Gender and Empire

“Be a Man: The influence of masculinity in the British Transjordan colonies” (2012)

Abstract: Questions of virility and definitions of manliness and masculinity have often been 

played out in the cultural confrontations of empire between colonizer and colonized. It is 

undeniable that masculinity has a history; it is subject to change and varied in its forms, and it is 

shaped in relation to men’s social power. In conjunction with the civilizing mission of empire, 

dominant ideologies of masculinity were spread from the metropole to the colonies. These 

ideologies were maintained through asserting their difference from—and superiority to—other 

races. This was especially true of Britain’s long colonial power over the “Third World” from 

1815 up to the mid-twentieth century. As such, this paper will attempt to examine the informal 

influence of masculinity as it was expressed from the British toward the colonized. More 

specifically, it will look at the Arab inhabitants of the Transjordan region, during the time period 

of World War I, specifically considering the Arab Revolt against Turkish/Ottoman rule which 

occurred in 1916. The British arrived in the Levant with heteronormative masculinity ideals that, 

I argue, were unconsciously imposed upon the Arab population. I am interested in the ways in 

which British colonizers manifested masculinity, as the cultural politics of masculinity cannot be 

understood in isolation from the imperial social formation. The idea of masculinity is critically 

important, and historians, with a few exceptions, have neglected to look at the relationship 

between imperialism and gender constructions—especially in the case of the colonizers 

themselves. I hope to achieve my intended research goals (of noting manifestations of 

masculinity in the British colonizers towards the colonized Arabs) by analyzing colonial 

memoirs of a particular English/British gentleman/colonial administrator/official, Sir Alec Seath 

Kirkbride, the first British minister to Transjordan. Kirkbride’s role in the formation of Jordan 

from Transjordan is often neglected and should be assessed more carefully, as he enjoyed a 

position similar to that of a colonial high commissioner and occupied the most important posts in 

the country after the king and his prime minister. He had much experience in the region 

previously and truly was a product of colonialism, as he had moved to Cromer’s Egypt with his 

parents as a child and had little experience outside of the Middle East. In 1916, he joined the 

British army under General Allenby, fought alongside the Arabs and was a companion of T.E. 

Lawrence. I will specifically use excerpts from A Crackle of Thorns: Experiences in the Middle 

East (1956) and An Awakening: The Arab Campaign 1917-18 (1972) to make my arguments. 

Travel writing of this nature (war memoirs) is essentially a “masculine” form, in that it has 

tended to be written by men to describe largely male experience for a primarily male audience. 

His writings also take a colonial form, namely, written by the colonizer(s) to describe the 

experience of colonization and primarily for an audience supporting colonization at home. A 

better understanding of masculinity is critical to exploring gender as power and for seeing 

masculine and feminine identities not as distinct and separable constructs, but as parts of a 

political field whose relations are characterized by domination, subordination, collusion and 

resistance.

This work was adapted and reworked for inclusion in Claire’s 2013 Master’s thesis.