Introduction

This section focuses on the experience of gender in Europe’s colonial towns. Gendered systems were not uniform, nor were Europeans unchanged by those that they encountered in the colonial world. These chapters thus not only contribute to understanding the topics of other sections, such as the gendered nature of the economy, the organization of urban space and the role of the town in forging local identities, but they also reveal the distinctive gendered natures of a variety of colonial towns scattered across the globe. ¹