Abstract
Consent as a legal and a social principle has been applied in many fields, from medical practice to political governance. It has been a key and controversial element in the legislation of sexuality, that arena balanced so uneasily – and so very often – between the private and the public. Arguments over age of consent have resurfaced periodically and always controversially. In Britain, the most recent manifestation of this debate has been over equalizing the sexual age of consent for same-sex and for heterosexual partnerings, a debate resolved by the passage of legislation in 2000 that finally allowed gay men the same age of consent as straight men and women. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, it was heterosexual consent that was at issue, and most specifically female age of sexual consent. Male age of consent was, at this juncture, a non-issue.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
P. Charles, ‘The Name of the Father: Women, Paternity and British Rule in Nineteenth-Century Jamaica’, International Labor and Working-Class History 41 (1992), p. 19.
R. Barber, ‘The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1891 and the “Age of Consent” Issue in Queensland’, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 10 (1977), p. 96.
A. Burton, ‘A “Pilgrim Reformer” at the Heart of the Empire: Behramji Malabari in Late-Victorian London’, Gender & History 8(2) (1996), pp. 175–96
A. Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain (Berkeley, 1997), Ch. 4.
C.H. Heimsath, ‘The Origin and Enactment of the Indian Age of Consent Bill, 1891’, Journal of Asian Studies 21(4) (1962), p. 492.
T. Sarkar, ‘Rhetoric Against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and Death of a Child-Wife’, Economic and Political Weekly (4 September 1993), p.1875
R. Singha, ‘Nationalism, Colonialism and the Politics of Masculinity’, Studies in History 14(1), n.s. (1998), p. 139.
P. Uberoi, ‘When Is A Marriage Not A Marriage? Sex, Sacrament and Contract in Hindu Marriage’, in Uberoi (ed.) Social Reform, Sexuality and the State (New Delhi, 1996), p. 335
H. Banerji, ‘Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform’, in C. Midgley (ed.) Gender and Imperialism (Manchester, 1998), p. 22
C. Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London, 1989), p. 34.
M. Kasturi, ‘Law and Crime in India: British Policy and the Female Infanticide Act of 1870’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 1(2) (1994), pp. 169–93.
R. Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices in Colonial India’, Studies in History 16(2), n.s. (2000), pp. 151–98, esp. p. 156.
D. Gorham, ‘The “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” Re-Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England’, Victorian Studies 21 (1978), p. 356.
J.R. Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham, 1998), p. 14.
M. Sinha, ‘Nationalism and Respectable Sexuality’, Genders 21 (1995), p. 41.
G. Forbes, The New Cambridge History of India. IV. 2: Women in Modern India (Cambridge, 1996), p. 84
A. Sen, ‘Hindu Revivalism in Action – The Age of Consent Bill Agitation in Bengal’, Indian Historical Review 7(1–2) (1980–1), p. 179.
P. Anagol- McGinn, ‘The Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered: Women’s Perspectives and Participation in the Child-Marriage Controversy in India’, South Asia Research 12(2) (1992), p. 100.
A. Burton, ‘Conjugality on Trial: The Rukhmabai Case and the Debate on Indian Child-Marriage in Late-Victorian Britain’, in G. Robb and N. Berber (eds) Disorder in the Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1999), pp. 33–56.
A. Burton, ‘From Child Bride to “Hindoo Lady”: Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain’, American Historical Review 103(4) (1998), pp. 1119–46
S. Chandra, ‘Whose Laws? Notes on a Legitimising Myth of the Colonial Indian State’, Studies in History 8(2) (1992), pp. 187–211
S. Chandra, ‘Whose Laws? Notes on a Legitimising Myth of the Colonial Indian State’, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (Delhi, 1998)
M. Kosambi, ‘Gender Reform and Competing State Controls over Women: The Rakhmabai Case (1884–1888)’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 29(1 & 2) (1995), pp. 265–90
T. Sarkar, ‘A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal’, Feminist Studies 26(3) (2000), p. 601.
D. Engels, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890–1939 (Delhi, 1996), p. 102.
T. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation. Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (London, 2001), p. 228.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2007 Philippa Levine
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Levine, P. (2007). Sovereignty and Sexuality: Transnational Perspectives on Colonial Age of Consent Legislation. In: Grant, K., Levine, P., Trentmann, F. (eds) Beyond sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230626522_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230626522_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54089-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62652-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)