Abstract
Whilst John MacKenzie’s work arose out of the study of the British Empire, the intellectual framework which he developed through Propaganda and Empire (1984) and its sequels received a global reception. Many historians of former European imperial powers started to test the concept of ‘popular imperialism’ in non-British contexts. Well before European Empires and the People (2009), MacKenzie’s work had inspired scholars of other European empires to look for the legacy of the colonies in metropolitan cultures. As this unearthing of hitherto-ignored evidence was taking place, it became increasingly evident that the colonial experience had contributed to shape national identities, especially since the New Imperialism coincided with the development of nation states around Europe. This chapter examines the multiple echoes around the world of John MacKenzie’s work on the popular cultures of empire. Beyond these historiographical considerations, the chapter will also demonstrate how the success of John MacKenzie’s ideas reflected broader social and political changes across Europe, echoing the increasing defiance inspired by Eurocentrism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Quoted in Charles-Robert Ageron, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Gilbert Meynier, and Jacques Thobie, Histoire de la France coloniale, Volume II, 1914–1990 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990), 7.
- 2.
John R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, new ed. (London: Macmillan, 1914), 10.
- 3.
John MacKenzie, ed., The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Empire (2016), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118455074/homepage/EditorsContributors.html [accessed 5 May 2018].
- 4.
Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), ix.
- 5.
Charles-Robert Ageron, France coloniale ou parti colonial? (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1978).
- 6.
Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow: Routledge, 2005).
- 7.
In the French case, Raoul Girardet’s excellent L’idée coloniale en France (Paris: La Table ronde, 1972) was often presented as merely the result of the author’s attachment to, and nostalgia for, the French Empire.
- 8.
On authors who predated or accompanied the rise of Said’s ideas, see Daniel M. Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).
- 9.
John M. MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
- 10.
John M. MacKenzie, ‘Analysing “Echoes of Empire” in Contemporary Context: The Personal Odyssey of an Imperial Historian’, in Kalypso Nicolaidis, Berny Sèbe, and Gabrielle Maas, eds., Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 189–206.
- 11.
John M. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986); John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); and John M. MacKenzie with Nigel R. Dalziel, The Scots in South Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).
- 12.
Robert H. MacDonald, The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994); Gordon Pirie, Cultures and Caricatures of British Imperial Aviation: Passengers, Pilots, Publicity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); and Gordon T. Stewart, Jute and Empire: The Calcutta Jute Wallahs and the Landscapes of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).
- 13.
For a reflection on the Studies in Imperialism series, see Andrew S. Thompson, ed., Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013).
- 14.
See, for instance, Kathleen Wilson, ed., A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For a general survey of the multiple disciplinary insights of the ‘new imperial history’, see Stephen Howe, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2010).
- 15.
Stuart Ward, ‘The MacKenziean Moment in Retrospect (or How One Hundred Volumes Bloomed)’, in Andrew S. Thompson, ed., Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 29–48.
- 16.
John M. MacKenzie, ed., Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992).
- 17.
A few examples are ‘Musées et impérialisme: appropriations, science et espace public bourgeois’, in Fabrice Bensimon and Armelle Enders, eds., Le Siècle Britannique: Variations sur une suprématie globale au XIXe siècle (Paris: Sorbonne, 2012); ‘Museen in Europa’, in Pim den Boer, Heinz Duchhardt, George Krels, and Wolfgang Schmale, eds., Europäische Erinnerungesorte 3: Europa und die Welt (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2012), 187–94; ‘Le esposizioni imperiali in Gran Bretagna’, in Sandrine Lemaire, Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Boetsch, and Eric Deroo, eds.,Zoo Umani: Dalla Venere ottentotta ai reality show (Verona: Ombre Corte, 2003), 107–17; ‘Les expositions impériales en Grande-Bretagne’, in Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch, Eric Deroo, and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Zoos Humains: de la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2002), 193–202.
- 18.
John M. MacKenzie, ‘Imperios del viaje: Guias de viaje británicas e imperialismo cultural en los siglos XIX y XX’, in Ricardo Salvatore, ed., Culturas Imperiales: Experiencia y representación en América, Asia y Africa (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2005), 213–41.
- 19.
