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As the British and French empires expanded, constructing new imperial dimensions through growing commerce and the relationships of industrialisation, the bases of Spanish power were being undermined. Nationalism, revolt, the pursuit of forms of decolonisation (often aided by Spain's rivals) became the prime characteristic of Central and South American politics. This book examines the study of natural history in the Spanish empire in the years 1750-1850, explaining how the Spanish authorities collected specimens for the
the British and French African colonies became independent, the pantheon of imperial heroes that roam the streets of these oncehegemonic capitals remains surprisingly varied. Many names linked to the now almost entirely dismantled British and French empires still inhabit the imaginary of millions of people, from the Gallieni métro station to Gordon Road (in the London borough of Southwark), from the
Imperial heroes embodied the symbolic implementation of the colonial project and performed a highly mythologized meeting between conquerors and conquered. They were a crucial element of the 'European encounter with Africa' that took place as part of the Scramble for Africa. The book explores systematically the multiple outlets through which heroes of the British and French empires were celebrated, how their reputations were made over several decades and who sustained them. It looks at the general socio-cultural and political trends prevalent in Britain and France, and considers micro-economic tendencies and technological developments in the cultural industry that the development of legends revolving around imperial heroes. The book allows the reader to grasp the variety of print and audiovisual media, genres and formats through which meanings were conveyed, allowing imperial heroes to reach a 'public presence'. Two major aspects invested imperial heroes with a role in society. First is the use of their image as political argument or their own political roles. The other is the values that they embodied through their own personal dedication above and beyond the call of duty. The book presents the micro-histories of the making of the legends surrounding the figures of Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand and the Sirdar Kitchener. It details how a war correspondent George Warrington Steevens, and a publisher, Blackwood and Sons, converted the fall of Khartoum to market 'With Kitchener to Khartoum' as patriotic writing.
This introductory chapter sets the scene for the book, sketching the situation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when colonial expansion in the British and French empires coincided with the appearance of portable, mass-produced cameras. It explains the book’s methodology, to observe anomalies in the mass of repeated visual tropes, and identifies the three categories of photographic images under discussion: views from the ‘small wars’ of the colonial front, early conflict photographs more generally, and photographs of suffering and physical coercion inflicted for the purpose of repression. The chapter briefly considers some of the issues around photography that the book will investigate in greater detail, notably photography as a process and the power relationship between the photographer and the photographed. It concludes by providing a brief summary of the chapters to follow.
reasons for their suffering and of finding a solution to end it or at least to relieve it. The crossover between responsibility, compassion and benevolence permeated the whole European colonial experience. Further on we will analyse two examples: the public debate in Britain during the first phase of the new British expansionism, and the project of the mission civilisatrice carried out in republican France. We will also see – again using examples concerning the British and French empires – how this crossover contributed to shaping the colonies’ administration. The
review of the exposition noted, Ballantine’s exhibit was ‘intended to perpetuate the amity and friendship of two states at the head of modern civilisation and refinement’.55 The window paid tribute to the British and French empires, and their shared ideologies of royal and parliamentary power, imperial rule, and economic and industrial development, but the depiction of the two rulers tête-à- tête, and the presence of tilting knights, served as a reminder of the competition between the two nations. Underpinning, or perhaps holding together, the symbolic image of a
independence in the post-Second World War period cartoonists reappropriated and recrafted imperialist imagery to convey new meanings. 1 The political cartoons drawn during the 1956 Suez Crisis provide a rich snapshot of this emerging iconography of decolonisation. While historians continue to debate the long-term implications of the crisis, at the time it was viewed as the final gasp of the British and French empires in the Middle East. 2
people in the metropoles and colonial societies received and saw these images, for professional or family reasons. But the photographs and their trajectories speak not only of violence; they are also a reflection of the deep underlying tensions within the British and French empires at the time. Private photographs: two albums compiled by rank-and-file soldiers Some of the most direct images of the violence committed in conflicts outside Europe at the time were never intended to be seen by more than a few
-Atta ( 2015 ) ‘ Aggression in mental health settings: a case study in Ghana ’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 93 ( 8 ), 587–888 . doi: 10.2471/BLT.14.145813 . Keller , R. ( 2001 ) ‘ Madness and colonialism: psychiatry in the British and French empires’, 1800–1962 , Journal of Social History 35 ( 2 ), 295
, can be considered binding as such. In the final scene of the film, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson tries in vain, and somewhat pathetically, to avoid the destruction of the bridge by soldiers from his own side. On a more general level, this undermining of Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson could be interpreted as a denunciation of an obsolete discourse about the superiority of the British war culture. It should be reminded that the film was distributed in 1957, one year after the Suez crisis, which undoubtedly marks the inevitable decline of the British and French empires