"Combining insights from imperial studies and transnational book history, this provocative collection opens new vistas on both fields through ten accessible essays, each devoted to a single book. Contributors revisit well-known works associated with the British empire, including Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, and Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. They explore anticolonial texts in which authors such as C. L. R. James and Mohandas K. Gandhi chipped away at the foundations of imperial authority, and they introduce books that may be less familiar to students of empire. Taken together, the essays reveal the dynamics of what the editors call an ""imperial commons,"" a lively, empire-wide print culture. They show that neither empire nor book were stable, self-evident constructs. Each helped to legitimize the other.
Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Elleke Boehmer, Catherine Hall, Isabel Hofmeyr, Aaron Kamugisha, Marilyn Lake, Charlotte Macdonald, Derek Peterson, Mrinalini Sinha, Tridip Suhrud, Andre du Toit"
Edited by:
Antoinette Burton,
Isabel Hofmeyr
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 404g
ISBN: 9780822358275
ISBN 10: 0822358271
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 12 December 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Spine of Empire? Books and the Making of an Imperial Commons / Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr 1 1. Remaking the Empire from Newgate: Wakefield's A Letter from Sydney / Tony Ballantyne 29 2. Jane Eyre at Home and Abroad / Charlotte MacDonald 50 3. Macaulay's History of England: A Book That Shaped Nation and Empire / Catherine Hall 71 4. ""The Day Will Come"": Charles H. Pearson's National Life and Character: A Forecast / Marilyn Lake 90 5. Victims of ""British Justice""? A Century of Wrong as Anti-imperial Tract, Core Narrative of the Afrikaner ""Nation,"" and Victim-Based Solidarity-Building Discourse / Andre Du Toit 112 6. The Text in the World, the World through the Text: Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys / Elleke Boehmer 131 7. Hind Swaraj: Translating Sovereignty / Tridip Suhrud 153 8. Totaram Sanadhya's Fiji Mein Mere Ekkis Varsh: A History of Empire and Nation in a Minor Key / Mrinalini Sinha 168 9. C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins and the Making of the Modern Atlantic World / Aaron Kamugisha 190 10. Ethnography and Cultural Innovation in Mau Mau Detention Camps: Gakaara wa Wanjau's Mihiriga ya Agikuyu / Derek R. Peterson 216 Bibliography 239 Contributors 261 Index 265"
Antoinette Burton is Professor of History and Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has written and edited many books, most recently, The First Anglo-Afghan Wars: A Reader, A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles, and Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism, all published by Duke University Press. Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and Visiting Distinguished Global Professor at New York University. Her prize-winning books include Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading, 'We Spend Our Years as a Tale That is Told' Oral Historical Storytelling in a South African Chiefdom, and The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress.
Reviews for Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons
Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire is a collection of engaging essays by an impressive group of contributors. The volume coheres around the political mobilization of print cultures by the British Empire's various constituent communities, and that coherence is reinforced by each essay's concentration on a single book. To my knowledge, nothing else remotely like this collection exists.
