White Women's Protection Ordinance: Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Papua (Brighton; Sussex University Press, 1975).
51. Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (London: The Women's Press, 1982), pp. 183-96;
52. Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 169-82.
53. Ann Laura Stoler, 'Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power', in Michaela di Leonardo (ed.), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 51-101, here p. 68;
54. Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935 (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 9.
55. Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels; also Gina Marchetti, Romance and the "Yellow Peril': Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
56. The ports where riots occurred were London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Newport, Barry, Salford, Hull, South Shields and Glasgow.
57. Roy May and Robin Cohen, 'The Interaction between Race and Colonialism: A Case Study of the Liverpool Race Riots of 1919', Race and Class, vol. 16, no. 2 (1974), pp. 111-26;
58. Neil Evans, 'The South Wales Race Riots of 1919', Llafur 3 (1980), pp. 5-29;
59. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 298-311;
60. Jacqueline Jenkinson, 'The 1919 Riots', in Panikos Panayi (ed.), Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), pp. 92-111;
61. Michael Rowe, 'Sex, "Race" and Riot in Liverpool, 1919', Immigrants and Minorities, vol. 19, no. 2 (2000), pp. 53-70.
62. For a detailed examination of the position of black workers in Britain's shipping industry, see Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca; Cornell University Press, 1994).
63. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London; Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 304, 299;
64. Liverpool Courier, 1 June 1919.
65. The Times, 3 July 1917, p. 5.
66. Daily Dispatch, 8 August 1917, p. 3,
67. in Richard Smith, 'Engendering Race: Jamaica, Masculinity and the Great War', unpublished PhD thesis (University of North London, 2000), p. 255.
68. Joyce Collins, Dr Brighton's Indian Patients, Dec 1914-Jan 1916 (Brighton: Brighton Book, 1997);
69. Philippa Levine, 'Battle Colors: Race, Sex and Colonial Soldiery in World War I', Journal of Social History, 9/4 (1998), pp. 104-30;
70. Shompa Lihiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 146;
71. Rosina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 185-92.
72. Rosina Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p. 191.
73. See David Omissi, Indian Yokes of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-18 (London: Macmillan, 1999) for a few cases of marriages between Indian soldiers and French women.
74. Annabelle Melzer, 'Spectacles and Sexualities: The "Mise-en- scene" of the Tirailleur Sénégalais on the Western Front, 1914-1920', in Billie Melman (ed.), Borderlines: Gender and Identities in War and Peace, 1870-1930 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 213-24, here p. 228.
75. However, colonial soldiers in France were treated much better than colonial workers. See Tyler Stovall, 'The Color Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War', American Historical Review 103 (1998), pp. 737-69.
76. Letter of 4 December 1914, in Gregory Martin, 'The Influence of Racial Attitudes towards India during the First World War', Journal of Imperial History, 14 (1985), pp. 91-113, here p. 94.
77. This concern with the behaviour of white women expressed by Lords Crewe and Hardinge reflected exchanges back in 1901-02 between their earlier equivalences, Lord Hamilton (Secretary of State for India) and Lord Curzon (Viceroy). Hamilton wrote to Curzon: 'There has always been such difficulty experienced in keeping low-class women away from coloured soldiers' (25 September 1901). A year later he was reflecting that in fact this tendency 'pervades all classes', even 'the smartest peeress' (17 September 1902); quoted in Shompa Lihiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 146.
78. Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 2nd edn 1990), p. 121.
79. In Michael Rowe, 'Sex, "Race" and Riot in Liverpool, 1919', Immigrants and Minorities, 19 (2000), pp. 53-70, here p. 56.
80. In Michael Rowe, 'Sex, "Race" and Riot in Liverpool, 1919', Immigrants and Minorities, 19 (2000), pp. 53-70, here p. 60.
