Agents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860s – 1930 (review)

Studies of gender and empire have been a growth industry in the last two decades. What distinguishes this volume is Lisa Chilton’s addition of migration studies to the mix. Agents of Empire examines how British and colonial women participated in a campaign to ‘domesticate the dominions’ by establishing and managing international networks of migration for single British women to Australia and Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century. It also offers glimpses into the lives of some of those young women who took advantage of these female emigration societies and became part of a community that spanned the globe.

As Chilton carefully explains, one of the first objectives of the small group of middle- and upper-class British women who initially championed female migration in the 1860s was to transform their cause into a ‘respectable sphere of work for social reformers.’ They also had to convince a colonial and imperial audience that not only did the future of the empire rest on the willingness of the right kind of woman to settle in the new dominions, but that female-directed organizations were the most appropriate vehicle to accomplish this goal. Two delightful chapters explore the campaign that enabled these women emigrators (to use Chilton’s term) to become accepted and respected agents of empire. Narratives of travel and resettlement presented in emigration society records, in the press, and in widely distributed pamphlets constantly reminded the British and colonial public that young women migrants needed to be protected. Only ‘the maternal gaze’ of female-directed and -managed emigration could transform potentially dangerous public spaces – aboard ship and in colonial cities – into safe and respectable havens. The irony was that the success of the discourse rested in part on emigrators’ ability to infantilize their charges at the same time that they were trying to convince reluctant colonial hosts that they needed a new class of women – educated, respectable, hardworking, willing, and capable of doing a multitude of tasks, including home help.

Chilton explores the experiences of some of those single women who took advantage of the opportunities offered by female emigration societies through a careful reading of the letters they sent home and that subsequently appeared in society publications and records. Among other things, we begin to see how some of these new settlers continued to draw on the imperial family of women for emotional and at times financial support. A number of them also graduated from being dependents to becoming active agents for feminizing the empire. This all began to change with the coming of war in 1914, however. Gradually, the state, both in Canada and in Australia, began to assume greater control over the policies and processes of migration. Chilton uses a case study of the Australian government’s program in the mid-1920s to import British domestic servants to work in the new capital of Canberra to illustrate the impact that this had on single female emigration. Men and state agents managed emigration in ways quite different from those of women directors and managers. Moreover, by the end of the decade, the work of female emigration societies had been almost completely co-opted by the state.

The strengths of this study are many. The comparative approach provides the author with the opportunity not only to appreciate the ‘gendered politics of imperial migration’ but also to explore the complexities of the debates and changing circumstances of single female migration during this period. This study also broadens our appreciation of the variety and complexity of middle-class women’s voluntary work in the second half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain and in the colonies and illustrates how networks of women – of varying circumstances –often had an international reach and influence. As Chilton makes clear, Agents of Empire does not, and it may not be possible to, consider the experiences of those young and not so young single women...