Juliette Milner-Thornton, 'A Feather Bed Dictionary: Colonialism and Sexuality', History COmpass, 5...

A Feather Bed Dictionary: Colonialism andSexuality

Juliette Milner-Thornton*Centre of Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University

Abstract

In this paper I utilise ‘autoethnography’. In dialogue with my white ancestor’s DrSidney Spencer Kachalola Broomfield’s autobiography Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter(1931), I examine his representation of the black female body in Northern Rhodesia(present day Zambia). Broomfield presents the black female body as decadent,demonised and sexualised, accusing it of conquering white men regardless ofeducation, class and religious affiliation. Firstly, I question how the black femalebody sexuality and reproduction became site of social, political and racial contest andentanglement and contradictorily also the site of collaboration between white andblack men; secondly, I examine the ongoing legacies of Broomfield’s representation.

European travelogues, including Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter (1931)1 – theautobiography of my English ancestor, Dr Sidney Spencer KachalolaBroomfield – provide a superficial account of Northern Rhodesian Africanindigenous life, and more especially indigenous sexuality. Broomfield, incommon with other nineteenth-century British adventurers, explorers andpioneers, writes about his escapades in the ‘new worlds’. The recurrentthemes in his autobiography are white masculine empowerment, sex,savagery, cannibalism and the conquest of the demonised ‘other’ in varyingimperial locations. Broomfield’s account of Africa and Africans is in linewith Eurocentric masculine perspectives, which focus on savagery, lawlessnessand sexualisation. In spite of this, Broomfield’s autobiography is unusual forits lack of censorship of his account of the dynamics of European andindigenous sex and sexuality in colonial Central Africa and other colonial sites.

In significant ways, black feminism has mapped new ground, enabling usto consider how the legacies of colonialism and slavery continuallyunderscore the demonised and sexualised stereotype of black women inpostcolonial society.2 Broomfield’s representation of the black female bodyis particularly interesting, and deserves some commentary. For example, heaccuses black women of the moral, social and sexual degeneration of whitecolonial men.3 Despite Broomfield’s accusations and negative portrayal ofblack women, he goes to surprising lengths to explain why white meninitiated sexual relations with them.4 One can only wonder why he took

© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.x

this stance. Was he sensationalising his story and thereby hoping to receivegreater exposure and wider circulation of his book? Or was he in factcondemning colonial society’s hypocrisy and double standards? Interestingly,several white men, including W. V. Brelsford – a Northern Rhodesiancolonial administrator – and historians T. C.Bridges and H.Hessell Tiltman,make favourable comments about Broomfield’s autobiography.5 However,they ignore the sexual elements in the text and do not comment onBroomfield’s ‘plant’ (sexual) metaphors.

In the 1930s, when Broomfield’s book was published, scholars of empiredetermined the ‘three Gs’ – that is, ‘Gold, Gospel and Glory’ – to be themain incentives and motivations for European imperialism.6 In the last twodecades work by feminist scholars and historians demonstrates that sex,gender, race and class were equally important and influential characteristicsof imperialism and colonialism.7 Disparate geographical locations were notonly strategic political locations for European empire-building, expansionand prestige; they were also intimate sites of cross-cultural exchange, sexualdesire and domestic intimacy. Consequently, the body – and particularlythe black female body – became the landscape of conquest and colonisation.Moreover, in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), black female bodies,sexuality and reproduction were the subject of concern, scrutiny, anxietyand surveillance by white and black men – and, contradictorily, also the siteof white and black men’s collaboration.

In his autobiography, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter (1931), Broomfieldportrays himself as a transnational traveller, explorer and doctor. Accordingto Broomfield’s testimony, in 1868 (when he was twenty-one years old) hemade his first trip to Africa. He describes his first encounter with impressionsof Africans. He thought them immoral: they seemed to instigate sexualrelations without any affection and long-term commitment.8 AlthoughBroomfield expresses great interest in African sexual conduct, he implies hisinterest was of practical nature: ‘I got into the habit of asking things andwrote the English and native into a notebook’. He also declares it wasobjective, he felt no sexual desire for African women: ‘I had no fancy forthe black velvet when I first started’.9 Contradictorily he admits that, anumber of years later when he arrived in Central Africa (present-dayZambia), he abandoned his initial sexual inhibition:‘It was a mistake on mypart. I found out later that owning a feather bed dictionary was the easiestand quickest and most pleasant way of learning the language and customsof the native’.10

Essentially, Broomfield describes his first encounter with indigenouspeople in the ‘contact zones’. In the 1990s, Mary Louise Pratt identified the‘contact zones’ as:

The space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically andhistorically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoingrelations, usually involving conditions of coercion, racial inequality, and intractableconflict.11

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© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Essentially, ‘contact zones’ are real and imagined spaces where incomingsettler communities and indigenous cultures meet in relationships ofsubjugation and domination, contest and negotiation.

What are the implications of Broomfield’s disclosure of the interracialsexual liaisons in colonial Zambia and other sites such as Ceylon, the DutchEast Indies and New Guinea?12 Broomfield shows that, far from beinginvisible, without agency and voice, indigenous women played a crucialrole in the ‘contact zone’. He reveals just how greatly Northern Rhodesianwomen assisted European men’s colonial ambitions in Northern Rhodesia.Broomfield’s so-called ‘feather bed dictionaries’ were the intimatecollaborators of white men: they provided sex, translated indigenouslanguages and the codes and practices of indigenous culture and custom –they were mediators of white men. Despite Africans’ – and most especiallyAfrican women’s – enterprise and agency in the ‘contact zones’ Europeanwriters such as Broomfield emphasise their white masculine empowermentand authority about Africa, its peoples, fauna and flora.

Pratt further states that the ‘contact zones’ are:

Geographical and spatial places were disparate cultures, meet, clash and grapplewith each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination andsubordination like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths lived out across theglobe today.13

The ‘contact zones’ have far-reaching and enduring effects so, rather thanbeing solely historical phenomena, they exist in the present day, visible inthe everyday life experiences of people in varying geographical sites aroundthe world – and particularly on black females bodies. Broomfield’sautobiography is a ‘contact zone’ and his representation of the demonisedand sexualised black female body has a ‘certain cultural continuity [which]carries a certain cultural baggage’.14

I will argue, using Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton’s point, that‘bodies-as-a-contact-zone [is] a powerful analytical term and a usefulpedagogical tool for understanding the nature and dynamics of imperial,colonial and world histories’.15 Analysing bodies-as-a-contact-zone revealsthe doubling effect of personal and collective history in the public and privatememory – that is to say, individual bodies experience the collective history;similarly, public memory is privately remembered. In other words, ‘bodies– raced, sexed, classed and ethnicized . . . were the sites through whichimperial and colonial power [was] imagined and exercised’16 and Broomfield’sautobiography is a microcosm of the sexual politics of imperialism. Byanalysing it, we can view the ‘raced, sexed, classed and ethnicized’ bodilycontacts in colonial Zambia.

