- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226075334
- eISBN:
- 9780226075303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226075303.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of President William McKinley's dilemma about what to do with the newly acquired Philippines, and then sets out the book's purpose, which is ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of President William McKinley's dilemma about what to do with the newly acquired Philippines, and then sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore how deploying the visual to signify empire helped further American imperialism in Asia. Through a close reading of a number of visual scapes—including the body, the decorative arts, the mass media, maps, the public spectacle of a parade, and architecture—the book argues that different visual mediums furthered empire while concomitantly fostering a space where debates about empire could take place. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of President William McKinley's dilemma about what to do with the newly acquired Philippines, and then sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore how deploying the visual to signify empire helped further American imperialism in Asia. Through a close reading of a number of visual scapes—including the body, the decorative arts, the mass media, maps, the public spectacle of a parade, and architecture—the book argues that different visual mediums furthered empire while concomitantly fostering a space where debates about empire could take place. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Sujit Sivasundaram
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226038223
- eISBN:
- 9780226038360
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226038360.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that ...
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How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that marked Britain's contemporaneous subjugation of the island of Sri Lanka. This book reconsiders the arrival of British rule in South Asia as a dynamic and unfinished process of territorialization and state building, revealing that the British colonial project was framed by the island's traditions and maritime placement, and built in part on the model they provided. Using palm-leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka to read the official colonial archive, it tells the story of two sets of islanders in combat and collaboration. The book explores how the British organized the process of “islanding”: they aimed to create a separable unit of colonial governance and trade in keeping with conceptions of ethnology, culture, and geography. But rather than serving as a radical rupture, it reveals, islanding recycled traditions the British learned from Kandy, a kingdom in the Sri Lankan highlands whose customs—from strategies of war to views of nature—fascinated the British. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, the book provides a retelling of the advent of British rule.Less
How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that marked Britain's contemporaneous subjugation of the island of Sri Lanka. This book reconsiders the arrival of British rule in South Asia as a dynamic and unfinished process of territorialization and state building, revealing that the British colonial project was framed by the island's traditions and maritime placement, and built in part on the model they provided. Using palm-leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka to read the official colonial archive, it tells the story of two sets of islanders in combat and collaboration. The book explores how the British organized the process of “islanding”: they aimed to create a separable unit of colonial governance and trade in keeping with conceptions of ethnology, culture, and geography. But rather than serving as a radical rupture, it reveals, islanding recycled traditions the British learned from Kandy, a kingdom in the Sri Lankan highlands whose customs—from strategies of war to views of nature—fascinated the British. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, the book provides a retelling of the advent of British rule.
