Customer Reviews

Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

David Cannadine, a self declared "Child of Empire" has what can only be described as an obsession with the British Aristocracy. Unlike some of his other works such as "Decline and fall oft the British Aristocracy" where he allows bittersweet emotions such as nostalgia to be evoked at the passing of an era, or the undisguised glee of an outsider indulging in schadenfreude in "Aspects of Aristocracy: grandeur or decline" this book presents a much more balanced analysis.

His thesis is that there was a complex interplay of class and race in the Empire, but in most cases class trumps race.

The defining example from the book is an exerpt from the "Raj quartet" where the british aristo identifies more clearly with his Indian counterpart who went to public school than to the uncouth white police constable. However the police constable viewed himself as superior to the Indian because of his race.

Its thesis accords well with my experience in public school at Winchester College in England where I felt accepted as a peer despite being Asian. But my same peers were openly disdainful of poor uneducated Pakistani and Bangledeshi immigrants. (They welcomed the educated Indians much more easily)

Perhaps these sentiments were what prevented mass support for Oswald Mosley and Fascism in the 1930s despite prevalent anti-semitism. It has been argued by John Lucas that Nazism as an ideology failed because Hitler had made his elite too small. The British extended their elites to the sultans, nawabs, emirs and kings all over the Empire and used them to bind the Empire together.

This book provides an interesting contrast to America where race is so much more important. Black and white interracial marriages are quite commonplace in Britain. In my opinion it better to recognize nobility in another person and disdain the baseness in another person regardless of the colour of their skin.

Let's keep it short. The title is more than a cute pun. Old Boney once said, no doubt in fine French, that a man would do things for a piece of yellow ribbon that he would not do for all the gold in the world. This scholarly, but not too much so, study is about British uses not of glory but pomp: the deliberate distribution of honors neatly packaged by class; indeed, neatly packaged by the rank of various colonial states somewhat in the pattern of elborate dinner seatings of the middle ages. "I say is Fijii above or below the salt?" In an age of "postcolonial/subaltern/otherness" studies this is a readable guide to events and behaviors of our British cousins that those of us on this side of the pond sometimes find rather mysterious. It is a good addition to the personal library of anyone doing serious literary/social analysis.

This volume serves as an extension of Cannadine's earlier book Class In Britain. In Ornamentalism, Cannadine takes a different approach in looking at the driving force of the British Empire. It was driven not by race, but class, a traditional-hierarchical one, with the Empire being "the vehicle for the extension of British social structures, and the setting for the projection of British social perceptions, to the ends of the world and back again." This in turn means that "it was about antiquity and anachronism, tradition and honour, order and subordination, about glory and chivalry,... processions and ceremony, plumed hats and ermine robes... about thrones and crowns... dominion and hierarchy, ostentation and ornamentalism." It was thus also concerned in the constructions of affinities rather than otherness, as one of the ways to civilize the places they had taken over.

Indeed, social ranking was the result of the Enlightenment's way of looking at people, races, and colour, a concept that transcended the three dynamics. And the British were far more welcoming than the racist Germans. An example was the invitation to England of King Kalakaua of Hawaii, who took precedence before the crown prince of Germany, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, who took offence at his being ranked lower.

A lot of focus is given to the nobles of other countries, as the image formed by these well-dressed personages created a dignified image of order and authority. These sultans, pashas, shahs, etc. were the apex to their own people, but formed a lateral relationship to the British dukes, princes, and marquesses. They were also important in keeping order after uprisings such as the Sepoy mutiny of 1857. India with its castes was the perfect example. Rudyard Kipling himself observed the fixed order of obedience, pack animals obeying their drivers, drivers their sergeants, sergeants to their lieutenants, lieutenants to their captains, all the way up to generals obeying their viceroy.

The monarch itself symbolized the semi-divine aspect of the empire/territory/kingdom. For Queen Victoria, the number of places named after her, the buildings, statues, stamps, honours, correspondence envelopes, were all manifestations of the omnipresence of empire and thus of class. This is where Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" marches came in, in honour of the queen's Diamond Jubilee (sixtieth anniversary celebration) in 1897. Critics saw them as "glittering gaudy toys."

Also, the creation of honours to promote the imperial hierarchical vision is discussed, such as the Order of the Garter, Order of St. Michael, all these medals, which became a status symbol, leading to officials proudly displaying their array of orders like a peacock, "the accoutrements of hierarchical display and imperial ostentation."

And thus did imperialism and classism, seen as one interconnected world, lead to ornamentalism, defined as "hierarchy made visible, immanent, and actual. Small wonder that was the way the ordinary British citizen related to the world. Abroad, "they saw what they were conditioned, what they wanted, and what they expected to see."

