ABSTRACT
It will be obvious by now that the Empire, throughout its long history, was dominated by the concerns of colonising men. In Britain, the Empire was represented as a place of masculine proving and of adventure in which white women and indigenous peoples were, at best, incidental, and more often than not detrimental, to good rule. This perception was grounded in a ruler-oriented view of the Empire that regarded it as a dangerous and diffi cult environment to be tamed.
