Verity McInnis’s Women of Empire follows American and British women as they accompanied their army offi cer husbands across continents to set up new lives as representatives of their nation’s empire. Using the women’s journals and letters as a window into their lives, McInnis follows the women as they negotiated relationships with each other, domestic servants, local peoples, and other military offi cials. Th ese relationships, along with the women’s explicit and implicit roles within the imperial community, provided women with a fl uid space in which to exercise newfound power. Th at power was, of course, limited by the gendered and marital hierarchies that framed women’s worlds, but McInnis successfully demonstrates that life in the empire off ered women newfound opportunities and symbolic importance. Women of Empire thus does the important recuperative work of adding women to the history of the American and British empires, but it also does more than that. It places gender at the heart of the history of empire and demonstrates that gender is essential to understanding the ways empire functioned and was maintained on a daily basis. McInnis reconstructs this gendered empire by examining the ways wives embraced the military and national mission and then enacted its aims in their everyday lives. As they set up housekeeping in farfl ung locations, greeted— and sometimes rejected— newcomers to the communities, hosted parties, participated in offi cial events, and managed the daily aff airs of their homes, women engaged in much of the work common for women of their time. Yet these social activities also provided women with a degree of power not held in the metropole. Offi cers’ wives gained a degree of power commensurate with that of their husbands’ rank and acted as gatekeepers to an exclusive social network that wielded great power for both men and women. Even women’s dress and home décor assumed weighty signifi cance as emblems of national power and prestige. As McInnis argues, every aspect of women’s lives on the outskirts of empire reconstructed the familiar class and racial hierarchies that bolstered their nation’s empires, making army offi cer wives “imperial ambassadors” (10). Women of Empire joins a growing list of works that place gender at the center of the story of empire and foreign relations more generally, a list that begins with Kristin L. Hoganson and includes works by Laura Briggs, Philippa Levine, Anne McClintock, Donna Alvah, and Ann Laura Stoler, among many others. Th is work is an important addition to this growing fi eld.

中文翻译：

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帝国妇女：19 世纪印度和美国西部军官的妻子 Verity McInnis

Verity McInnis 的《帝国女性》讲述了美国和英国女性陪伴她们的军官丈夫穿越各大洲，作为他们国家帝国的代表开始新生活的故事。麦金尼斯利用女性的日记和信件作为了解她们生活的窗口，跟踪她们与彼此、家庭佣人、当地人和其他军事官员谈判关系的过程。这些关系，以及女性在帝国社会中明确和隐含的角色，为女性提供了一个流动的空间来行使新获得的权力。当然，权力受到构成女性世界的性别和婚姻等级制度的限制，但麦金尼斯成功地证明了帝国的生活为女性提供了新的机会和象征意义。因此，《帝国女性》做了重要的恢复性工作，将女性添加到美国和大英帝国的历史中，但它的作用还不止于此。它将性别置于帝国历史的核心位置，并表明性别对于理解帝国日常运作和维持的方式至关重要。麦金尼斯通过研究妻子接受军事和国家使命的方式，然后在日常生活中实现其目标，重建了这个性别帝国。当她们在偏远的地方设立家政服务、迎接——有时甚至拒绝——社区的新来者、举办派对、参加官方活动以及管理家庭日常事务时，女性从事了许多女性常见的工作他们的时间。然而，这些社会活动也为女性提供了某种程度的权力，而这些权力在大都会中没有。官员的妻子获得了与丈夫等级相当的权力，并充当了一个对男性和女性都拥有巨大权力的专属社交网络的看门人。甚至女性的着装和家居装饰也被视为国家权力和威望的象征。正如麦金尼斯所说，帝国郊区妇女生活的方方面面都重建了支撑其国家帝国的熟悉的阶级和种族等级制度，使军官妻子成为“帝国大使”（10）。帝国女性加入了越来越多的将性别置于帝国和外交关系故事中心的作品清单，这份清单以克里斯汀·L·霍根森 (Kristin L. Hoganson) 开头，包括劳拉·布里格斯 (Laura Briggs) 的作品，Philippa Levine、Anne McClintock、Donna Alvah 和 Ann Laura Stoler 等等。这项工作是对这个不断增长的领域的重要补充。