81. Manchester Guardian, 12 June 1919.
82. Morning Post, 13 June 1919.
83. Letter to Undersecretary of State, Home Office, 10 June 1919, in PRO: HO/45/1107/ 377969.
84. Liverpool Evening Express, 6 June 1919.
85. Western Mail, 13 June 1919.
86. Liverpool Courier, 11 June 1919.
87. Liverpool Courier, 11 June 1919.
88. Thanks to Mary Hickman for this observation.
89. The People, 24 April 1919;
90. and see Laura Tabili, '"Women of a Very Low Type": Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Fader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-90.
91. This representation of black men as interested in fashion was also remarked on in 1917 with the implication of effeminacy; 'The black dandy is a familiar figure in our city streets these days... These men are as fastidious as a woman over the cut of clothes'. Empire News, 2 September 1917, p. 4,
92. quoted in Richard Smith, 'Engendering Race: Jamaica, Masculinity and the Great War' unpublished PhD thesis (University of North London, 2000), p. 250.
93. Sunday Express, 15 June 1919, emphasis in the original.
94. In Peter Fryer, Black People in the British Empire: An Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 1988), p. 78.
95. In Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), p. 189.
96. See for example The People, 27 April 1919;
97. Liverpool Courier, 1 June 1919;
98. Western Mail, 13 June 1919.
99. This view of the men contrasts strikingly with that represented in M. E. Fletcher, Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports (Liverpool; Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930), p. 21, which claims that white women who marry 'coloured men' 'almost invariably regret it', because 'many of the men are heavy drinkers and gamblers, while their sexual demands impose a continual strain on white women'.
100. On men's experiences of World War I, see J. M. Winter, The Experience of World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988);
101. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996);
102. Santanu Das, '"Kiss Me, Hardy": Intimacy, Gender, and Gesture in World War 1 Trench Literature', Modernism/ Modernity 9 (2002), pp. 51-74;
103. Margaret Millman, 'In the Shadow of War: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Construction of the Masculine Identities of British Soldiers, 1914-1924', unpublished PhD thesis (Greenwich University, London, 2003);
104. Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
105. 15 October 1925: in PRO: HO 45/25404. This is an aside made during correspondence between the Home Office and the Foreign Office concerning problems faced by British women going to China with their Chinese husbands. The author notes that the latter 'is only part of the larger [question] of British women having sexual relations with men of colour'. The author signature is illegible. The noting of white British women's attraction to black men was not new. In the eighteenth century West Indian planter Edward Long noted: 'the lowest class of women in England are remarkably fond of the blacks, for reasons too brutal to mention'. Edward Long, Candid Reflections, 1772,
106. in Fernando Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1974), p. 137.
107. Liverpool Post, 11 June 1919.
108. Richard Smith, 'Engendering Race: Jamaica, Masculinity and the Great War' unpublished PhD thesis (University of North London, 2000), p. 260.
109. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996).
110. Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), p. 176.
111. Thanks to an anonymous reader for Gender & History for suggesting this enlightening interpretation.
112. Laura Tabili, '"Women of a Very Low type": Cross-Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-190, here p. 165.
113. I am indebted to Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994) for the following discussion.
114. Laura Tabili, '"Women of a Very Low Type": Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-190, here p. 172.
115. Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), ch. 6.
116. Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), chs 1 and 2.
117. See Laura Tabili, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), chs 6 and 7.
118. The Times, 19 June 1919.
119. See Catherine Anne Cline, E. D. Morel: The Strategies of Power (London; Blackstaff Press, 1980).
120. The Union of Democratic Control of Foreign Policy was set up in 1914; it was opposed to the war and demanded democratic control of foreign policy and non-punitive peace terms. It strongly opposed the Treaty of Versailles.
121. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920.
