The British Empire and Victorian Britain 2 Cecil

The British Empire and Victorian Britain 2

Cecil Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes, „the Colossus”

Cecil Rhodes cartoon

Map of Africa 1914

n „We are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race. ” (Cecil Rhodes)

British India (the Raj) n n Cantonments (only 20. 000 Britons) ‘Roman proconsul’ self-image Selfless work + glamour (feudal style) INDIAN MUTINY (1857): trauma for the British betrayal

„The British Lion’s Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger”

Edward Armitage: Retribution

Cawnpore massacre

Mutiny

Doughty, English Homes in India

Miss Wheeler defending herself

Lucknow

T. J. Barker: The Relief of Lucknow

n „The Indian Government never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos at all. If my religion consisted of bestiality, infanticide and murder, I should have no right to it unless I was prepared to be hanged. The religion of the Hindoos is no more than a mass of the rankest filth that imagination ever conceived. The Gods they worship are not entitled to the least atom of respect. Their worship necessitates everything that is evil, and morality must put it down. The sword must be taken out of its sheath, to cut off our fellow subjects by their thousand”. (Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, 1857)

Retributions

Ideologies of empire: science, exploration n n 1826 Zoological Society of London (Humphrey Davy, Stamford Raffles, etc. ) 1830 Royal Geographical Society 1836 Botanical Society of London 1843 Ethnological Society of London Augustus Pitt Rivers

Theories of race and racism After 1850 France, Germany, Britain Before 1850: polygenesis – monogenesis

social Darwinism „The law of survival applies to races as well as to animal species. It is pure sentimental bosh that Africa belongs to a lot of naked blacks. It belongs to the race that can make the best use of it. I am for the white man and for the English race. ” (Rudyard Kipling)

‘scientific racism’ Phrenology, craniometry, anthropometry, physiognomy A. Retzius: ‘the cephalic index’ atavistic ‘stigmata’ E. Haeckel: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny Dr. John Beddoes: ‘index of Nigrescence’ within Britain (amount of melanin)

„The most recently discovered wild beast”

Racist theories n n n Max Nordau: Degeneration (1892) Arthur Gobineau (decline caused by miscegenation) Francis Galton: eugenics

The Hottentot Venus

Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus

Sawtche

„Love And Beauty: Saartjie the Hottentot Venus”

Saartjie Baartman wax cast

Nationalism Boy scout movement Lord Robert Baden-Powell)

Jingoism „By Jingo” music hall song 1877 (‘Mc. Dermott’s War Song’) „We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do. . . We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too! The Russians shall not have Constantinople. . . ”

Imperial ideologies Manifest destiny n Christian athleticism and militarism n Hero-worship n Public school ethos Thomas Hughes: Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) n

Rudyard Kipling: Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) Dan and Una + Puck Two Roman centurions (Parnesius and Pertinax, defending Roma Dea and Hadrian’s Wall) Two medieval knights (Richard and Hugh), defending Puck’s Hill Manor

Orientalism n n Edward Said: Orientalism (1978) Discourse: science, fantasy; producing knowledge Lord Curzon: orientalism is the „necessary furniture of the Empire” G. Ch. Spivak: „epistemic violence”

Richard Burton (1821 -90)

Edward William Lane (Mansoor Efendi) Translator of Arabian nights Author of The Manners of the Modern Egyptians, 1836

Frederick Goodall: The Finding of Moses

Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Finding of Moses

Olivier Merson: Rest on the Flight into Egypt

David Roberts: Ruin

Ruins n “Splendid cities, once teeming with a busy population and embellished edifices, the wonder of the world, now deserted and lonely, or reduced by mismanagement and the barbarism of the Moslem creed, to a state as savage as the wild animals by which they are surrounded” (David Roberts)