In this article I deepen an existing tension – not three axes as TrinhMinh-ha17 suggests: ‘writer of color’, ‘woman writer’ or ‘woman of color’– but five ‘Euro-African’ axes:‘Coloured’,‘mixed race’,‘African-Australian’,‘post-colonial’ and ‘woman writer’. I write from my current post-coloniallocation in Australia and I look back to my colonial origins in Zambia – I© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

A Feather Bed Dictionary . 1113

am Broomfield’s Zambian-born, ‘mixed-race’ great-granddaughter – mymother Nellie Milner is Broomfield’s granddaughter – Nellie’s father StephenBroomfield is Broomfield’s son. Through my analysis of Broomfield’srepresentation of the black female body, I return his white, imperial,masculine gaze with my own Euro-African,African-Australian,‘mixed-raceAfrican’, ‘post-colonial’ feminine gaze. I utilise a feminist and autoethno-graphic framework to render visible Broomfield’s exclusions and silencesin his autobiography about the legacies of his participation in sexualrelations with black women.18 Autoethnography allows me to situate my(Broomfield’s) family history within the discussion of this article and toquestion if Broomfield’s representation of the black female body in NorthernRhodesia in any significant way contributed to black women’s bodies,sexuality and reproduction entering the public domain – the site of politicalcontest, resistance and entanglement in Northern Rhodesia.

Andrew Sparkes, an autoethnographic sociologist, advocates autoethno-graphy as ‘a way of extending sociological understandings’.19 CatherineRussell, on the other hand, argues that ‘autobiography becomesethnographic’ when a person ‘understands his or her personal history isimplicated in larger social and historical processes’.20 An autoethnographictext therefore reveals the double-sidedness of the collective and individualexperience, as well as the doubling of public and private memory.Autoethnography allows me to discuss the intimate legacies of sexuality,domesticity and imperialism in Zambia. I argue using Pratt’s point: Ifethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselvestheir (usually subjugated) others, auto-ethnographic texts are those theothers construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitanrepresentations’.21 Autoethnography is the subjugated other’s autobiographicalresponse to the dominant European/metropolitan representation. ToshaTsang demonstrates the point at which an autobiographical narrative meets,resists, interacts and negotiates with the collective narrative, thus becomingautoethnographic:

I have claimed these stories to be my own, yet a story of myself, of my identity,necessarily involves and depends upon the story of the Other too. So these storiesbelong to them as well (albeit not in the same way or invoked with the samepower) – the Other being the characters in the stories with whom I interact andcompare myself and allude to.22

In order for me to tell the story of the ‘other’ – the characters with whomI compare myself and to whom I allude – it is necessary that I tell the storyof my English ancestor, Dr Sidney Spencer Kachalola Broomfield. However,to tell his story it is first necessary that I tell my own family story.

Broomfield’s Family Story

My maternal grandmother, Eliza Maria (my grandfather Stephen’s wife),often spoke to me about her father-in-law Kachalola. She told me he was



a caring and loving father and grandfather.23 However, she could neverexplain why, in the 1920s, Kachalola mysteriously left Northern Rhodesia,abandoning his ‘mixed-race’ children – including my grandfather, Stephen.Kachalola had (seemingly) disappeared ‘without a trace’. Some familymembers believed that he had travelled to America chasing gold. This aspectof my family oral history appeared plausible, as Kachalola had embarked ona lifelong quest for adventure and gold. Nonetheless, my grandfather Stephenand his sisters Dolly (also known as Jessie), Grace, Nellie (also known asLena) and Alice all died not knowing where their father was or his fate.

My father Japhet Milner was the son of a Lithuanian Jew, Joseph Milner,and Ester Cele, a Zulu. My father was born in Southern Rhodesia in 1934.He migrated to Zambia in the 1950s, where he met and married my mother,Nellie Broomfield. I was born in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia)in 1961. I lived there until my marriage to my Australian husband, Robert(Bob) Thornton. In 1994 we migrated to Australia with our children. In1998, after a four-year stay in Bangkok, my family and I returned to Australiaand settled in Brisbane. In Brisbane, I amazingly discovered Broomfield’sfate: he died on 24 October 1933 at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, and on27 October that year, he was buried in Toowong Cemetery in Brisbane’swestern suburbs.

Dr Sidney Spencer Kachalola Broomfield is an enigma – his life piecedtogether through family oral history, archival records, personal documents,biographies, and newspaper and journal articles. Broomfield’s autobiography,Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, disappointingly provides limited informationabout his early life and family history.24 In common with other nineteenth-century British adventurers, explorers and pioneers, he writes about histravels, hunting and prospecting expeditions in Australia, the Dutch EastIndies, Ceylon, India, East and Central Africa, and New Guinea.Throughout, Broomfield represents himself as a doctor, transnationaltraveller, adventurer and explorer. According to Broomfield’s testimony,he was born in the south of England in July 1847 and his mother died inchildbirth while delivering him.25 W. V. Brelsford accuses Broomfield offabricating his life story, name and medical qualifications:

[Broomfield] first appeared, as Sydney Spencer, in Southern Rhodesia in 1892 . . .it is said that Dr. Broomfield was not a doctor neither was his nameBroomfield . . . there was a Doctor Broomfield also in Southern Rhodesia whowas an entomologist. He disappeared and somehow Spencer took his title andname.26

Brelsford may indeed be correct in his assumptions about Broomfield. Ihave been unable to find a record of birth for Sydney Spencer Broomfield;however, there is a record of birth for a Sydney Edgar Spencer of OxfordStreet London corresponding to Broomfield’s supposed date of birth. Aswell, I have been unable to find any evidence to support Broomfield’s claimthat he was a doctor.27 According to Brelsford, ‘it is said Kachalola had atleast eight or nine native wives and that in Feira district alone he left© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


thirty-six half-caste children’.28 As far as my mother Nellie, her siblings andcousins are aware, our families are the only surviving descendants ofBroomfield. Brelsford accuses Broomfield of numerous criminal activities,including murder, raiding slave caravans and illegally shooting elephants.29

By his own testimony, Broomfield describes his murderous encounters with‘natives’ in New Guinea and Africa.30 Broomfield was very proud of hisnickname ‘Kachalola’. He claimed the ‘natives’ bestowed it on him onaccount of his prowess as a hunter and his political leadership. T. C. Bridgesand H. H. Tiltman declare: ‘Broomfield entered East Africa as stranger, butleft like a king. Indeed as he says, he could have been king of a good portionof the country had he wished it’.31

Broomfield boasted that ‘Kachalola’ meant ‘the great hunter’.32 However,Brelsford suggests that the origin and meaning of ‘Kachalola’ is unknown,33

and a descendant of Andrew Bruce Grey,34 a contemporary and businesspartner of Broomfield, says ‘Kachalola’ in Nsenga, in its crudest sense, means‘likes women’.35 Our family history is unable to provide any insight apartfrom the fact that Broomfield was always referred to as Kachalola, and a townin the eastern province of Zambia is named ‘Kachalola’ in honour of him.

