ABSTRACT
Great interest has been shown in the sexual interface of the colonial encounter. The imperial enterprise not only served political expansion, but the colonies provided Europeans an opportunity to indulge their sexual fantasies. A close examination of novels and memoirs of Victorian literature reveals that European women were categorically absent from the sexual fantasies of colonial men, yet the very same men deemed them to be desired and seductive figures to men of colour. Allusions to the political subversion of the colonial system went hand in hand with the fear of sexual subversion. The term ‘Black Peril’ referred to sexual threats, but it also connoted the fear of insurgence, of some perceived non-acquiescence to colonial control more generally. In the Anglo-Indian world of colonizer and native, the colonizer depends upon native protection and interpretation in order to keep control of the country.
