Royal tourists, colonial subjects and the making of a British world, 1860–1911

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Charles V. Reed
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Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects, and the Making of a British World, 1860-1911 examines the ritual space of nineteenth-century royal tours of empire and the diverse array of historical actors who participated in them. The book is a tale of royals who were ambivalent and bored partners in the project of empire; colonial administrators who used royal ceremonies to pursue a multiplicity of projects and interests or to imagine themselves as African chiefs or heirs to the Mughal emperors; local princes and chiefs who were bullied and bruised by the politics of the royal tour, even as some of them used the tour to symbolically appropriate or resist British cultural power; and settlers of European descent and people of colour in the empire who made claims on the rights and responsibilities of imperial citizenship and as co-owners of Britain’s global empire. Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects, and the Making of a British World suggests that the diverse responses to the royal tours of the nineteenth century demonstrate how a multi-centred British-imperial culture was forged in the empire and was constantly made and remade, appropriated and contested. In this context, subjects of empire provincialized the British Isles, centring the colonies in their political and cultural constructions of empire, Britishness, citizenship, and loyalty.

 

‘In telling this story, Reed ably handles a large academic literature. Within the unfolding drama, readers are helped to understand the prehistory of today's royal visits and how they connected, and still connect, overlapping transnational cultures that always owed more to Empire than to London.'
Donald MacRaild
The British Council
March 2016

‘This account succeeds in revealing the long and storied past of the royal tour.'
Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Catholic University of America
Victorian Studies (issue 60.1)
Autumn 2017

‘This publication, the author's first full-length monograph, ably demonstrates some of the possibilities of a localised and biographical methodological approach to social and cultural analyses. It marks a solid contribution to present historical understanding of how local and nationalist identities are adapted within the ritualised framework of royal tours, themselves increasingly prominent within concurrent and swiftly expanding spheres of inter-disciplinary scholarship on imperialism in all its guises. Royal tourists, colonial subjects and the making of a British world, 1860–1911 will be of great relevance to scholars examining the overlapping spheres of Australasian, African and South Asian colonial and post-colonial politics within the continuing legacy of the British imperial world. I look forward to reading more of this author's work.'
Laura Cook, The Australian National University
Royal Studies Journal
2017

‘Within the unfolding drama, readers are helped to understand the prehistory of today's royal visits and how they connected, and still connect, overlapping transnational cultures that always owed more to Empire than to London.'
Donald M. MacRaild is professor of British and Irish history, Ulster University
THE
March 2016

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