Broomfield states that he first arrived in far north Queensland Australiain 1875, and that Bully Hayes, the infamous blackbirder and buccaneer,accompanied him.36 Broomfield’s association with Hayes adds a newdimension to his character, particularly as he discloses that Bully Hayes didinform him about his ‘recruiting trips to the Solomons’.37 Bridges andTiltman write that Bully Hayes

was the most famous of ‘blackbirders’ – that is, recruiter of labour for theQueensland sugar plantations. He was often called a pirate, and there are storiesabout him to fill a book.38

Kachalola’s association with Hayes may well mean that his visits toQueensland were sinister in nature:

In the second half of the 19th century, shaded from the excesses of the subtropicalsun, rich owners of the new sugar plantations waited for the blackbirding boatsto disgorge their human cargo: South Sea Islanders, kidnapped, for the most part,from their homelands and brought to Queensland to fill the labour shortage.39

In his autobiography, Broomfield also claims that he travelled to China,India and South America – which may well mean that he was transportingindentured labourers and captured men from China and India to live andwork as slaves, presumably in Surinam which was one of the main marketsfor such men.40

Broomfield’s first ‘official’ visit to Australia was in 1933. He wrote to theNorthern Territory administration seeking permission to enter ArnhemLand, an Aboriginal reserve. Broomfield was granted permission on accountof his newfound notoriety as a writer.41 In his application,Broomfield sworehis last trip to Australia was in ‘1886 . . . he had traveled to Van Diemen’sGulf to shoot buffalo’.42Why Broomfield made this false statement is unclear



– especially as Queensland historical records reveal Broomfield had residedthere with his wife for three and a half years prior to his wife’s death inMarch 1909.43 On South African-born Hester Broomfield’s death certificate,Broomfield declared his occupation as a hunter and planter, and not a medicaldoctor. He was sixty-two years old when Hester died; she was survived bytheir four children.

Feather Beds: Sexuality and Colonialism

Context for Broomfield’s story can be found in the genre of imperial andcolonial narratives. These played a significant role in the enticement of aEuropean readership. They generated myths about the uninhibited sexualbehaviour of indigenous peoples in the colonies. L. H. Gann and PeterDuignan point out:

In the Victorian missionary and imperial imagination, Africa often figured as aland of lust. Evangelical journals printed many accounts depicting the black manas a heathen who lived as slothful and lascivious life, sustained by the sexualfavours and physical work of his several spouses.44

Ann Laura Stoler makes a similar comment:

The tropics provided a site for European pornographic fantasies long beforeconquest was under way, with lurid descriptions of sexual license, promiscuity,gynecological aberrations, and general perversion marking the Otherness of thecolonized for metropolitan consumption.45

These fantasies had parallels in actual practices of empire. Tony Ballantyneand Antoinette Burton make the point that imperialism and colonialismwere intimate encounters enacted on individual bodies; consequently, bodieswere the site of cultural contact, resistance, negotiation, domination andcollaboration.46 In the contemporary context, Ballantyne and Burton suggestthat these imperial ‘webs’ intersect and interconnect varying and disparategeographical locations, people, religions and cultures to a common andshared historical past that originates in imperial sites of contact.47 ParaphrasingBallantyne and Burton, bodies in the metaphorical and physical sense aremarked by these imperial and colonial cultural contacts and cross-culturalexchanges.

In Northern Rhodesia, as in other parts of the British Empire, the blackfemale body was closely monitored and supervised; consequently, blackwomen’s sexuality and reproduction became politicised. Ronald Jacksonmakes a number of interesting comments on the politicisation of blackbodies. According to Jackson,‘bodies are socially understood and treated asa discursive text read by interactants’.48 He reasons that, when the blackbody is interpreted as an object of subjugation and familiarity, it becomes apolitical entity, thus politicising it – hence the term ‘body politics’. Bellhooks makes a similar point when she incriminates historical narratives forthe sexualised, promiscuous representations of the black female body:© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


Representations of black female bodies in contemporary popular culture rarelysubvert or critique images of black female sexuality which were part of the culturalapparatus of 19th century racism and which still shape perceptions today.49

The discursive text of the black female is marred with deep-seated scarsfrom abhorrent European representations about their supposed licentious,sexualised, wicked, decadent, expendable, promiscuous, degenerate,purchasable, demonised, accessible, available, ever-ready, seductive bodies.Writing from the Australian perspective, Anne Cranny-Francis makes thepoint that ‘bodies are a text on which are inscribed historical and discursivecontexts of sex, ethnicity, class, gender and race’.50 She elaborates this pointfurther, saying that ‘the bodies of the colonized are the grounds on whichcolonisation is maintained’.51 European colonisation is an indelible imprinton the black female body.

In the British context, Ronald Hyam states that sexual desire played afundamental role in British imperialism and colonialism. According to Hyam,‘sexual dynamics crucially underpinned the whole creation of British empireand Victorian expansion’.52 Hyam points out British men perceived imperialand colonial locations as exotic, erotic and seductive destinations in whichthey could indulge their sexual fantasies in a way they could not back homein sexually conservative and suppressive Europe.53 However, Gann andDuignan disagree, and dispute Hyam’s view.54 They point out that sex wasreadily available in imperial Britain; therefore, there was no need for youngBritish men to travel abroad for sexual gratification. Nevertheless, Gann andDuignan somewhat reluctantly concede that ‘black flesh [my emphasis] mayhave seemed attractive merely [my emphasis] because it was forbidden orwas thought to be more “natural”’.55 Gann and Duignan’s choice of wordsis interesting to say the least. By referring to African women as ‘black flesh’,the words denote a number of things. First, they dehumanise and characteriseAfrican women as animalistic. This is in concurrence with imperial andcolonial negative representations of black women. Second, they suggestBritish men who did initiate sexual relations with African women weresocial reprobates and degenerate. However, this is in line with Gann andDuignan’s overall discussion of British colonialism in Northern Rhodesia.They emphasise that British Northern Rhodesian administrators were ‘menof class’ and ‘men of character’, graduates of Britain’s most exclusive andprestigious schools and universities, and as such not likely to initiate sexualrelations with African women.

However, in Zambia it is commonly known that ‘educated, middle-class’British men did initiate sexual relationships with African women. Theevidence of their interracial sexual liaisons is Zambia’s mixed-race people –otherwise known as the Coloured population. In Zambia, the majority ofColoured people are descendants of British men who resided in Zambiaduring the colonial era. Zambian Coloureds reside in Zambia, and morerecently in Britain where they have migrated. Their presence in the bothdomains is evidence of the interracial sexual liaisons British men had with



African women. The point I want to make here is that British men of ‘class’and ‘good character’ did enter into, and often maintained, long-termrelationships with African women. However, their cohabitations with Africanwomen were an open secret, as was the presence of their mixed-racechildren. Amongst colonial society in Zambia, there appears to have beenan unspoken rule of ‘what goes on in the colony remains within the colony’.However, since 1964, and Zambia’s independence from Britain, manyColoured descendants of British men have overturned their concealmentand denial, and have irrevocably proven their relationship and ancestry toBritish men who served, traded, travelled and sermonised in NorthernRhodesia. They have also claimed their birth right – British citizenship –and have since migrated to, and currently reside in, Great Britain – thehomeland of their British ancestors.

Interracial Domesticity: Sex, Gender, Race and Class

In the previous section, I looked at imperial and colonial narratives oflicentious representations of the black female body and sexuality, and theoutcomes of such representations – that is, the politicisation of the blackfemale body. In this section, I take a closer look at Broomfield’s auto-biography and his interpretations of sex, gender, race and class, family andcommunity that transpired around the black female body and sexuality incolonial Zambia. As I have already highlighted, Broomfield’s account ofAfrica and Africans corroborates Eurocentric masculine perspectives – ofsavagery, lawlessness and sexualisation.