In the end, it was nationalism, attacks from the urban, intellectual, and middle classes, technology, and the perception that hierarchy was unchanging that brought down the empire.

Cannadine doesn't take the neo-conservative, imperial apologist position, nor does he take the post-colonial and post-modern perspective in writing this book. Rather, he neither defends nor criticizes it, but tells the facts plain and simple, using the "entire interactive system" approach and giving a wider perspective of what the Empire looked like. He succeeds in breaking new ground, away from the ancient master narratives, by addressing the issue of class and hierarchy.

David Cannadine has added another well written volume to his studies of the British aristocracy, the British class system in general, and other related topics. Ornamentalism covers the British attitudes towards their Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Cannadine argues that the British took a hierarchical view of their empire, ruling it on the basis of what they supposed to be traditional English government, which devolved from the monarch to the local nobility and gentry. In the empire colonial governments made use of local grandees, such as the numerous Indian princes, so that Britain ruled not so much over them as through them. Thus Cannadine disagrees with prevailing historical opinion, that the Empire was based on race, by demonstrating its basis in existing class structure

As always, Cannadine writes clearly with few wasted words. He continues to be a master of the short biographical/historical sketch. A short but fascinating read.

David Cannadine supposes that there might be more to the British Empire than simple racism. The reviews here at Amazon neatly prove his supposition to have been true. The critiques offered are all of the 'you did not pander to the antiracist ideology; you are an evil racist supremacist and you write badly, too' genre.

Well, Cannadine writes superbly, in the detached manner not of a 'child of the empire' but of an Englishman who wonders whether, indeed, he was one, and, if so, how much?

His argument apparently has taken his PC readers so much by surprise that they cannot comprehend it, but to someone, like myself, who lives in Hawaii, it is a commonplace. Hawaii was colonized by Americans, not Britons, but they behaved exactly the same -- despising, or at least keeping their distance from, the commoners; but happily intermarrying with the 'natural' aristocracy. Once Hawaii became a republic and the aristocracy was extinguished, they stopped intermarrying with them, as all natives were then 'common.'

This little story from the islands was written large in the British Empire. Cannadine does not pretend there was not a color line, but he notes -- and any Australian would say, 'Right, mate!' -- that the elite in the metropole despised the white colonists more than the black elites they chose to cosset and use in the policy of indirect rule.

Britain was becoming an urban and more democratic place, but the men who ran it were not, as Arno Mayer described (for Europe as a whole) as 'The Persistence of the Old Regime.'

The proconsuls of empire and the men who selected them in London were devoted to a rural, hierarchical, anticapitalist society; some explicitly yearned for 'feudalism.' Cannadine shows how they allied with rural and traditional hierarchs, or, in southwest Asia, invented them. They ignored or suppressed the modernizing, urban, educated -- and often, equally anticapitalist, though Cannadine does not point that part out -- rising classes in the Empire.

That one can speak of 'rising classes,' as even the Marxists do, proves that Cannadine is on to something when he speaks of the class-based, rather than race-based empire.

The contradiction brought down the empire in a short time, but, ironically, the inheritors were often more racist than the British and decidedly less progressive. Cannadine wrote this book in 2001 and includes a memoir, 'An Imperial Childhood?' (note, as other reviewers did not, the significant ?) in 1997, when Hong Kong was absorbed into a new, more savage empire. Now, five years on, it becomes less and less possible to deny that the former 'victims' were unable either to be governed or to govern themselves. Cannadine does not ruminate on this striking effect.

'Ornamentalism' is not meant, as some reviewers here suppose, to be a history. It is an extended essay on an aspect of empire that has been overlooked. But not the least of the book's many joys is the appended memoir, which, along with the clever title, skewers the turgid, lying, fake memoir of the sweetheart of the orientalists, Edward Said. There's no doubt that Cannadine was really a Birmingham boy, while Said was never a Palestinian.

Lastly, for an American reader, immune to the claims of aristocratic privilege, part of the joy of this book is the pictures of self-important men in funny hats.

Let's start off with the title. Unlike the book, which does not mention the term until page 122, simply put it is an explanation of the method by which Great Britain exercised (indirect?) control over its Empire. Cannadine argues that the Empire was governed using a theatrical form of social elitism which interpreted local societies as a reflection of the multilayered and tightly ranked home society in Britain. What this meant was that local aristos were sought out by the British (eg Maharajahs, Sultans, Nawabs, tribal chiefs, Bedouin leader/kings. In the settled dominions these were drawn from settled grandees - especially and initially in Ireland) and placed alongside the British colonial regimes to lend legitimacy and local control. Why ornamental? Because an elaborate system of rewards based on the award of (colourful & ornate) honours within a structure of conspicuous display for those of local & British high rank (Indian durbars, investitures, "plumed hats") bred a form of upper class bonding that crossed caste & race differences to create a ruling class that controlled one quarter of the globe in the interests of Britain.

