Brett L. Shadle
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Chivalry, immorality, and intimacy
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This chapter investigates how settlers defined civilization in large part through gender norms, and how regulating sexual morality appeared crucial to upholding prestige. Whites marked African savagery through gender: white men and women believed that what separated them from Africans was women’s domesticity and men’s defense of their womenfolk’s honor and bodies. Despite Kenya settlers’ reputation for rampant adultery, many settlers proclaimed the need for discretion: if whites could not adhere to sexual morality, how could Africans be convinced of white superiority? More worrying was inter-racial sex. Inter-racial sex was fearful because it could suggest emotional intimacy and, thus, an inversion of the racial order. Worse still, by whites’ logic once a single white woman had fallen, the prestige of all white woman was endangered. Once white women showed themselves to be uncivilized, to be as mortal – and as immoral – as the colonized, the prestige of all white women was shown to be a sham. This led directly to black peril.

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The souls of white folk

White Settlers in Kenya, 1900s–1920s

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