Responses to traveling Indian ayahs in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain

Abstract

The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement for both colonizers and colonized across the world. This study focuses on Indian traveling ayahs (female servants and nannies) who traveled between India and Britain, but often underwent periods of destitution in Britain before returning to India. Using case studies of destitute ayahs, this essay investigates how the British state, British persons and British institutions responded to the destitution of imperial subjects from overseas in Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study examines the social, legal and economic power dynamics underlying these responses, revealing a combination of confrontation and collaboration between migrant colonized subjects and those engaging with them in responding to contradictory imperial polices. The article highlights the agency of a neglected group of women who, in asserting their contribution to the Empire and their rights as imperial subjects, refused to accept a second-class form of Britishness.