In a way this was no more than Louis XIV's use of Versailles court procedure - making up grand offices/titles/costumes for the upper nobility in return for a superficial court task, but this kept them quiet and allowed Louis to rule absolutely.

Everyone, local dignitary or colonial official, knew their place in the hierarchy and energies focused on climbing up the decorative ladder and not falling out with the fount of promotion - London. Hence colonial government was carried out as London wished, and the plumed hats and fancy awards poured out to those in government, especially the local royalty. Reading this it struck me how this concept had survived even to the Scottish public school I attended in the 1960's where everyone had a defined role, ornamentally visible and so enforceable to everyone else (under 13 years old-short trousers, aged 14: uniform jacket had to be closed at all times using the middle button; aged 15: jacket could be open; aged 16: hands could be put in pockets; aged 17: could wear a non uniform jacket. Prefects: could wear special ties, Team players could embroider teams in gold thread on jacket. Everyone then policed the system to ensure no younger boy could exercise their "privilege". Indeed this was control on the cheap for the school!).

Cannadine's is an interesting idea but there are several issues:
* There is too little on who actually perceived the Empire in this way at the time and more importantly who cultivated it.
* What was the role of the new "yellow press"?
* How conscious a process was it? This is especially significant when the book shows how even the British ruling classes were so ready to get rid of the ornamental Empire and betray its colonial collaborators during decolonisation.

Nonetheless there is much to this work, most perhaps in its final sections where it is clear that ornamentalism was no preparation for independent nationhood - once Britain left and deserted those it had previously been happy to collaborate with, the new regimes put in place by the departing British came from those (lower) social classes previously excluded from government. Lacking experience or traditional supporters, the outcome in most ex colonies was to be instability and long term chaos.

Another salient point to emerge: the crucial role played by Britain's Irish experience: first colony where ornamentalism was practiced and model for elsewhere, then the first post 1776 colony to break free and then serve as a model for independence from London for those colonies seeking independence. (See casahistoria Ireland site)

Finally, my edition has an interesting personal essay (An Imperial Childhood") as an appendix, and if the author ever reads this then let me say that yes, I have similar recollections and am of a similar age. But on the other hand, I am a historian too.......

This is a good, but not great, work. For a more thorough investigation of this topic, read "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire" by Brendon.

This is a much better book than I had originally expected. It is also a much easier read than I had anticipated. It's certainly not dry-as-dust narrative history. I had first read a review of the book in History Today which suggested that Ornamentalism by David Cannadine cast a new light on the importance of rank and ceremony in binding the British empire together across the globe, especially during its peak from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This was enough to whet my appetite. That, and an interesting reminder in the title that Edward Said had already written in his book Orientalism about the fascination that the East (Near, Middle or Far, depending on the distance from London as the epicentre) had for British empire-builders, and a suggestion that the ideological traffic of empire was more than just a one-way street. Ornamentalism certainly delivers on its promise in painting a complex cultural picture of cultural and ideological interchange between ruling hierarchies throughout the British Empire. The author shows how this order was identifed and then explicitly sustained through mechanisms such as the British peerage system (think about all those thousands of OBEs). Cannadine also shows how order abroad confirmed and upheld order at home. This "Burkean" view of society bolstered (even upholstered) the fortunes of conservative British politicians from Disraeli to Churchill. As this world view dissolved through the twentieth century, so did British support for carefully constructed local elites overseas. In my own country, small conservative New Zealand, attachment to the Mother Country died hard. British titles were only abolished in New Zealand in 2000. Ornamentalism argues its own corner. It doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive history of the British Empire (go to the Cambridge History series for that). But it is an enjoyable read, and provided (at least for me) a different, richer way of thinking about empire. The book is also entertaining (some great anecdotes of the Raj in India); insightful (nice distinctions between the different experiences of the Dominions, the Colonies and the Mandates); idiosyncratic (the author provides a personal perspective of empire in an unexpected epilogue); and credible (check out the great notes/bibliography). If you are even vaguely interested in the British Empire, Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or your own country belongs to that odd international club called the British Commonwealth,do yourself a favour and read this book. You'll enjoy it.

Monarchs and aristocrats are not very pleasant people. Rulers like Wilhelm II, Victor Emmanuel III and Hirohito have all played their part of making their country safe for fascism and dictatorship. Even the British ruling house are not a nice lot; more often than not they are philistine, reactionary and unimaginative. But the historian of aristocracy-AH, there's a different subject altogether. David Cannadine in his various books and collections of essays have portrayed in subtle, mordant detail the world of the declining aristocracy. Whether it is discussing the inability of Winston Churchill to get off the London Metro, or George V's inordinate admiration for shooting small birds and collecting stamps; whether it is the fact the George VI had one of the five greatest art collections on the planet but was too dull to appreciate it, or whether it is how the British monarchy moved from the amateurish funerals of George IV and William IV to the top notch rituals of the Late Victorian era, Cannadine provides a humorous sceptical eye on the world of monarchist kitsch.