In spite of this, his autobiography is unusual because of his expositionabout the interracial sexual relations between white men and indigenouswomen. Broomfield does not condemn (with the exception of missionaries,whom he denounces as hypocrites) his own or his fellow white colonialmales’ sexual conduct with African women.56 In many ways, Broomfield’sautobiography reads like an erotic journal. It is a description of his sexualencounters with ‘feather bed dictionaries’ in varying imperial sites. AboutAfrican women, Broomfield claims:

[African] Girls were only too anxious to take on with a white man, and nodisgrace attaches to the girl. They know when they take on the contract that itis not binding, and they are liable to be discarded at any time or place.57

In opposition to black promiscuity – and thus impurity – Broomfieldproclaims his innocence and purity. Broomfield’s declaration that Africanwomen were only too eager ‘to take on a white man’ is plausible. Mostespecially in that historical period, black and white women in colonialZambia – in common with their female counterparts in the metropole –were dependent upon their menfolk for food, clothing and shelter.58 Theblack female as a young child was under the tutelage of her father; as a youngwoman, it was her husband; and as an old woman it became her



son. Throughout the course of her life, the African woman was dependentupon a male family member.59 With the onset of colonialism,African men’ssocial and political status and authority were challenged and emasculated bywhite men, the ‘bwana’ – that is, the white colonial master.60 Under thesecircumstances, it is probable that the social and political status of a blackfemale ‘who [took] on with white men’ would be elevated above the restof her community.

On the other hand, Broomfield’s claim that the ‘contracts were notbinding’, and therefore of a temporary nature, is questionable – especiallyin view of studies by Harriet Ngubane, Isodore Okpewho,Audrey Richards,A. L. Epstein and Karla Poewe, all of whom demonstrate the complexitiesof African customary law and sexuality which Broomfield simplifies.61

Broomfield provides the following explanation about African sexuality andmarriages:

I inquired about these marriages and found out that there was no ceremonyattached to marriages amongst natives. A boy wanted a woman to cook his skoff[food], carry his cooking utensils and other goods, lay close up against him on acold night and what not. He looked around, picked some unmarried woman orgirl, spoke to her parents or owner should she be a slave, bartered for her andpaid hoes, or perhaps a couple of goats, calico, or what goods he had and tookhis purchase with him. The price of a girl ranged from 5s. in those days.62

According to Broomfield, these marriages were ultimately a commercialand sexual transaction, lacking any emotional attachment and sentimentalexpression. He focuses on the monetary and sexual exchanges, and thusinfers that they were temporary arrangements with no long-termcommitments and reciprocal obligations for either party. Martin Chanockmakes similar observation in his discussion about the legitimisation andlegislation of customary law in Zambia. Chanock reveals that the Britishcolonial administrators in Malawi and Zambia, and the Christian and Africanpolitical leadership, voiced similar concerns about the changes to Africanmorality, and particularly the temporary and casual marriages in whichurbanised African people were participating. Their main anxiety was thatsuch temporary marriages would fragment the fibre of African society.63Thefact that the African leaders expressed their concern seems to suggest thatthe marriages Broomfield describes were not in accordance with Africanmoral conduct.

In Zambia’s historical context, African sexual codes and conduct werecomplex and not as simple as Broomfield suggests. A case in point is AudreyRichards’s study of the initiation ceremony for Bemba girls known as chisungu(also known as cisungu). Richards reveals the complex puberty and subsequentnubility rites that prepared young Bemba girls for marriage.64 Richards’sstudy is of importance because it was conducted in the early 1930s at thetime Broomfield published his autobiography, and it clearly demonstratesthat traditional African values were of great social significance, passed downthrough the generations.



Broomfield is adamant that black females were sold and bought like acommodity. This is probable in areas where slavery was rampant.65 However,it is questionable that parents would sell their daughters. It is probable thatBroomfield was describing lobola or bride price. In Zambia (as in the entireSouthern African region), marriages are sanctioned with the payment oflobola (i.e. bride price or bride wealth). Lobola is, and has been, an integralpart of African marriage for centuries; however, it is not the sale of womenwhich Broomfield implies and which would thus lessen its value andmorality. Broomfield focuses on monetisation, thus ignoring the long-termand reciprocal benefits. For example, a letter Chanock documents from theBlantyre Native Association to the colonial administration in 1936 highlightsthis point:

These customs have been practiced from time immemorial and have beenrecognised by the Churches when have first entered the country. Where lobolamarriage prevailed, the Association wrote, representing the ideal rather thancurrent reality, no marriage was recognised unless brideweath was paid, whichwas ‘not buying, but giving an assurance that the man takes responsibility’.66

Harriet Ngubane clarifies the social and moral significance of lobolo (orlobola, as it is known in Zambia).67 Ngubane eloquently describes itscomplexities, from the initial negotiation processes and the etiquette thisentails (i.e. not to show too much eagerness or accept fewer cows becauseit means your daughter is not of any worth) to the subsequent transactionand long-term reciprocal obligations and benefits to the families concerned.Ngubane identifies herself first as a woman, and second as Zulu (incidentallythe same ethnic group as my grandmother, Esther Cele). Ngubane describesthe customs of Zulu patrilineal society. Zulus regard lobolo as the union oftwo families, and not just the union of the betrothed. Lobolo, or bride price,is paid to the bride’s family in cattle or cash; however, Ngubane arguesagainst ‘monetisation [because] it trivialises and commercialises lobolo’.68 Onthe other hand, she argues for the payment of lobolo with cattle because ithonours the centuries-old custom and tradition. According to Ngubane,lobolo serves many purposes: first, lobolo seals the marriage contract; second,it increases the wealth of both families; third, it reminds all parties of theobligations of the marriage; fourth, it reminds all parties that the bride hasher own family and should her groom and his family mistreat her they areanswerable to them; and finally, the payment of lactating cows to the brideand her mother ensures their economic independence and the economicindependence of the male family members so that they too have a sourceof cattle with which they in turn can pay lobolo for their own bride. Loboloensures that the Zulus engage in a complex web of familial connections and,as explained by Ngubane, these have long-term reciprocal obligations andbenefits to the families involved. African customary marriages were not asimmediate, temporary and sexually orientated as Kachalola suggests.

A former colonial administrator, J. E. Stephenson – otherwise known as‘Chiripula’ – discloses his participation in marriage to an African princess in© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


Northern Rhodesia. Chiripula is much more explicit about the domesticarrangements of white colonial men and African women. Unlike Broomfield,he does not demean the black female – in fact, he writes about them withgreat admiration and respect, and refers to them as ‘ladies . . . of a differentcomplexion’. Chiripula also openly acknowledges his African marriage:‘My African wife’s name was Chisimongana’.69 Chiripula reveals thatChisimongana was an Ngoni princess and former slave. As a child, shehad been kidnapped and then sold to a neighbouring tribal chief. Chiripulawrites about his marriage to Chismongana:

And in Blantyre I married her . . . Well it’s easy to sniff! Easy to select any numberof rude names. I bought her? If you will. Certainly I paid for ten shillings – theestablished price of the marriage-contract – just as a husband with a black skinwould have paid that value of goods. Anyhow, before the sniff becomes toopronounced or the name too rude, I would suggest that judgements formed notso far from London in this year of grace . . . If this sounds like an apology, it isnot intended to be one: rather, an explanation and a caution.70

