Lord Cromer championed Egyptian women’s rights while opposing British suffrage.

Evidence

One pith-helmeted English gentleman who rose to the occasion was Evelyn Baring, first Earl of Cromer, more famously known as Lord Cromer. When Britain invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882, Cromer was entrusted to oversee the occupation. He wrote that “Islam as a social system has been a complete failure… . The degradation of women in the East is a canker that begins its destructive work early in childhood, and has eaten into the whole system of Islam.” The solution was that Muslims “be persuaded or forced into imbibing the true spirit of western civilization.” At home, this champion of Egyptian women’s rights worked feverishly to deny British women the right to vote as a founding member and president of the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. This was not a contradiction for Cromer, who was a social conservative at home but an enlightened colonizer abroad. As a colonial overlord, he was not putting forward a statement of principle but rather simply deploying arguments useful to the colonial mission. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 165

Yet, at home, this “champion” of Egyptian women’s rights worked feverishly to deny British women the right to vote as a founding member and president of the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. Even though the Victorian male establishment rejected feminism at home, it used the language developed in the domestic context in the service of colonialism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 145

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete case of feminist rhetoric as empire’s instrument — links to Grosfoguel on gendered imperial ideology. — connects to: Cromer opposed women’s suffrage in Britain while invoking women’s rights to justify empire — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 157; Suffragists argued women’s rights would strengthen Britain’s empire — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 149
• SEED: Angle: the selective feminism of imperial power, from Cromer to Bush’s Afghan liberation narrative.
• SHARE: The irony that Britain’s leading ‘rescuer’ of Egyptian women headed the men’s antisuffrage league is a striking detail for someone writing on double standards in imperial feminism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 165; Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 145

Broader Connections

• Cromer opposed women’s suffrage in Britain while invoking women’s rights to justify empire #expands (0.98) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 157
• Suffragists argued women’s rights would strengthen Britain’s empire #qualifies (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 149