Commerce was a woman : women in business in colonial Sydney and Wellington
Creators: name: Bishop, Catherine Elizabeth
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: HD6072.6.A8 B57 2012
subject: Businesswomen History 19th centuryAustralia Sydney (N.S.W.)
subject: Businesswomen History 19th centuryNew Zealand Wellington
subject: Women History 19th centuryAustralia Sydney (N.S.W.)
subject: Women History 19th centuryNew Zealand Wellington

description: This thesis uncovers a hitherto unacknowledged group of female entrepreneurs in Sydney in New South Wales and in Wellington in New Zealand between 1830 and 1870. It investigates the historiographical and popular invisibility of these women in contrast to their contemporary visibility in the streets of colonial cities. Making full use of the newly available resources of the digital revolution, along with finding new uses for a range of more traditional sources, this study refutes the contentions that women retreated into domesticity after 1830 in Sydney and were contented to be mere 'colonial helpmeets' in Wellington. My research supplements recent international scholarship which argues for significant levels of female involvement in business in the wider colonial world and draws attention to the importance of pre-industrial, commercial colonial towns and cities as locations for this phenomenon. I argue that women's businesses tended to be small-scale and concentrated in particular areas but were as long-lived as male enterprises of similar size and made a significant contribution to the colonial urban economy. I consider the relevance of middle-class ideals of female domesticity for colonial women who came from further down the social scale. I look at the ways married women negotiated the inconvenience of coverture laws, which restricted their ability to act independently as well as the response of colonial legislators to the problems faced by deserted wives trying to run businesses. This study argues that widows often used small business as a strategy of survival instead of remarriage, while there were also some life-long spinsters who made a similar choice. The transnational focus of this thesis has highlighted the mobility of colonial women, many of whom used business to facilitate their mobility, while for others, their mobility was a core part of their business strategy. The recovering of these businesswomen in plain view in colonial streets challenges our view of nineteenth century women as adjuncts to male enterprise. It highlights continuities rather than disjuncture in Sydney from the early colonial period, when opportunities for female entrepreneurs have been acknowledged. Situating this study within a transnational framework shows that businesswomen were present in and connected with other colonial and English towns and cities, emphasising the global networks of empire. It complicates our perceptions of nineteenth century women as disengaged from public life. This thesis also has broader implications for the study of history in the digital age, with its plethora of searchable sources revealing previously inaccessible details about ordinary lives. My study demonstrates the importance of returning to the archive to unpick the rhetoric of the dominant voices to highlight the experiences of a more historically silent but contemporarily visible and important group of people. -- provided by Candidate.