Chiripula reproaches imperial society for its harsh criticisms of men suchas himself who married African women, and he goes to great lengths toexplain that he did not ‘buy’ his wife, but rather paid lobola in accordanceto African customs and traditions. Therefore, lobola should be seen asanalogous with the Western practice of giving a betrothed an engagementring as an assurance of marriage. Its purpose, therefore is/was identical tothe gold wedding band as evidence of the nuptial agreements.71 Chiripularationalises his participation in African customary marriages; on the otherhand, Broomfield chooses to distort an ageless tradition and instead makesout that sex was a commodity of exchange and thus the black female bodyand black female sexuality were synonymous to prostitution. Broomfield’sdistortion of African sexual conduct ensured that his ‘mixed-race’ children,including my grandfather Stephen, were despised and seen to be illegitimate– the unauthentic children of white men. The stigma of illegitimacy greatlyimpacted on Broomfield’s children, and it resonates down to the presentday. According to Isodore Okepewho, customary marriages in Africa (inboth the contemporary and the historical context) are initiated and conductedwithin African morals and norms. Okepewho further points out that theyare an important and integral aspect of African society. He argues againstEurocentric interpretations about African marriage and sexual conduct,likening them to ‘an aerial photograph, which provides only broad outlines:they may locate a church within the general layout of a town, but theycannot show us what the church is really like’.72

Epstein’s discussion of African social life and sexuality in Zambia issomewhat more sympathetic than that of Chanock. Epstein explains thatAfrican sexuality was governed within African moral conduct, and hedemonstrates the social consequences for infringing on the sexual boundariesand also draws a distinction between the sexual practices of Africanwomen. A lover was known as kapenta (which, incidentally, is a small fish



and part of Zambia’s staple diet): ‘she carried herself with an air of urbansophistication’ and entered into a temporarily cohabitation with her lover,providing him with sex, preparing his food and housekeeping; he, in turn,provided her with gifts of money and clothing. Epstein explains that thesecohabitations had mutual commitments and expectations which includedan element of romance; he emphasises that kapentas were not prostitutes.73

On the other hand, ‘a ihuli [a derivative of the English word whore in thecontemporary context mahuli] was a prostitute her usual hang-out was thebeer hall and she was paid for sex’.74 Epstein goes further to explain that,once a young girl had her cisungu (puberty and nubility rites), there was greaturgency for her to find a suitable husband so that she could leave her father’shome and set up her own home and produce children. Children were/areof great social significance in Zambia, as they care for their parents in theirold age.75 However, as Epstein explains, in order for a young woman to finda suitable husband, she had to conduct herself and behave appropriately bynot participating in indiscriminate sex.

Epstein makes reference to bucende (i.e. adultery).76 Under customary lawin Zambia, when a couple commits adultery, the transgressor has to paydamages to the cuckolded for sexual transgressions – that is, they have topay damages for adultery. Chanock shows that bucende was subject to abuse,with some men openly encouraging their wives to have extramarital affairsso that they could claim compensation from the adulterer.77 Epstein concurswith Chanock. However, as Epstein points out, bucende had social value. Theadulterers were subjected to the humiliation of a court appearance and usuallyboth parties had to pay damages for their offence. Women were economicallydependent upon their husbands, so the obligation was for the husband topay her fine. Once he had done so, it meant the matter had been settled.78

Epstein makes a distinction between bucende (adultery) and ‘ukupoka mukabene, the stealing of another man’s wife’.79 Ukupoka muka bene was a muchgraver offence because a woman left her husband, children and home, andthis was a great dishonour to her husband and of great shame to her family.80

Although Epstein’s study was undertaken in industrial towns in Zambia’sCopperbelt, and not in rural areas and villages, his study demonstrates thatAfricans did conduct their sexuality in accordance to African morality andconduct, and that women who did not conduct themselves accordinglywere labelled according to their sexual conduct – that is, kapenta, ihuli andwife.

Martin Chanock argues that, with the onset of British colonialismand industrialisation in Zambia, many African customs and traditionswere corrupted, distorted and altered significantly – especially Africansexuality. Thereby the private sphere of African life ultimately became public.Chanock explains that many factors contributed to the transition of theprivate sphere to the public sphere, and interference of the colonialadministration through the institution of government legislation to superviseand regulate African sexual behaviour.81 The primary factor was



industrialisation – and with it the incitement to young men from the ruralareas to leave their villages to find work in the mines and industrialtowns. The men’s migration greatly disrupted African village life.Consequently, black women were left and more commonly abandoned inthe villages; they, in turn, followed in the footsteps of their menfolk, leavingbehind their villages and the supervision of family elders and triballeaders. Accordingly, young people lost the moral guidance and supervisionof traditional leaders and family elders, and centuries-old customs andtraditions were left on the wayside of modernity. Black females were accusedof infringing African moral conduct and their sexual behaviour was of graveconcern to the African political and tribal leadership, colonial administrationand church leaders.82 As a result, the African leadership, colonial admini-stration and church leaders banded together in an attempt to curb, regulateand supervise the sexual conduct of African women.83 However, theircollaboration was not without some difficulties. The African leadership wasparticularly distrustful of the colonial government, especially during theprocess of initiating and introducing legislation for African marriages. TheAfrican leaders felt the colonial government would institute laws that wouldfurther infringe on their authority and administration of their community.

However, this situation was not exclusive to Zambia. In varyingimperial and colonial geographical locations, the sexuality and domesticityof indigenous people – and most especially women – were open to Europeanscrutiny, misconceptions and misunderstandings. Ann McGrath providesone such example in Australia, where the ‘loaning’ of Aboriginal womento white men by their Aboriginal husbands was understood by whitecolonial society as tantamount to prostitution. McGrath explains that theloaning of women was in fact integral to complex cross-cultural negotiationsrepresenting an invitation to white men by Aboriginal men to enter intothe reciprocal obligations of their kinship networks. However, as McGrathpoints out:

Few white men met their long-term commitments, so the exchanges becamestandard and immediate, with goods such as flour, sugar or clothing being handedover simultaneously [not a payment for sex but in Aboriginal terms] as a giftexchange.84

Remarkably, in the Zambian context, Martin Chanock reveals similarsexual practices:

The chastity of women, or their feelings, on the subject (if they have any is notconsidered); it is the custom to occasionally change wives with each other andalso to loan their wives to a friend or for money value to a stranger.85

Were these in fact genuine sexual practices in the Australian and Zambiancontext, or did white colonial men such as Broomfield imagine and distributethese ideas about the promiscuity and immorality of indigenous people –particularly women – and transport and transplant these ideas in the varyinggeographical sites that they visited? Or were these sexual practices evidence



of the impact of imperialism and cross-cultural contact and exchange withwhite settlers and men like Broomfield – agents in the disintegration ofindigenous forms of sexual exchange? Broomfield sexually exploits Africanwomen, then he justifies that exploitation by naturalising it as a highlypolitical exchange.