122. And see Robert Reinders, 'Racialism on the Left: E. D. Morel and the "Black Horror on the Rhine" International Review of Social History 13 (1968), pp. 1-28;
123. Keith Nelson, "The "Black Horror on the Rhine": Race as a Factor in Post-World War I Diplomacy', Journal of Modern History 42 (1970), pp. 606-27;
124. Sally Marks, 'Black Watch on the Rhine: A Study in Propaganda, Prejudice and Prurience', European Studies Review, 13 (1983), pp. 297-334;
125. Chris Koller, 'Enemy Images: Race and Gender Stereotypes in the Discussion on Colonial Troops. A Franco-German Comparison', in Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schuler-Springorum (eds), Home/Front: War and Gender and Twentieth Century Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2002). (Thanks to Dick van Galen Last for the Koller reference.)
126. E. D. Morel, Africa and the Peace of Europe (1917; repr. London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 66-70.
127. Coloured Troops in Europe: Report of Meeting Held in the Central Hall on April 27th, 1920 (London: Women's International League, 1920), p. 17. Thanks to Christine Coates of the TUC Library, London Metropolitan University, for locating this reference.
128. Coloured Troops in Europe: Report of Meeting Held in the Central Hall on April 27th, 1920 (London: Women's International League, 1920), pp. 19-20.
129. Coloured Troops in Europe: Report of Meeting Held in the Central Hall on April 27th, 1920 (London: Women's International League, 1920), p. 14.
130. E. D. Morel, The Horror on the Rhine (London: n. p., 1920), p. 11.
131. E. D. Morel, The Horror on the Rhine (London: n. p., 1920), p. 13.
132. E. D. Morel, The Horror on the Rhine (London: n. p., 1920), p. 10. Emphasis in the original.
133. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920;
134. Robert Reinders, 'Racialism on the Left: E. D. Morel and the "Black Horror on the Rhine"', International Review of Social History 13 (1968), pp. 1-28, here pp. 8, 9.
135. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920. Emphasis in the original.
136. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920.
137. Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 2nd edn 1990), p. 42.
138. Daily Herald, 26 April 1920.
139. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920.
140. Helena Swanwick was also a founder member of the UDC. See Joanna Alberti, Beyond Suffrage: Feminists in War and Peace, 1914-28 (London: Macmillan, 1989).
141. Coloured Troops in Europe: Report of Meeting Held in the Central Hall on April 27th, 1920 (London: Women's International League, 1920), p. 3.
142. E. D. Morel, The Horror on the Rhine, (London: n. p., 1920), p. 9.
143. Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 23-26;
144. Susan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1999), ch. 2;
145. Nicoletta F. Gullace, The Blood of our Sons': Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship (New York: Palgrave, 2002), ch. 1.
146. In Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 26.
147. Another parallel between the two sets of propaganda was the lack of substantiated evidence. See Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton, 1993)
148. and Sally Marks, 'Black Watch on the Rhine: A Study in Propaganda, Prejudice and Prurience', European Studies Review 13 (1983), pp. 297-344.
149. Daily Herald, 10 April 1920.
150. Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace; The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
151. Annabelle Melzer, 'Spectacles and Sexualities: The "Mise-en- scene" of the Tirailleur Sénégalais on the Western Front, 1914-1920', in Billie Melman (ed.), Borderlines: Gender and Identities in War and Peace, 1870-1930 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 213-44, here p. 230.
152. 'A Black Man Replies', Workers' Dreadnought, 24 April 1920, p. 2;
153. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 318-19;
154. Winston James, 'A Race Outcast from an Outcast Class; Claude McKay's Experience and Analysis of Britain', in Bill Schwarz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 71-92.
155. Winston James, 'A Race Outcast from an Outcast Class: Claude McKay's Experience and Analysis of Britain', in Bill Schwarz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 71-92, here p. 83.
156. Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 74.
157. Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), n. 92, p. 250.
158. Robert Reinders, 'Racialism on the Left: E. D. Morel and the "Black Horror on the Rhine"' International Review of Social History 13 (1968), pp. 1-28, here p. 19.
159. Coloured Troops in Europe: Report of Meeting Held in the Central Hall on April 27th, 1920 (London: Women's International League, 1920), p. 5.