See, for instance, Almut Steinbach, Sprachpolitik im Britischen Empire. Herrschaftssprache und Integration in Ceylon und den Föderierten Malaiischen Staaten (München: R. Oldenbourg, 2009), 16.
- 20.
As discussed in Nicholas Bancel, Florence Bernault, Pascal Blanchard, Ahmed Boubeker, Achille Mbembe, and Françoise Vergès, eds., Ruptures postcoloniales (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2010), and exemplified by works such as Jean-Loup Amselle, L’Occident décroché: enquête sur les postcolonialismes (Paris: Stock, 2008); and Jean-François Bayart, Les études postcoloniales: un carnaval académique (Paris: Karthala, 2010).
- 21.
Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Laurent Gervereau, eds., Images et Colonies (Paris: BDIC/Achac, 1993).
- 22.
Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire, and Nicolas Bancel, Culture coloniale en France: de la Révolution française à nos jours (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2008).
- 23.
Conversation between the author and Sandrine Lemaire, 20 January 2006.
- 24.
Raoul Girardet, L’idée coloniale en France (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1972).
- 25.
For an overview of the French-speaking historiography of ‘French popular imperialism’, see Berny Sèbe, ‘Exalting Imperial Grandeur: The French Empire and Its Metropolitan Public’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 19–56.
- 26.
See, for instance, among the early attempts, Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur, eds., Promoting the Imperial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); and Martin Evans, ed., Empire and Culture: The French Experience, 1830–1940 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
- 27.
Anthony Kirk-Greene, review of Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur, eds., Promoting the Colonial Idea; and Tony Chafer, The End of Empire in French West Africa, African Affairs 103 (2004), 500–1.
- 28.
Matthew G. Stanard, Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011).
- 29.
See, for instance, in English, Paolo Bertella Farnetti and Cecilia Dau Novelli, eds., Colonialism and National Identity (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) and by the same editors, Images of Colonialism and Decolonisation in the Italian Media (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), or Guido Abbattista, ‘Humans on Display: Reflecting on National Identity and the Enduring Practice of Living Human Exhibitions’, in Guido Abbattista, ed., Moving Bodies Displaying Nations: National Cultures, Race and Gender in World Expositions. Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century (Trieste: EUT, 2014). Similar efforts appear to have been made in the Italian-speaking historiography, with works such as Guido Abbattista, Umanità in mostra. Esposizioni etniche e invenzioni esotiche in Italia (1880–1940) (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2013). On Fascism and propaganda, see Valeria Deplano, L’Africa in casa: propaganda e cultura coloniale nell’Italia fascista (Milano: Mondadori Education, 2015). With thanks to Giuseppe Finaldi for his advice on the subject.
- 30.
Giuseppe Finaldi, ‘“The Peasants Did Not Think of Africa”: Empire and the Italian State’s Pursuit of Legitimacy, 1871–1945’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 223.
- 31.
Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002).
- 32.
Ferran Achilés Cardona, ‘¿Ni imperio ni imperialismo? El imaginario nacional español y el imperialosmo africanista en la España de la Restauración (c. 1880–1909)’, in Ferran Archilés Cardona, Ismael Saz, and Marta García Carrión, eds., Nación y nacionalización. Una perspectiva europea comparada (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2013), 201–24. See also my article on Tomás García Figueras and his perception of the British and French empires: Colonial emulation, competition and opportunism: A twentieth-century perspective on the British and French ‘Empire projects’, in Robert Fletcher, Benjamin Mountford, and Simon Potter, eds., ‘After Darwin’, special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (forthcoming: November 2019).
- 33.
Ferran Achilés Cardona, La narrativa del africanismo franquista: génesis y prácticas socio-educativas, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Valencia (Spain), 7.
- 34.
David Parra Monserrat, ‘Africanismo e arabismo no relato histórico escolar: Espanha, 1939–1956’, História. Revista da FLUP. Porto, fourth series, 6 (2016), 89–101.
- 35.
As exemplified by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983) or Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992).
- 36.
Gilles Teulié, Les Afrikaners et la Guerre anglo-boer (1899–1902) (Montpellier: Université de Montpellier III Paul Valéry, 2000); and personal testimony of the author (20 February 2018).
- 37.
