Abstract
Finally, there is the striking familiarity of some of the cases, set within very different places and times, which suggest broader patterns: "Native" women as objects of sexual fantasy, arguments for racial hierarchy, and transcultural intermediaries; the stark differences between the racial-sexual politics of early and late colonial rule; fervent, forceful efforts to "save" and "civilize" "native" women by changing their bodily attire and appearance (and the subsequent resistance and backlash); the physical and emotional violence justified by the saving of "oppressed" women; the articulation of colonial ideologies through tropes of masculinity and/or femininity; the at once overwhelming but always fragile arrogance of empire; and the astonishing array of embodied forms of "native" agency.