160. In Winston James, 'A Race Outcast from an Outcast Class: Claude McKay's Experience and Analysis of Britain', in Bill Schwarz (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 71-92, here p. 83.
161. Gina Marchetti, Romance and the "Yellow Peril' in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
162. Sax Rohmer was the pseudonym of English writer Arthur Henry Ward. Rohmer wrote a series of thrillers in the early twentieth century about the evil Dr Fu Manchu, starting in 1913. As an example of witty inter-textuality, Fu Manchu is pursued by Sherlock Holmes's nephew, Dennis Nayland Smith. See Sax Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu (1913; repr. London J. M. Dent, 1985).
163. Thomas Burke, Limehouse Nights (1917; repr. New York: Robert M. McBride and Co., 1926).
164. For example, Tai Ling, who is described as 'a loveable character' but 'non-moral'. Thomas Burke, Nights in Town (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1915; cheap edition, 1925), p. 63.
165. He appears again in 'The Father of Yoto' in Thomas Burke, Limehouse Nights (1917; repr. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1926), p. 28, where he is described as 'by our standards, a complete rogue; yet the most joyous I have known'.
166. Thomas Burke, Nights in Town (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1915; cheap edition, 1925), p. 67.
167. Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992).
168. Sax Rohmer, Dope: The Story of Chinatown and the Drug Traffic (London: Cassell, 1919).
169. Andrew Blake, 'Foreign Devils and Moral Panics: Britain, Asia and the Opium Trade', in Bill Schwarz (ed.), The Expansion of England (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 232-59, here p. 253.
170. Evening News, 5 October 1920.
171. Daily Express, 18 April 1922.
172. Daily Express, 23 April 1922.
173. Empire News, 30 April 1922.
174. Virginia Burridge, The Origins of the English Drug "Scene", 1890-1930', Medical History 32 (1988), pp. 51-64.
175. Daily Express, 25 April 1922.
176. Evening News, 30 April 1922.
177. Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), p. 166.
178. For example, Evening News, 6 Oct 1920.
179. Empire News, 30 April 1922.
180. For 'white slave' narratives, see Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart Inc., 1991), ch. 4;
181. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (London; Virago, 1992), ch. 3;
182. Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast (London: Penguin, 1995; repr. London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 297-302.
183. PRO: HO 45/25404.
184. PRO: HO 45/25404. In 1913 the India Office had instructed British marriage registry offices to 'explain to British women contemplating marriage with Hindus, Mohamedans and other subjects or citizens of countries where polygamy is legal, the risk attendance on such marriages'. In Shompa Lahiri, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 122.
185. 15 October 1925, PRO: HO 45/25404. Memo from Home Office to the Foreign Office; the author's signature is illegible.
186. 14 October 1925, PRO: HO 45/25404. Memo from Home Office to the Foreign Office.
187. For a more extended discussion of the trial, see Lucy Bland, 'The Trial of Madame Fahmy: Orientalism, Violence, Sexual Perversity and the Fear of Miscegenation', in Shani D'Cruze (ed.), Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950 (Essex: Longman, 2000), pp. 185-97.
188. The Times, 14 September 1923.
189. Daily Mirror, 17 September 1923.
190. E. M. Hull, The Sheik (London: Eveleigh Nash and Grayson, 1919);
191. on The Sheik see Patricia Raub, 'Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hull's The Sheik', Women's Studies 21 (1992), pp. 119-28;
192. Karen Chow, 'Popular Sexual Knowledge and Women's Agency in 1920s England', Feminist Review, 63 (1999), pp. 64-87;
193. on desert romances generally see Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties (London; St Martin's Press, 1988).
194. For discussion of the appeal of Valentino, see Miriam Hansen, 'Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship', in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 259-80.
