1450-1750 South Asia

The Political Influence of Elite Women in the Mughal Court

Source: Bese, Manda Kranta. Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India.
(New York; Oxford University Press, 2000.) pp. 201-203, 209.
The importance of the Mughal era in the history of India rests not only on the unification of
virtually all of India under an elaborately centralized administration but also on the complexity
of its political culture. The finely nuanced character of the power games that shaped the fortunes
of the dynasty are nowhere better illustrated than in the lives and acts of the great ladies at the
Mughal court, who often exerted an influence far beyond the limits granted them by their male
dominated polity. Although in principle the Islamic faith acknowledges the equality of men and
women in both ability and intelligence, in practice in the Mughal world, as in others, women
were relegated to a subordinate position. Yet despite the constraints on women, many of the
mothers, daughters, and wives of the Mughal emperors were the driving forces behind them, who
protected and advanced them by their own will, talents, and ambitions.
This is a steady but often overlooked pattern of achievement, even though the cultural
sophistication of these women is common knowledge by virtue of their literary and artistic work.
The diaries and autobiographies of Baburs daughter Gulbadan Begum, Shahjahns daughter
Jahanara, and Aurangzebs daughter Zebunnisa are well known as both historical and literary
documents
Womens life at the Mughal court was relatively free of restraints. Purdah was less
strictly observed in the harems of the first two Mughal emperors than enjoined by custom.
Gulbadan Begum, states that the ladies of the royal harem moved freely with their male friends
and visitors. They often dressed in male attire, played polo, and engaged in music. They were
free to remarry after divorce, and some did so more than once after divorce
There is little doubt that women of the Mughal court played central roles in the power
games, often murderous, that shaped the history of medieval India. Whether at the inception of
Mughal power or during its tortuous consolidation women such as Aisan Daulat Begum,
maternal grandmother of Babur; Maryam Makani, Humayuns wife and Akbars mother; Maham
Anaga, Akbars foster-mother; and Sultana Salima, Baburs granddaughter and Bairams wife
and later a senior consort of Akbar, all influenced policy and wielded substantive power over the
administration
At the same time, the history of these women reveals an aspect of Mughal society not
often recognized for the ambiguity it represents- namely, that this society did not render women
as utterly helpless and submissive as the conventional wisdom about womens lives in India
holds. Within the constraints of religion and custom, there was enough room for Mughal women
to socialize with men on the basis of mutual respect and, more important, to achieve personal
development, as demonstrated by the substantial body of their literary, artistic, and musical
works.

The Status of Non-Elite Women outside the Mughal Court

Source: Stearns, Peter N. Gender In World History. (London and New York: Routledge, 2000.) p. 63.

Although the position of women at the Mughal court improved in the middle years of the dynastys
power, that of women in the rest of Indian society declined. Child marriage grew more popular,
and the age limit was lowered. It was not unheard of for girls to be married at age nine. Widow
remarriage among Hindus nearly died out. Seclusion was more and more strictly enforced for
upper-caste women, both Hindu and Muslim. Muslim women rarely ventured forth from their
homes unveiled, and those who did risked verbal and even physical abuse. The governor of one
of the provinces of the Mughal Empire divorced his wife because she was seen scrambling for her
life, unveiled, from a runaway elephant. Among upper-caste Hindus, the practice of sati spread
despite Shah Jahans renewed efforts to outlaw it. The dwindling scope of productive roles left to
women, combined with the burden of the dowry that had to be paid to marry them off, meant that
the birth of a girl was increasingly seen as an inauspicious (unlucky) event. At court as well as in
the homes of ordinary villagers, only the birth of a son was greeted with feasting and celebrations.

Women and Textile Production in the Mughal Era

Source: Hughes, Sarah Shaver and Brady Shaver. Women In World History, Volume 2,
Readings from Prehistory to 1500. (New York: M.E. Sharpe Armonk, 1995.) pp. 60-61.
Indias women hand spinners could also have bragged of their part in creating a textile
industry that for a time, before industrialization, seemed to clothe the world. By the sixteenth
century, women as spinners and handloom weavers helped to make the cotton cloth that was a
commodity important in both Indias and the international economy, as S.M. Ikram details:
The manufacture of cotton goods had assumed such extensive proportions that in addition
to satisfying her own needs India sent cloth to almost half the world: the east coast of Africa,
Arabia, Egypt, Southeast Asia, as well as Europe. The textile industry, well established in
Akbars (Mughal emperor, 1556-1605) day, continued to flourish under his successors, and soon
the operations of Dutch and English traders brought India into direct touch with Western
markets. This resulted in great demand for Indian cotton goods from Europe, which naturally
increased production at home.

