The British Empire was always about more than just ruling lands or colouring the map red; it was a state of mind, a set of beliefs and ideals and a way of looking at the world and making sense of it. It is no surprise, therefore, that it left its mark in literature and the arts and that we can use these as a way of tracing its impact and influence.
Literature was an important component in the way the British actively promoted the imperial vision and philosophy. Although echoes of Empire are to be found in a wide range of well-known 19th-century authors not normally thought of as ‘imperial’ writers, such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, other writers took their inspiration directly from Britain’s imperial role. The best known of these was Rudyard Kipling, often thought of as a narrow-minded imperialist, but in fact a much more subtle, nuanced and even critical commentator on Empire than he is often given credit for. Other ‘imperial’ writers included adventure writers like Rider Haggard and the prolific G A Henty; significantly, the works of both were eagerly devoured by children, for whom a whole sub-genre of literature, in which imperial themes played a major role, was being developed. It is possible to find echoes of Empire in well-known works like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and even in A A Milne’s ‘Winnie the Pooh’ stories.
These, of course, were writers who believed in Empire and wrote to celebrate and promote it, knowing that their readers shared their views. How can we use these writers nowadays to get an insight into attitudes that have long since passed from common acceptance? How can we use them to get an understanding not just of the beliefs that motivated the British in upholding and extending their Empire, but also the doubts and questions that they experienced as well? At a time when post- and even anti-imperialism has taken something of the quasi-religious characteristics that imperialism itself enjoyed in its heyday, an understanding of this sort of imperial literature is one of our best ways into an understanding of the mind of imperialism.
In the 20th century film and the moving image quickly established itself as the modern age’s distinctive art form and it quickly developed a key role in the presentation and understanding of Empire. In its earliest stages film provided a record of the everyday reality of Empire: we have in archives some of the home movie footage shot by British residents in India which provides a fascinating record of how they lived their lives and how they viewed the colonial world around them. Film was also used as a means of propaganda to counter the message of the growing nationalist movement. By the 1930s Hollywood had latched onto Empire as a major theme for kits mass-circulation films, offering a very acceptable variation on the themes and stories of its popular westerns; Kipling’s stories provided inspiration for many of these and the bandit fighting of India’s North West Frontier provided a sort of equivalent of the Wild West. These films in themselves contributed to the debates and arguments about the future of Empire, as Indians protested, often violently, against the way they were portrayed in the films, rather as black American actors like Paul Robeson were beginning to criticise the ‘Uncle Tom’ portrayal they were required to present on screen. Robeson himself decided to take part in the film Saunders of the River, set in British Africa, a decision he later came to regret.
In the years after the Second World war and the end of Empire, film portrayals of Empire fell broadly into two contrasting approaches. By the 1970s a genre of nostalgic films had begun to appear, mostly set in India, presenting the imperial period as a world we had lost, a romantic time of (in the title of one of them) heat and dust. Other films, of which the most successful was Richard Attenborough’s epic biopic Gandhi, used the medium to highlight the cruelty and injustice to be found under British rule. This course will look at both approaches.