Exotic versus Indigenous: Women and Sex

Broomfield defends his and white colonial men’s sexual relations withindigenous women. He states that the scarcity of donahs – that is, Europeanwomen – in the colonies gave white men no option but to initiate sexualrelations with indigenous women. Broomfield further claimed that theupkeep of European women was expensive in comparison to the cost oflooking after an indigenous woman. It was therefore financially practical forwhite colonial men to form sexual unions with black women. Broomfieldproclaimed that white men forming sexual alliances with indigenouswomen was advantageous for them, as they benefited socially, sexually andeconomically.86

Kachalola depicts present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe as ‘central Africa’,and he utilises plant metaphors to describe women, sexual intercourse andreproduction:

A settler who resists the temptation of owning an indigenous plant selects anduproots an exotic plant from the conservatories of Europe. If he is wise and canafford to do it, he will return to Europe and travel out with his plant. If he sendsfor it, there is a chance of his plant becoming fertilized by other pollen than hisown while the plant is en route.87

In this excerpt, Broomfield describes women as flowering plants. Heconveys African and European women’s desirability, sexual availability andaccessibility according to the commonality and exquisiteness of a particularplant – that is, ‘indigenous versus exotic’. He represents the sexual act – or,more explicitly, semen – as ‘pollen’ and sex and reproduction as ‘fertilisation’.Broomfield provides a contrary view about European women. He dispelsthe aura of white women being virtuous and innocent. Kachalola alsodiscloses the sexual rivalry colonial white women exhibited towards Africanwomen:

It is not long before his exotic learns the indigenous plant language, and findsout that pollen that should be used to give it pleasure is giving pleasure toindigenous plants, and they are able to harvest their own fruit without help andexpense. In some instances the exotic fruit fades so rapidly on hearing this thatit has to be returned to the conservatory from which it was uprooted, or itbecomes a nuisance to its owner and his friends.88

According to Kachalola, white women were extremely upset when theyfound out about their spouses’ sexual relations with black women. On theother hand, black women did not mind men having more than one sexual



partner.89 Broomfield represents white women as delicate and exotic; hedescribes the black female as ‘natural’, akin to an animal, and thereforeracially inferior to the white woman. He expounds on this idea by statingthat white women had to leave the colonies in order to give birth to theirchildren, while black women ‘dropped their fruit . . . naturally’, akin toanimals giving birth without any supervision and outside intervention.Broomfield discloses the sexual rivalry between black and white women.He implies black women were more understanding of a man’s sexualneeds:

But having your other plants to attend gives you pleasure and also pleasure tothe plants that you attend, and when it is time for me to be treated with fertilizer,you pay attention and do your work thoroughly, enjoying the work yourselfand giving me great pleasure.90

On the other hand, he states that white women did not understand, andtherefore caused problems in the colony.

Was Broomfield referring to his wife’s rivalry in his description of thesexual dynamics in Northern Rhodesia? Mr O. C. Rawson describes hismeeting with Broomfield in Northern Rhodesia in 1904. According toRawson, he met Broomfield at his house – which Broomfield presumablyshared with his European wife, whom Rawson does not mentionindividually, though he does provides a photograph of Mrs Broomfieldholding a gun over a dead hyena:

[Broomfield’s house was] quite imposing . . . on a low hill overlooking thesurrounding country and a wide road leading through the bush to it. The housewas surrounded by fruit trees and wild flowering shrubs, making a delightfulpicture . . . Broomfield had managed to get rubber seed somewhere and wasexperimenting with a small plantation.91

Broomfield suggests that the sexual relations white men had with Africanwomen were natural and instinctive, and this may account for the sexualrivalry colonial white women exhibited towards African girls. KarenTranberg Hansen states that white settler women in Northern Rhodesiarefused to employ young African girls as domestic servants in theirhouseholds, preferring to employ African men. Tranberg Hansen declarestheir distrust was a ‘legacy of pioneer days, the suspicion lingered that[African girls] were sexually available to the master of the house . . . for theywere assumed to be sexually precocious’.92 White settler women had littlepolitical power in the public sphere; however, they wheedled their authorityin the privacy of their homes:

White women in Northern Rhodesia had little scope for autonomous activityand power acquisition in their own right in this class and race conscioussociety. To understand this, we must reckon with their status as incorporatedwives whose ascribed social character was a function of their husbands’ occupationand culture. Their private lives easily merged into officialdom and made theirrole into that of ‘silent partner’.93



Kachalola promotes the idea that African women and their mixed-racechildren did not require any financial and emotional support from whitemen. On the other hand, white women and their children were emotionallyand financially demanding. However, Chanock demonstrates the abandon-ment of mixed-race children by white fathers was an issue of concern forNorthern Rhodesian African political and tribal leadership. They appealedto the colonial administration to institute laws that would ‘make white menliable to support their children’. In response, the colonial administrationinformed the African leadership that a law already ‘existed’ in theterritory. The African political and tribal leaders stated such a law had ‘neverbeen interpreted to our native women and to the Native community as awhole’.94 Nonetheless, Broomfield’s portrayal of his mixed-race children iscontradictory to my family oral history. Kachalola’s grand-daughter, myAunt Mavis, informed me that at her birth, upon hearing her cry, Broomfielddeclared ‘I hear a mavis bird sing’ and he named her Mavis.95

Broomfield absolves himself from criticism by arguing the virtues of‘native women’: they were plentiful, accessible and sexually available.Broomfield also reveals that he was not alone in falling for their charms.Broomfield’s claim is supported by the existence of the mixed-racedescendants of British men: they are acknowledged locally in Zambia as thedescendants of former Northern Rhodesian pioneers – colonial administratorsand officials including E. H. Lane-Poole, a ‘Balliol man’ and son of anOxford Professor; Sir Alfred Sharpe, Rhodes’ emissary;96 J. E. Stephenson,colonial administrator; sleeping sickness researcher and medical doctor AlanKinghorn; Sir Percy Sillitoe, a former Northern Rhodesian police officerand Director General of Britain’s Security Service; and H. S. Thornicroft,District Commissioner at Old Petauke.97 Both Kachalola and Chiripulaconcede that colonial interracial sexual liaisons in Northern Rhodesia(otherwise known as miscegenation) were performed behind locked doors,in dark rooms, far from the reproachful eyes of puritanical European society.

Nonetheless, it was not only indigene sexuality that was scrutinised andmonitored by imperial and colonial society. In Southern Africa, the sexualbehaviour of Europeans, and especially white women – idealised as themothers of civilisation and creators of imperial nations – was closelyguarded. Their white bodies were protected, revered as the foundation ofwhite racial purity. However, this is not to say European men’s sexualconduct was not regulated. It was – and most especially in relation tocolonised subjects. Imperial and colonial society’s governance of Europeansexuality instituted class and racial boundaries founded on the politics ofexclusion which established political power for European imperialists andcolonisers.98

In Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), Zambia’s one-timefederation partner, sexual desire and intimacy were policed, particularly inrelation to white women and black men. Sexual relations between Africanmen and European women were made a criminal offence, and sexual laws



were instituted to safeguard against white women initiating sexual relationswith black men. As Phillip Mason points out, under the Immorality SuppressionOrdinance 1903, a white woman convicted of sexual intercourse with a nativeincurred a two-year sentence of hard labour and the ‘native’ received fiveyears’ hard labour. A further Act passed in 1916 made it ‘an offence for awhite woman and a native man to make indecent suggestions to each other’(my emphasis).99 However, Mason points out that it was not a criminaloffence for white settler men to have sexual relations with native women.100

Arguably, this was because a significantly large number of white settler menwould have had to face criminal charges. Mason points out that

a large number of white settler men in Northern Rhodesia were in the habit ofcohabiting with native women and that their behaviour was regarded by bothcolonial officials and white settler women as ‘appallingly shameful’.101

In the Southern Rhodesian context, the sanctity of English women’s sexualitywas a particularly important issue. For example, the colonial governmentpermitted white women from Germany, France and Portugal to enter theterritory so that they could act as prostitutes to gratify the sexual needs ofwhite men in the colonial territory.102 It seemed that the government believedpromoting prostitution in the colony was a ‘necessary evil’ to discourage afar greater evil – English women having indiscriminate sex with white men– and also to discourage white man from having sexual relations with Africanwomen.103 The arrival of European women in colonial Zimbabwe incitedsocial moral panic commonly known as the ‘black peril’; Jock McCullochdescribes it as ‘the fear and often imagined danger’ of ‘whitewomen . . . being sexually molested by black men’.104 White Rhodesiansociety perceived the sexual violation of a white woman not only as aviolation against the individual woman, but as a violation and desecrationof the entire community.

