Playing the Game: Western Women in Arabia

289 Pages·2003·1.72 MB·English

by  Penelope Tuson

Playing the Game
To Islwyn Morris Williams
PLAYING
THE GAME
The Story of
Western Women
in Arabia
Penelope Tuson
Published in 2003 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave
Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Penelope Tuson, 2003
The right of Penelope Tuson to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1 86064 933 5
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British
Library
Typeset in Sabon by Dexter Haven Associates, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin
Contents
Illustrations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xviii
Map xx
Introduction: Claiming a Place: Women and Imperial
Politics before the First World War 1
1 ‘Keeping up the Dignity of the Empire’: the Viceregal Tour
of the Gulf in 1903 17
2 The Wife of the Political Agent: Emily Overend Lorimer in
Bahrain, 1911–12 49
3 Rival Narratives: American Missionaries in the Gulf,
1892–1914 84
4 War Work for the Empire: Western Women in Mesopotamia
and the Gulf, 1914–18 114
5 Women and the ‘New World Order’: Anglo-American
Perspectives on Colonialism, 1918–26 149
6 ‘Women called Wild’: Travellers and Orientalists in the
Inter-war Years 178
7 The ‘Beach Pyjama Incident’, 1933: Oil, the Arabian Gulf
Air Route and the ‘Opening up’ of the Coast 208
Postscript: Completing the Story 239
Bibliography 243
Index 257

Illustrations
1 Lord and Lady Curzon on deck during their tour of the
Gulf, 1903. 18
2 Percy Cox, British Political Agent at Muscat, and his wife
Belle, together with the ruler of Muscat, Sayyid Taymur
bin Faysal Al Sa‘id, and Muscat notables including Sayyid
Yusuf Zawawi (on the right). The photograph was taken
to mark the Delhi Coronation Durbar celebrations in
January 1903. 38
3 Emily Overend, photographed in Oxford, 1909. 50
4 Captain David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer in his
uniform, 1909. 50
5 Emily Lorimer photographed by her husband in her sitting-
room in Bahrain, 1911. 60
6 The Arabian Mission hymn, published in Neglected
Arabia, 1915. 86
7 Dr Stanley and Mrs Bessie Mylrea in Arab dress. Published
in Neglected Arabia, 1915. 119
8 Dorothy Van Ess, other teachers and pupils at the Basra
Girls’ School. Published in Neglected Arabia, 1916. 120
9 Gertrude Bell on a picnic with King Faysal I of Iraq (right
foreground) and other British officials, early 1920s. 166
10 The Philbys with Rosita Forbes and Bertram Thomas,
Petra, 1923. 190
11 Dora Philby wearing a dress presented to her by King
‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa‘ud, Kuwait, 1935. 193
12 A woman carrying water at Mukalla and two girls at
Huraydah, photographed by Freya Stark during her travels
in southern Arabia, 1938. 228
The author and publisher would like to thank the following for their kind per-
mission to reproduce photographs: 1: British Library Oriental and India Office
Collections; 2: Dr Omar Zawawi; 3, 4 and 5: Dr Marjorie Gillespie; 6, 7 and 8:
Gardner A. Sage Library, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Jersey; 9,
10, 11 and 12: St Antony’s College, Oxford, Middle East Centre.
vii

Preface
This book is about Western women who lived, worked and travelled in
the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region between the 1890s and the
1930s. In particular, it maps their changing and complex involvement
with the British Empire from its high point at the end of the nineteenth
century to its twilight, on the eve of the Second World War. Sometimes
flamboyant and unconventional, sometimes conservative and conformist,
these women and their stories are largely unknown. With the exception
of a handful of famous travellers such as Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark,
their histories have not been excavated from the archives, let alone brought
to a wider readership. Almost all of them wanted in some way to be a
part of British imperial life. Some were prepared to conform and ‘play the
game’ and others decidedly were not. Some were allowed to play the game;
others were not. As well as reconstructing their lives, therefore, this book
also looks at the ways in which women negotiated, or tried to negotiate,
power and position in the imperial enterprise, and how this negotiated
power and involvement changed over time; it examines the ways in which
the conventional roles of Western women were determined and defined by
the masculine perspectives and hierarchies of imperial culture and authority;
and it considers the extent to which women themselves actively partici-
pated in, passively colluded with, or deliberately subverted these roles,
both in their day-to-day activities and in their own representations of
their lives.
In the introduction to a collection of writings on gender and impe-
rialism published in 1998, the feminist historian, Clare Midgley, noted
the ways in which gender history and traditional imperial history have
developed separately, with imperial history being regarded and written as
‘the history of the exploits of male policy-makers, military commanders,
explorers and missionaries’, while the history of women and imperialism
has, until recently, been seen as of marginal significance, ‘a special interest
area which can be safely left to female historians’.1Midgley’s comment still
holds true in relation to the Arabian Peninsula. Although major inroads
are now being made into the study of gender in the context of imperial
India and colonial Africa, the story of Western involvement in Arabia and
the Gulf has been, and still is being, studied almost exclusively from
the traditional perspectives of political and international relations. Titles
such as Britain and the Persian Gulf; Britain, India and the Arabs; The
ix