In Domesticating the Empire, Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda bring together twelve essays- most of them original- that probe issues of gender, race, and power in the French and Dutch Empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This collection goes beyond the crude dichotomies of "European" and "indigenous" or "non-European" to examine the meanings of cross-cultural and interracial interactions in local historical contexts. The contributors' analyses are firmly rooted in historical figures and events and employ a wde range of primary sources to examine shifting images of femininity and masculinity, motherhood and fatherhood.