This has not been the case for black women and black society as a whole.Colonial accounts promote racist assumptions about the black female bodythat they were more licentious and promiscuous than white women andtherefore racially and morally inferior to white women. Disappointingly,the sexual behaviour of white men such as Kachalola and their colonial roleshave remained unquestioned, most especially the ‘fruits’ of their interracialsexual relations with African women. In colonial Zambia, the majority ofBritish men denied and more commonly abandoned their ‘fruit’ – theirmixed-race children.

Colonialism and its cultural apparatus racism is an indelible mark on theblack female body. I experienced this in 1998 in Brisbane, where I wasunfortunate enough to encounter white officials who took it upon themselvesto uphold Broomfield’s colonial legacy and safeguard white racial purity inhis family genealogy. Immediately after my discovery of Broomfield’s deathand burial in Brisbane, I unsuccessfully tried to obtain a copy of his will.Despite trying various avenues, including personally going into the



Queensland Public Trustee’s office on numerous occasions in addition tomaking several phone calls, each time I was told by them that there was norecord of any will.

In October 2002, I finally resorted to writing a letter, and within a monthof posting it I received a phone call from the Public Trustee’s Office in replyto my letter. I was told ‘yes’, there was a record of Broomfield’s will, and‘no’, I could not access it, and would I please ‘withdraw my application’. Theman who rang me from the Public Trustee’s Office was most insistent, andI felt that he tried to bully me into withdrawing my application. He toldme I could not access the will due to the Privacy Act. I asked him what lengthof time I would be given in order to try other avenues for accessing the will.He gave me a month’s grace. I sought advice from my Honours supervisor,Dr Belinda McKay, and she advised me to contact the Attorney-General’soffice to seek legal advice. I was subsequently advised by them to directlycontact the Public Trustee himself and explain my circumstances. I did so.

In response, the Public Trustee instructed one of his officials to contactme and make arrangements for me to come in and access the will at myearliest convenience. I went to the offices accompanied by my husband,Bob, a couple of days later. I introduced myself at reception and wastold to wait. Shortly after arriving, I was escorted to a senior official’soffice. When he saw me, his manner changed immediately and he appearedto be flustered. My understanding of the situation was that he had notexpected a black woman to walk in. His manner was one of discomfortwhen I requested copies of the limited documents in Broomfield’s file. Hetold me very tersely that I could not have a copy of the will but I couldwrite down what information I needed. I hastily typed away on my laptopas he stood over me and impatiently kept looking at his watch. His bodylanguage told me that he did not want me there in his office. It seemed tome that he felt he had been misled by me, which I found puzzling as I hadnever pretended to be anything I was not – I am Kachalola Broomfield’sgreat-granddaughter. The impression he left me with was that I was a blackdescendant with no legal rights to obtain and access my white ancestor’slegal will. Three years and six months later, I had a last-ditch attempt atobtaining a copy of Broomfield’s will from the Queensland Public Trustee.Recently, they finally agreed to give me a copy.

My experience at the Queensland Public Trustee’s Office greatly impactedon me, as I fully appreciated the legacy of Broomfield’s misrepresentationof African sexuality. Broomfield’s negative representation of the black femalebody, sexuality and reproduction had entered into Australia’s public domainas the circumstances of my being came into question. I felt as though mygrandfather Stephen’s public stigma of his supposed illegitimacy had followedme to Australia. According to African custom, my grandfather was notillegitimate, as Broomfield would have had to pay lobola for his mother;however, as I have shown throughout this article, Broomfield appears tohave purposely misrepresented African sexual conduct, demeaning it to a



commodity of financial and sexual exchange. Broomfield did not reveal theaccurate reciprocal benefits of interracial marriages in Northern Rhodesia;consequently, his descendants – such as myself – are predisposed to bepublicly humiliated. I was made to feel by the official at the QueenslandPublic Trustee that my very presence in his office was the embodiment ofthe ‘forbidden fruit’ of interracial sexual relations across distinct class andcolour lines. I was humiliated as my African great-grandmother hadbeen. The stereotype of the sexualised and demonised black female bodyhad accompanied me to the present. However, it may well be thatBroomfield’s so-called ‘feather dictionary’ meted their justice bymisinforming him about his epithet ‘Kachalola’ – their legacy, a mockeryof his sexual and not hunting prowess as he was led to believe.

Acknowledgement

Academia, like life, is a journey and on that journey you meet many people.I have been fortunate to have met many who have mentored me andbefriended me with their kindness and generosity as well as sharing theirindividual academic expertise. Despite their teaching and research schedulesand the demands of their private lives, they have all shown me – a fledglingacademic – utter kindness, generosity and friendship. I take this opportunityto thank each and every one of them for their generous support: ProfessorPaul Turnbull, Dr Fiona Paisley, Dr Felicity Grace and Dr Sarah Rickson,Jean Will, Dr Victoria Haskins, Professor Mohamed Adhikari, ProfessorHugh Macmillan and Caroline Goetzee, my anonymous reader for theirdiscerning recommendations, the Centre of Public Culture and Ideas (CPCI)at Griffith University and CPCI’s editor Sue Jarvis.

Last but not least I thank my family: my husband Bob Thornton and ourthree sons who remain at home (although Greg will dispute this, astechnically he lives across the road). Greg – thank you for being such acaring big brother and older son; Cameron – thank you for being such awonderful, helpful and responsible thirteen-year-old; and Dion – thank youfor your helpfulness around the house and all your hugs and kisses, as therehas been many a day when I have needed them. Thank you to my dearestfriend who is also my only brother, Owen Milner.

Short Biography

Juliette Milner-Thornton’s current research interest is in mixed-race historyand particularly the origination and sustainment of Coloured identity inZambia. Milner-Thornton’s research is situated in autoethnography at theintersections of ethnology and auto/biography studies. She is a part-timeassociate lecturer and graduate researcher at Griffith University’s Centre forPublic Culture and Ideas. Upcoming publications include a chapter entitled‘Absent White Fathers: The Case of Colouredness in Zambia’, in Mohamed



Adhikari (ed.), New Perspectives on Coloured Identity (University of CapeTown, forthcoming). Milner-Thornton holds a B.A. (Hons.), majoring inLiterary Studies and Screen Production, from Griffith University where sheis currently undertaking her doctorate degree.

Notes

* Correspondence: Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University, Nathan Campus,170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 4111. Email:[email protected].