195. Ruth Hall, Marie Stopes (London: Virago, 1978), pp. 93-100;
196. June Rose, Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), pp. 78-9.
197. Eugenics Review 12 (1920), p. 10.
198. In Eugenics Review 15 (1924), p. 647.
199. On degeneracy fears in the nineteenth century, see Gareth Steadman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971);
200. Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1989);
201. for the twentieth century see Richard A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
202. Nancy Stepan, 'Biological Degeneration: Race and Proper Places', in J. Edward Chamberlin and Sander Gilman (eds), Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (New York; Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 97-120, here pp. 105-7;
203. Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 32, 46.
204. In contrast to the European condemnation of the mestizo (mixed race) population of much of Latin America, Mexican eugenists had a notion of 'constructive miscegenation', believing that the mixing of disparate racial groups could lead to a new and superior racial type. See Nancy Stepan, 'The Hour of Eugenics': Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
205. Eugenics Education Society unpublished letters; Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, D179, Box 33.
206. Eugenics Education Society unpublished letters: Wellcome Library, D179, Box 33.
207. R. M. Fleming, 'Anthropological Studies of Children', Eugenics Review (1927), p. 299.
208. For a sophisticated analysis on the dilemmas of 'passing' see Pamela L. Caughie, Passing and Pedagogy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
209. Ann Laura Stoler, 'Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power', in Michaela di Leonardo (ed.) Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 51-101, here p. 53.
210. M. E. Fletcher, Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports (Liverpool: Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930), pp. 5, 21, 50.
211. Percy Roxby, 'Introduction' in M. E. Fletcher, Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports (Liverpool: Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930).
212. M. E. Fletcher, Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports (Liverpool: Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930), pp. 32-4.
213. M. E. Fletcher, Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports (Liverpool: Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children, 1930), p. 5.
214. James Wilson, 10 April 1929, to the Cardiff Watch Committee, quoted in Paul Rich, Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 2nd edn, 1990), pp. 127-8;
215. and see Michael Banton, The Coloured Quarter (London: J. Cape, 1955), p. 35.
216. Empire News, 25 March 1923;
217. see Empire News, 18 March 1923 for details of the murder;
218. also Richard Lawless, From Ta'izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-East of England during the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), p. 179.
219. Empire News, 25 March 1923.
220. For another, earlier example of a call for prohibition, see C. Hamilton McGuiness, 'White Women and Coloured Men', London Opinion, January 1909.
221. Shields Daily Gazette, 20 March 1923, In Richard Lawless, From Ta'izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-East of England during the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), p. 182.
222. Shields Daily Gazette, 21 March 1923, In Richard Lawless, From Ta'izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-East of England during the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), p. 185.
223. Shields Daily Gazette, 23 March 1923, In Richard Lawless, From Ta'izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-East of England during the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995), p. 186.
224. My thanks for this useful formulation to an anonymous reader for Gender & History.
225. Bill Schwarz, 'Black Metropolis, White England', in Mica Nava and Alan O'Shea (eds), Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity (London; Routledge, 1996), pp. 176-207, here p. 197.
226. The Times, 1 May 1926, p. 16.
227. Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London; The Bodley Head, 1990), p. 403;
228. The Times, 1 May 1926.
229. The Times, 1 May 1926.
230. George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
231. Daily Express, 14 June 1919.
232. Tariq Modood et al., Ethnic Minorities in Britain (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997), p. 50;
233. Yasmin Alibai-Brown, Mixed Feelings: The Complex Life of Mixed-Race Britons (London: The Women's Press, 2001), p. 77.
234. The Times, 19 June 1919.
235. Laura Tabili, '"Women of a Very Low Type": Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modem Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-90, here p. 187.
236. Laura Tabili, '"Women of a Very Low Type"; Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain', in Laura Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modem Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 165-90, makes a start on precisely this project.
237. And see Mica Nava, 'Wider Horizons and Modern Desire: The Contradictions of America and Racial Difference in London, 1935-45', New Formations 37 (1999), pp. 71-91, for the slightly later period.