Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont 2019 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award Research Award 1-1-2019 Engendering Empire: The rB itish Women's Military Services in India and the Middle East, 1939-1945 Natalie McDonald Recommended Citation McDonald, Natalie, "Engendering Empire: The rB itish Women's Military Services in India and the Middle East, 1939-1945" (2019). 2019 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award. 3. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cclura_2019/3 This Senior Award Winner is brought to you for free and open access by the Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in 2019 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Reflective Essay Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award Natalie McDonald, Pomona College ‘19 The story of my senior thesis begins less with a moment of inspiration than with one of idle curiosity. Were there, I wondered 15 months ago, women’s military services in the British colonies during the Second World War as there were in the U.K.? A few quick Google searches led me to an online version of “We Were There,” a 2000 Ministry of Defence photographic exhi- bition chronicling the involvement of non-white British subjects in the armed forces from the sev- enteenth century through to the modern day.1 The section of the exhibit devoted to the Second World War included a brief segment on “Women in War” featuring photographs of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India) as well as Middle Eastern members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service.