Sati
Bernier, Francois. Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668. Translated by Archibald Constable on the basis of
Irving Brocks version. Edited by Vincent A. Smith. 1934. Reprint, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1994.

Letter to Monsieur Chapelain, Despatched from Chiras in Persia, the 4th October 1667.
Describing the Superstitions, strange customs, and Doctrines of the Indous or Gentiles of
Hindoustan; From which it will be seen that there is no Doctrine too strange or too improbable
for the Soul of man to conceive.
As I was leaving Sourate [Surat] for Persia, I witnessed the devotion and burning of another
widow: several Englishmen and Dutchmen and Monsieur Chardin of Paris were present. She was
of the middle age, and by no means [ugly]. I do not expect, with my limited powers of
expression, to convey a full idea of the brutish boldness, or ferocious gaiety depicted on this
womans countenance; of her undaunted step; of the freedom from all perturbation with which
she conversed, and permitted herself to be washed; of the look of confidence or rather of
insensibility which she cast upon us; or her easy air, free from dejection; of her lofty carriage,

void of embarrassment, when she was examining her little cabin, composed of dry and thick
millet straw, with an intermixture of small wood; when she entered into that cabin, sat down
upon the funeral pile, placed her deceased husbands head in her lap, took up a torch, and with
her own hand lighted the fire within
At Lahor I saw a most beautiful young widow sacrificed, who could not, I think, have been more
than twelve years of age. The poor little creature appeared more dead than alive when she
approached the dreadful pit: the agony of her mind cannot be described; she trembled and wept
bitterly; but three or four of the Brahmans, assisted by an old woman who held her under the
arm, forced the unwilling victim toward the fatal spot, seated her on the wood, tied her hands and
feet, lest she should run away, and in that situation the innocent creature was burnt alive. ..
It is true, however, that I have known some of these unhappy widows shrink at the sight of the
piled wood; so as to leave no doubt on my mind that they would willingly have recanted, if
recantation had been permitted by the merciless Brahmans; but those demons excite or astound
the affrighted victims, and even thrust them into the fire. I was present when a poor young
woman, who had fallen back five or six paces from the pit, was thus driven forward; and I saw
another of these wretched beings struggling to leave the funeral pile when the fire increased
around her person, but she was prevented from escaping by the long poles of the diabolical
executioners.
Yet the woman whose courage fails at the sight of the horrid apparatus of death, and who
avails herself of the presence of these men to avoid the impending sacrifice, cannot hope to pass
her days in happiness, or to be treated with respect or affection. Never again can she live with the
Gentiles [Indians]: no individual of that nation will at any time, or under any circumstances,
associate with a creature so degraded, who is accounted utterly infamous, and execrated because
of the dishonor which her conduct has brought upon the religion of the country. ..
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1450-1750 Southeast Asia

Kenneth Pomeranz. The World that Trade Created. Pages 28-31.

How the Other Half Traded:

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries operated in places where
few Dutchwomen were willing to live; and while most men working for the company were quite willing to
seek mates among indigenous women, this brought complications of its own. Given the cultural gulf
separating these couples, it may be no great surprise that the private letters of these men are full of references
to how hard it was to "tame" these women into the kinds of wives they expected. What may be more
surprising is how hard the VOC, the Dutch Reformed Church, and other Europeans in Southeast Asia found
it to break the commercial power of these women, many of whom were substantial traders in their own
right.
Long before Europeans arrived, maritime Southeast Asia (including present-day Malaysia,
Indonesia, and the Philippines) carried on a substantial long-distance trade. Many of the merchants were
women-in some cases because commerce was thought too base an occupation for upper- class men, but too
lucrative for elite families to abstain from completely. (Some elites carried this snobbery a step further, and
held that noble women were also too lofty to barter in the marketplace or to visit the Chinese settlements
where much long-distance trading was arranged; they were not, however, too noble to supervise a team of
servants who carried out these businesses.) Malay proverbs of the 1500s spoke of the importance of teaching

daughters how to calculate and make a profit.

