With its vast imperial holdings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Great Britain ruled over millions of Muslim women. Often using women's social roles as benchmarks of civilization, British imperial agents used women to legitimate their imperial oppression of indigenous societies in vast areas of the Islamic world, including large territories in the Arab Middle East. However, although imperial agents claimed their agendas were meant to advance women's social positions, the experience of imperialism was often less than rewarding for women's personal and public lives.

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