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Popular culture is invariably a vehicle for the dominant ideas of its age. Never was this truer than in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it reflected the nationalist and imperialist ideologies current throughout Europe. It both reflects popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and it generates support for selected views and opinions. This book examines the various media through which nationalist ideas were conveyed in late-Victorian and Edwardian times: in the theatre, "ethnic" shows, juvenile literature, education and the iconography of popular art. It seeks to examine in detail the articulation and diffusion of imperialism in the field of juvenile literature by stressing its pervasiveness across boundaries of class, nation and gender. It analyses the production, distribution and marketing of imperially-charged juvenile fiction, stressing the significance of the Victorians' discovery of adolescence, technological advance and educational reforms as the context of the great expansion of such literature. An overview of the phenomenon of Robinson Crusoe follows, tracing the process of its transformation into a classic text of imperialism and imperial masculinity for boys. The imperial commitment took to the air in the form of the heroic airmen of inter-war fiction. The book highlights that athleticism, imperialism and militarism become enmeshed at the public schools. It also explores the promotion of imperialism and imperialist role models in fiction for girls, particularly Girl Guide stories.
The search for an improving juvenile literature demonstrates perhaps better than any other field the manner in which the core ideology of imperialism solved the many problems which had been identified during the nineteenth century. Anxieties about the extension of literacy and the provision of a distinctively juvenile literature, both in books and in periodicals, were resolved by the
British writing about India, usually referred to as ‘Anglo-Indian’ 1 literature, can be divided into three distinct periods, each with its own set of attitudes and assumptions. The first, roughly from 1800 to 1857 (the year of the Indian Mutiny), can be called the ‘era of romance’. It yielded historical romances full of action, adventure and sentimentality. Important
aristocrats or nouveaux riches. Its values were propagated through the influence of such people over the natural history establishment in the museums and universities, through the publication of large numbers of travelogues and memoirs, and in paintings and engravings. Juvenile literature invariably represents the values, aspirations or fantasy life of a contemporary elite. In the Victorian
, service and sacrifice which epitomizes the popular cultural images of the military in the heyday of the empire. 1 The affirmative attitude towards the heroism, romance and adventure of empire that these memories imply was confirmed by Shaw’s boyhood reading. He steeped himself in the juvenile literature of his age. He revered G.A. Henty, but his particular love was sea stories
heartlands? After all, the great bulk of the literature that exists on the relationship between architecture and empire is focused on the former European colonial world. The contours of the field as initially defined were shaped appreciably under the impetus of cognate disciplines such as colonial and imperial history and area studies, albeit inflected through the analytical lens of postcolonial theory and its associated modes of inquiry. Considering the imposition of built form on the ground, in the colonial world, was understood
British culture after empire is the first collection of its kind to explore the intertwined social, cultural and political aftermath of empire in Britain from 1945 up to and beyond the Brexit referendum of 2016, combining approaches from experts in history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies and theatre studies. Against those who would deny, downplay or attempt to forget Britain's imperial legacy, these contributions expose and explore how the British Empire and the consequences of its end continue to shape Britain at the local, national and international level. As an important and urgent intervention in a field of increasing relevance within and beyond the academy, the book offers fresh perspectives on the colonial hangovers in postcolonial Britain from up-and-coming as well as established scholars.
and, in passing, to missionary children’s play. 9 Here it is reapplied in a more virtual mode, thinking about literature as a space in which domestic readers encountered and formed attitudes about people different from themselves, which I would argue sometimes included missionaries and their children alongside the Indigenous or national peoples among whom missionary children lived. On the other hand
Missionary children were an important but relatively hidden part of the modern Protestant missionary movement. As ‘empire citizens’ their lives were shaped by both political and religious contexts or imperatives. This book brings to light the lives, experiences and feelings of a range of children born into British world missionary families. It develops new ground in two ways. First, it takes a comparative approach that includes children mainly from Britain (especially Scotland) and settler societies like New Zealand as well as the the United States of America. Second, it focuses on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such it offers a new contextual and relational model by which to understand their historical lives. It argues that three different perspectives need to be held in tension. These include the stories told by parents, institutions and the children. To do so it uses a combination of archival, published and oral history sources. Furthermore, it explores the ways in which missionary children were represented through popular literature and negotiated their way within spaces defined by imperialism and colonialism. It draws on scholarship from childhood and emotions history as a way of differentiating their lives further. From this comparative study, missionary children’s historical lives emerge as a complex mix of ordinary and complicated. Their lives were kaleidoscopic rather than monochrome. Children were both the authors of their own lives and the products of their unique contexts.
way by examining how active insurgency by the victims of empire proactively shaped the thought of critics of empire at the metropole. 25 Another significant work is Kate O’Malley's Ireland, India and Empire , which provides a broad comparative survey of the engagement of Indian and Irish nationalist agitators fighting for independence in their respective countries. 26 Newer additions to the literature revitalise this macro approach regarding Protestant missionaries