More generally, these societies typically allowed women to control their own property, gave them
considerable voice in the choice of husbands, and were often quite tolerant of other liaisons. The long
journeys away from home that some of these women took even made it necessary to allow them, within
the crude limits of available technology, to control their own fertility. (Herbal medicines, jumping from
rocks to induce miscarriages, and even occasional infanticides were among the methods used.) Both the
Islamic missionaries who swept through the area in the 1400s and the Christians who followed a hundred
years later were appalled, and hoped to bring such women to heel.
But despite these qualms, the Portuguese, the first Europeans to establish themselves in this world, had
found intermarrying with such women to be an indispensable part of creating profitable and defensible
colonies. When the VOC gave up on importing Dutch women-having sometimes found "willing"
candidates only in the orphanages or even brothels of Holland, and facing discontent among the intended
husbands of these women-it turned to the daughters of these earlier Portuguese-Asian unions: they at least
spoke a Western language, and were at least nominally Christian. Many had also learned from their mothers
how useful a European husband could be for protecting their business interests in an increasingly multinational and often violent trading world. Councillors of the Dutch court in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), who
were rarely rich themselves, but were very well placed to prevent the VOC's rules and monopoly claims
from interfering with their wives' trade, were often particularly good matches for the richest of these
women. Thus, arranging elite interracial marriages proved relatively easy: but making the resulting families
conform to visions hatched in Amsterdam proved harder.
The VOC's principal goal, of course, was profit, and profit was best secured by monopolizing the export
of all sorts of Asian goods--from pepper to porcelain-back to Europe. In theory, the Company also claimedat least intermittently---the right to license and tax (or sink) all the ships participating in the much larger
intra-Asian trade, including those of Southeast Asia's women traders. But the realities of huge oceans and
numerous rivals made enforcing such a system impossible, and the VOC also faced powerful enemies
within. Most Company servants soon discovered that while smuggling goods back to Holland was risky
and difficult, they could earn sums by trading illegally (or semi-legally) within Asia that dwarfed their
official salaries. Here their wives were a perfect vehicle for making a fortune: they were well connected in
and knowledgeable about local markets, often possessed of considerable capital, and able to manage the
family business continuously without being susceptible to sudden transfer by the Company.
And for some particularly unscrupulous Dutchmen there was the possibility of a kind of lucrative
cultural arbitrage: after profiting from the relatively high status of Southeast Asian women, one might take
advantage of their low status in Dutch law to gain sole control of the family fortune, and then perhaps even
return to the Netherlands to settle down with a "proper" wife. (Though even with the law on the man's side,
such a process could be very complex if the woman used her informal influence cleverly and hid her assets-in one such case the man eventually won control of most of his wife's profits, but the legal proceedings
took nineteen years.)
But if men had powerful allies in the Dutch law and church, women had the climate on their side.
Foreigners tended to die young in India and Southeast Asia, leaving behind wealthy widows. Such women
were often eagerly sought after by the next wave of incoming European adventurers, enabling them to
strike marriage bargains that safeguarded at least some of their independence; many wed and survived three
or four husbands. The rare Dutchman who did live a long life in Batavia was likely to rise quite high in the
VOC, become very wealthy, and marry more than once himself; but since such men (not needing a
particularly well-connected or rich spouse once they'd risen this high) often chose a last wife much younger
than themselves, they tended to leave behind a small circle of very wealthy widows, whose behavior often
scandalized those Dutchmen who took their Calvinism seriously.
From the founding of Batavia in 1619 until the late 1800s, Dutch moralists and monopolists waged an
endless battle to "tame" these women, and at least partially succeeded; later generations, for instance, seem
to have conformed much more than earlier ones to European sexual mores. And as the scale of capital and
international contacts needed to succeed in long-distance trade grew larger, European companies and their
Chinese or Indian merchant allies--all of them male-did increasingly shrink the sphere in which these
women operated.
Southeast Asia:

Experiencing World History by Paul Adams

One place that did see significant migration was the Spanish and Dutch areas of Southeast Asia
(primarily the Philippines and Indonesia), where the Spanish Crown and Dutch East India
Company encouraged the development of mestizo culture similar to that of South America,
especially in the cities of Manila and Batavia, In these two cities, indigenous women often
married Europeans, converted to Christianity, and developed their own culture that blended
styles of dress, foods, and patterns of behavior; their children were considered fully legitimate
with their daughters forming the next generation of marital partners for European traders.