Hugo García Fernández, ‘De Masterman a Orwell: el debate británico sobre la propaganda en democracia, 1914–1945’, Rubrica Contemporánea 5 (2016). http://www.raco.cat/index.php/rubrica/article/viewFile/316667/406765 [accessed 10 November 2018].
- 38.
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, War of Words: Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (1899–1902) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 19; Martin Bossenbroek, Holland op zijn breedst. Indië en Zuid-Afrika in de Nederlandse cultuur omstreeks 1900 (Amsterdam: Bakker, 1996) also seems to fall within the historiographical MacKenzie-ite tradition, even if he refers to MacKenzie’s work only occasionally.
- 39.
See, for instance, Matthijs Kuipers, Fragmented Empire: Popular Imperialism in the Netherlands Around the Turn of the Twentieth Century, PhD thesis, European University in Florence (2018). With thanks to Vincent Kuitenbrouwer for his input about the Dutch-speaking historiographical scene.
- 40.
Fabien Locher and Grégory Quenet, ‘L’histoire environnementale: origines, enjeux et perspectives d’un nouveau chantier’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 56 (2009), 7–38.
- 41.
Bernhard Ghissibl, The Nature of German Imperialism: Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
- 42.
First through an article, John MacKenzie, ‘Edward Said and the Historians’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 18 (1994), 9–25, and then through a full-length volume, John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
- 43.
See for instance, Cristina Almarcegui, ‘El legado de Edward Said. Orientalismo y literatura comparada’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 769–770 (2014), 179–88.
- 44.
Ismail El Outmani, ‘Oriente como discurso en el discurso de Occidente’, Espéculo. Revista de estudios literarios. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. http://webs.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero34/oriente.html [accessed 20 November 2017].
- 45.
Bernard Porter, ‘Further Thoughts on Imperial Absent-Mindedness’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36 (2008), 101–17; and John M. MacKenzie, ‘“Comfort” and Conviction: A Response to Bernard Porter’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36 (2008), 659–68; and see, for instance, Achilés Cardona, ‘¿Ni imperio ni imperialismo?’, 203.
- 46.
Christopher Bayly, ‘Review: John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts’, Journal of Historical Geography 22 (1996), 361. For a discussion of MacKenzie’s involvement in historiographical debates see Cherry Leonardi, ‘The Power of Culture and the Cultures of Power: John MacKenzie and the Study of Imperialism’, in Andrew S. Thompson, ed., Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 57–62.
- 47.
See, for instance, John MacKenzie, ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English Worlds? A Four-Nation Approach to the History of the British Empire’, History Compass 6 (2008), 1244–63.
- 48.
Berny Sèbe, ‘Exalting Imperial Grandeur: The French Empire and Its Metropolitan Public’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 19–56.
- 49.
The review article by John A. Davis, ‘Remapping Italy’s Path to the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Modern History 66 (1994), 291–320, takes such a ‘metro-centric’ approach.
- 50.
Finaldi, ‘The Peasants Did Not Think of Africa’, 225.
- 51.
Bernhard Ghissibl, ‘Imagination and Beyond: Cultures and Geographies of Imperialism in Germany, 1848–1918’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 158–94.
- 52.
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, ‘Songs of an Imperial Underdog: Imperialism and Popular Culture in the Netherlands, 1870–1960’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 90–123; and Matthew Stanard, ‘Learning to Love Leopold: Belgian Popular Imperialism, 1830–1960’, in John MacKenzie, ed., European Empires and the People (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 124–57.
- 53.
See John H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469–1716, new ed. (London: Penguin, 2002); and for example, Raymond Carr, ed., Spain: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
- 54.
As identified by Tomás García Figueras, La acción de España en torno al 98 (1860–1912), De la crisis de la politica africana (1898) al protectorado de Marruecos (1912) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1966), and more recently by Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Sebastian Balfour, Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- 55.
Ferran Achilés Cardona, ‘¿Ni imperio ni imperialismo?’, 203.
- 56.
Berny Sèbe and Matthew Stanard, eds., Decolonising Europe? Popular Responses to the End of Empire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sèbe, B. (2019). MacKenzie-ites Without Borders: Or How a Set of Concepts, Ideas, and Methods Went Global. In: Barczewski, S., Farr, M. (eds) The MacKenzie Moment and Imperial History. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24459-0_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24459-0_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-24458-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24459-0
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)