Empire Religiosity - Studies in Imperialism by Tim Allender Paperback

About the Book

Book Synopsis

WINNER of the Conference on the History of Women Religious Distinguished Book Award 2025

This book explores Roman Catholic female missionaries and their placement in colonial and postcolonial India. It offers fascinating insights into their idiomatic activism, juxtaposed with a contrarian Protestant raj and with their own church patriarchies. During the Great Revolt of 1857, these women religious hid in church steeples. They were forced into the medical care of sexually diseased women in Lock Hospitals. They followed the Jesuits to experimental tribal village domains and catered for elites in the airy hilltop stations of the raj. Yet, they could not escape the eugenic and child rescue practices that were the flavour of the imperial day.
New geographies of race and gender were also created by their social and educational outreach. This allowed them to remain on the subcontinent after the tide went out on empire in 1947. Their religious bodies remained untouched by India yet their experience in the field built awareness of the complex semiotics and visual traces engaged by the East/West interchange. After 1947, their tropes of social outreach were shaped by their direct interaction with Indians. Many new women religious were now of the same race or carried a strongly anti-British Irish ancestry.
In the postcolonial world their historicity continues to underpin their negotiable Western-constructed activism - now reaching trafficked girls and those in modern-day slavery. The uncovered and multi-dimensional contours of their work are strong contributors to the current Black Lives Matter debates and how the etymology and constructs of empire find their way into current NGO philanthropy.

From the Back Cover

Empire religiosity explores Roman Catholic female missionaries and their placement in colonial and postcolonial India. It offers fascinating insights into their idiomatic activism, juxtaposed with a contrarian Protestant raj and with their own church patriarchies.
During the Great Revolt of 1857, these women religious hid in church steeples. They were forced into the medical care of sexually diseased women in Lock Hospitals. They followed the Jesuits to experimental tribal village domains while also catering for elites in the airy hilltop stations of the raj. Yet, these women could not escape the eugenic and child rescue practices that were the flavour of the imperial day. New geographies of race and gender were created by their social and educational outreach. This allowed them to remain on the subcontinent after the tide went out on empire in 1947. Their religious bodies remained untouched by India yet their experience in the field built awareness of the complex semiotics and visual traces engaged by the East/West interchange. After 1947, their tropes of social outreach were shaped by direct interaction with Indians. Many new women religious were now of the same race or carried a strongly anti-British Irish ancestry.
In the postcolonial world, their historicity continues to underpin their negotiable Western-constructed activism - now reaching trafficked girls and those in modern-day slavery. The uncovered and multi-dimensional contours of their work are strong contributors to the current Black Lives Matter debates and to how etymology and constructs of empire find their way into current NGO philanthropy.

Review Quotes

WINNER of the Triennial Distinguished Book Award, 2022-25, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Notre Dame University, South Bend, USA

'Allender modifies the critique of postcolonial thought in ways that are truly refreshing'
Ana Jelnikar, Anthropological Notebooks

'Empire Religiosity builds on Tim Allender's excellent track record of detailed research into the history of education... This is a compelling story, beautifully written, conveyed with clarity and compassion towards both the women themselves and the girls who received education.'
History of Education Journal

'Empire Religiosity is an important contribution to the study of Catholic missions in India, and its detailed archival work is commendable.'
Journal of Religious History

About the Author