1 S. S. Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter: The Early Life and Adventures of Sidney SpencerBroomfield (New York, NY: William Morrow, 1931).2 B. Hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992); Hooks,Talking Back: Thinking Feminist Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989); M. Wallace,Dark Designs and Visual Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); D. Willis andC. Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Philadelphia, PA: Temple UniversityPress, 2002); D. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation (New York, NY: W. W.Norton and Co., 1985); G. E. Wyatt, Stolen Women: Reclaiming our Sexuality, Taking Back OurLives (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1997).3 See also L. H. Gann and P. Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 1978), 239.4 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 80, 81.5 W. V. Brelsford, Generation of Men: European Pioneers of Northern Rhodesia (Salisbury: StuartManning, 1965); T. C. Bridges and H. H. Tiltman, Recent Heroes of Modern Adventure (Sydney:George Harrop, 1932); ‘Romantic Career: Dr S. S. Broomfield Death in Brisbane’, Courier-Mail,26 October 1933; W. Hatfield, I Find Australia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940); NationalArchives, Canberra, CA1/15 (Series) 1933/743.6 H. R. Crowe, Imperialism and Race Relations, Vol. 5 (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 13;Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 2.7 See A. L. Stoler, ‘Making Empire Respectable’: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality inTwentieth-Century Colonial Cultures’, in Anne McClintock,Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat, (eds.),Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press, 1997), 344–73; Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the IntimateColonial Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); A. McGrath, Born in theCattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987);Tony Ballantyne and AntoinetteBurton, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press, 2005); Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (eds.), Domesticating The Empire:Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville, VA: University Pressof Virginia, 1999); Pamela Pattynama,‘Secrets and Danger: Interracial Sexuality in Louis Couperus’sThe Hidden Force and Dutch Colonial Culture around 1900’, in Clancy-Smith and Gouda,Domesticating the Empire, 84–107.8 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 5, 18.9 Ibid., 18, 19.10 Ibid., 18.11 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.12 Ibid., 193, 194, 241.13 Ibid., 4.14 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983), 2.15 Ballantyne and Burton, Bodies in Contact, 407.16 Ibid., 6.17 Trinh Min-ha, Woman Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington, IN:Indiana University Press, 1989), 6.18 In this article, I interchange between ‘black women’ and ‘black females’, which is an ack-nowledgment that an African girl’s first menstrual cycle signifies her maturity to womanhood© 2007 The Author History Compass 5/4 (2007): 1111–1135, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00441.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


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rather than her first sexual experience. It can safely be assumed that many of the black femalesBroomfield refers to were actually young girls – hence his reference to them as ‘girls’. See J.Holland,‘In the Same Boat? The Gendered (In)Experience of First Heterosex’, in D. Richardson(ed.), Theorising Heterosexuality: Telling It Straight (Buckingham: Open University Press), 145.19 Andrew Sparkes, ‘Autoethnography and Narratives of the Self: Reflections on Criteria inAction’, Sociology of Sports Journal, 17 (2000): 21–43.20 C. Russell, Experimental Ethnography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 276; seealso Wallace, Dark Designs and Visual Culture, 4.21 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.22 T. Tsang, ‘Let Me Tell You a Story: A Narrative Exploration of Identity in High-PerformanceSport’, Sociology of Sports Journal, 17 (2000): 47, also cited in A. Sparkes, ‘Autoethnography:Self-Indulgence or Something More?’, in A. P. Bocher and C. Ellis (eds.), AutoethnographicallySpeaking: Autoethnography, Literature and Aesthetics (Walnut Creek: Altamara Press, 2002), 217.23 The following section, titled ‘Broomfield’s Family Story’, will appear in an upcoming pub-lication. The paper is titled ‘Absent White Fathers: The Case of Colouredness in Zambia’, to bepublished at the University of Cape Town, 2008.24 See Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter.25 Ibid., 1.26 Brelsford, Generations of Men, 65.27 Ibid.28 Ibid., 70.29 Ibid., 67, 68, 69.30 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 24, 44, 70, 151, 244.31 Bridges and Tiltman, Recent Heroes of Modern Adventure, 37.32 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 154.33 Brelsford, Generations of Men, 77.34 Ibid., 75, 76.35 C. Goetzee, personal communications, 18 January 2005.36 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 230, 231.37 Ibid., 227.38 Bridges and Tiltman, Recent Heroes of Modern Adventure, 37.39 Kris Olsson,‘Kidnapped’, The Courier-Mail, 5 December 2002, 17.40 Dr Trevor Sue-A-Quan, author of Cane Reapers (Cane Press, 2002), personal communications,5 December 2006.41 National Archives of Australia, Series No A1/15 Item No 1933/743, ‘Dr S. S. Broomfield –Appln. Permission to enter Arnhem Reserve.42 Ibid.43 State of Queensland, 22 March 1909, Death certificate, Hester Maria Broomfield.44 Gann and Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa, 239.45 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 43, 44, 45.46 Ballantyne and Burton, Bodies in Contact.47 Ibid., 3.48 R. L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in PopularMedia (New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), 2.49 Hooks, Black Looks, 62.50 A. Cranny-Francis, The Body in Text (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), 66.51 Ibid., 47.52 R. Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press,1991), 1.53 Ibid.54 Gann and Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa.55 Ibid., 240.56 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 81, 132, 133.57 Ibid., 18.58 K. T. Hansen,‘Body Politics: Sexuality, Gender, and Domestic Service in Zambia’, in C. Johnson-O’Dim and M. Strobel (eds.), Expanding the Boundaries of Women in History: Essays on Women inthe Third World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), 12.



59 A. L. Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship: The Domestic Domain on the Copperbelt of Zambia 1950–1956 (London: Academic Press, 1981).60 K. Makasa, Bwana District Commission: White Colonial Master (Lusaka: Multimedia Publications,1989).61 I. Okpewho, ‘Understanding African Marriage: Towards a Convergence of Literature andSociology’, in D. Parkin and D. Nyamwaya (eds.), Transformations of African Marriage (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1987), 337; A. Richards, Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation CeremonyAmongst the Bemba of Zambia (London: Tavistock, 1982); Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship;K. Poewe,Matrilineal Ideology: Male–Female Dynamics in Luapula, Zambia (London: Academic Press,1981).62 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter, 18.63 M. Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia(Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1998).64 Richards, Chisungu.65 O. C. Rawson, ‘Trekking Cattle through Northern Rhodesia in 1904’, Northern RhodesianJournal, 2/5 (1954): 26.66 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order, 205.67 Harriet Ngubane, ‘The Consequences for Women of Marriage Payments in a Society withPatrilineal Descent’, in D. Parkin and D. Nyamwaya (eds.), Transformations of African Marriage(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 174–81.68 Ibid., 174.69 J. E. Stephenson, Chiripula’s Tale: A Bye-Way in African History (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1937),30.70 Ibid., 3271 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter; Stephenson, Chiripula’s Tale, 29.72 Okpewho,‘Understanding African Marriage’, 337.73 Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship, 313.74 Ibid.75 Ibid., 314.76 Ibid., 315–16.77 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order.78 Epstein, Urbanization and Kinship, 316.79 Ibid., 317.80 Ibid.81 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order.82 Ibid.83 Ibid.84 McGrath, Born in the Cattle, 76.85 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order, 146.86 Broomfield, Kachalola or the Mighty Hunter.87 Ibid., 82.88 Ibid., 82, 83.89 Ibid., 83.90 Ibid.91 Rawson,‘Trekking Cattle through Northern Rhodesia’, 26.92 Hansen,‘Body Politics’, 12.93 Ibid.94 Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order, 205.95 Mavis Burt, personal communications, 20 April 2003.96 Brelsford, Generation of Men, 120; Gann and Duignan, Rulers of British Colonial Africa, 226.97 M. Gelfand, Northern Rhodesia: In the Days of Charter (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), 187,240; Brelsford, Generation of Men, 120; www.kent-police-museum.co.uk/core_pages/index.shtml.98 Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 42, 43.99 P. Mason, The Birth of a Dilemma: The Conquest and Settlement of Rhodesia (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1958), 246.100 Ibid.101 Ibid., 241.



www.kent-police-museum.co.uk/core_pages/index.shtml

102 D. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, NC: Duke University Center for International Studies, 1987), 178.103 J. McCulloch, Black Peril White Virtue (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), 89,90.104 Ibid., 2, 3.

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