Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens (Jun 2021)
Cultures of Display: The Mirror of Imperialism
Abstract
Imperial history in general received very little attention in British universities until the 1950s. Until that time, such history was treated in highly ethnocentric ways, often with a specific focus on imperial rule from above. Most significantly, British domestic history was largely taught without any reference to its imperial dimension, except in a few restricted economic areas. When the revolution in the writing and teaching of history began to take place in the 1960s, the emphasis changed into aspects of resistance, notably the rise of nationalism and the study of instances of revolt within the empire. Yet there was a great deal of evidence for the material presence of empire within Britain, as well as the many examples of the visuality and cultural presence of imperialism. Indeed, these visual and cultural dimensions of imperial history seemed to offer an entirely different route into the history of the relationship between Britain, the British people and empire. The text, and the many documents in archives appeared to obscure as much as they illuminated. Such an approach soon produced negative responses. Bernard Porter famously argued that the British were indeed ‘absent-minded imperialists’ because they took very little interest in empire, with the imperial influence on British culture being essentially minimal. Andrew Porter similarly argued that missionaries were essentially anti-imperial and should be absolved from any guilt surrounding the processes of empire. However, the development of a great range of studies of cultural aspects of empire seemed to contradict both these approaches. Studies of the theatre, of film, exhibitions, museum displays, advertising, ephemera, heroic popular biographies and novels, as well as emigration propaganda seemed to indicate the pervasiveness of the imperial presence in British culture. Missionaries while often critical of specific events seemed to be swept up in this all-embracing culture. It became obvious that imperial images and ideas were used by so many companies and agencies that they had to be regarded as having a positive resonance among the population. Moreover, local studies of the material presence of cities and of the press (together with the cross-over from the presentation of fact into fiction) seemed to suggest the ubiquity of the imperial presence in British culture.
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