Cannadine's latest book is fundamentally flawed, but it is based on wide reading, is gracefully written and contains many fascinating details. The book has been advertised as a new approach to understanding empire: instead of it being based, as Edward Said supposedly argues, on racial hierarchy, it was really based on class superiority. Actually Cannadine argues that class "was as important as (perhaps more important than?)" race. And so Cannadine discusses how in the "white dominions" the British sought to ensure strong governor generals, aristocratic upper houses, and elaborate new orders. We go to India where the British treat the hundred or so princely states with elaborate tact and generosity. We see the British working with local princes and rules from Fiji to Malaya to Zanzibar to Ghana. In the twenties and thirties we see the British prop up new quasi-independent monarchies in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. All over the world we see among the British officials and the local rulers the world of the countryhouse, the fox hunt and the cricket match. Naturally enough this imperial order was obsessed with giving itself honors and glories, such as the Irish Lord Dufferin, who eventually got a "proper" English peerage, as well as the governor generalship of Canada, the viceroy of India and the knighthoods of six separate orders. There are no fewer than six Lake Victorias, while cities and towns and every conceivable form of geological and geographical body was christened after the queen from British Columbia to Belize to Rhodesia.

This effusion of monarchist kitsch is very interesting, but what is its larger significance? Cannadine himself has to admit that despite their endless appetite for royalist cant, conservatives in Canada and Australia never gave their aristocrats more than an ornamental position. He also admits that in the "white dominions," including South Africa, there was no pretence of any arrangement with the indigenous population, who were dispossessed and disinherited. He also agrees that the British exaggerated the effects of caste, that many local rulers were venal puppets. But the major flaw with Cannadine's argument is that Said and his colleagues will not fit into Cannadine's misleading race/class dichotomy. Said focuses as much on religious, technocratic and Zionist prejudices as much as race. And as Barbara Fields has pointed out in two brilliant essays (which Cannadine has mysteriously ignored) "racism" is not something separate from class. After all, what unites the subordinate status of African-Americans in pre-1865 law is not their skin colour, which varies considerably, but the fact that they are almost all slaves, ex-slaves or the descendants of slaves. The development of racist ideology cannot be viewed separately from the class struggles of the past. As Fields puts it, the English were not enslaved in the 17th century because they benefited from centuries of previous struggles. By contrast Africans could claim no such benefit. Racist ideology is as much a mutation of class ideology than it is an alternative.

And so larger questions of the effect of Britain on their colonies and the effect of colonialism on British life and society are not really developed. In order to do that, we would have to look at the overwhelming colonial majority, not the small elites that the British flattered. And we would have to look at racial ideologies, the economic impact of empire, and the "wages of whiteness." Some imperialists may have preferred the "stability" and "organic" nature of colonial India. But most Englishmen viewed this stability as stagnation and treated Hinduism and Islam with contempt. Why else would the British churches concentrate so much on missionaries? And Cannadine makes no mention of miscegenation, a taboo that has been a theme of Forster and Scott and many others. The British may have admired their puppet monarchies in the Middle East. But the most important effect of their mandates was, as Tom Segev has pointed out, to insure the formation of Israel, whose socialist and nationalist ideology was as far from Ornamentalism as one could get. Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, may have stood up for the King of Hawaii, but that did not prevent the King's sister from being overthrown in a vulgar coup by the Americans. There are some errors in the book. Kwame Nkrumah was not a Marxist, South Yemen was not a Soviet satellite, and Canadine refers to "pre-1776" Ontario when he obviously means "post-1776". The ending, however, is interesting as Cannadine discusses what the empire meant during his childhood, less a home of racial others than as an abstraction of power that was slowly dissipating away into irrelevance.

This book presents a clear and concise perspective of the British empire. Not only does the author give a good general overview of this huge topic, but his views are clear and to the point. The empire meant different things to different people. What the author has tried to show is that the British did not base their empire on race, but class. An important distinction which balances many of the anti-empire racial perspectives that politically correct historians have been so fond of pointing out recently. Cannadine agrees that there was a racial element for sure, but that class hierarchy and ceremony were the predomenent factors involved. Seen in this way we get a much different idea of what the Empire was to different people. It is less a Black and White view which may not be popular to those who like to see things in more simplistic terms. Still, a nice read, with clear and concise writing. It will deffinitely stimulate your thoughts on the topic.