As Long as There Were Any Roads to Amnesia and Anaesthesia Still to be Explored: Contemporary Artistic Reflections on the Intertwined Memories of British Imperial History, Trees and Place

In 2023, Tate Britain rehung its semi-permanent collections display as a revisionist history of Britain. This major curatorial project makes compelling storytelling. Its critically engaged approach opens British art and history to wider interpretations. At the same time, the display elevates rich, white men. Drawing on a range of theoretical literature from cultural studies, sociology and art history, this article considers how Tate Britain operationalises difference and hierarchy as a British inheritance post-Brexit. I argue that key areas early in the first section of the display, Historic and Early Modern British Art (1550 to 1930), augment a rich, white, male hegemony, against which ‘others’, people of colour, the working classes and (some) white women, are presented as what Nirmal Puwar calls ‘space invaders’. I explore how curatorial revisions and other display strategies – chronology, staging, portraiture and binaries – both disrupt and reinforce the hegemony. The article includes my drawings of key areas of the display, which guide my research.

A hippopotamus herd in Trafalgar Square

This dissertation is about Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and postcolonial studies, with cultural heritage as the subject of examination. It examines how postcolonial heritage preservation can function as an actual decolonization project, with specific reference to the Southeast Asian context, by articulating the relationship between the understanding of history, place-attachment and decolonization. The dissertation suggests that heritage needs to be understood in a trialectic relationship of time, space and identity and not in purely temporal or economic terms, such that the complexity and possibilities of cultural heritage can be articulated. It also argues for the importance of differentiating between depoliticized and radicalized versions of “collective memory”, where the latter provides the space for resistance. Elaborating on the “Inter-Asia” approach and on previous studies of “port cities” as cosmopolitan urban spaces closely related with each other long before the era of “global capitalism” and often marginalized in the nationalist discourses, this dissertation proposes and demonstrates how looking at port cities can be operative as “method”. This methodology allows different locales to become each other’s mutual reference point in an equal way, based on their common historical experiences. With examples mainly drawn from three former British colonial port cities in Southeast Asia—Hong Kong, Singapore and Penang—this dissertation articulates the following issues: (1) Colonial heritage: How is colonial heritage treated in postcolonial societies and how are nationalism and global capitalism implicated within the decision-making process? Why are anti-colonial nationalism and the demolition of colonial heritage not effective ways of decolonization? How might a decolonization process that challenges both nationalism and global capitalism be possible through the preservation of “colonial” heritage? (2) Heritage of port cities: How have heritage places and urban landscapes that embed the histories of port cities been treated in postcolonial societies? What are the ideologies represented behind these treatments? What is the significance of the heritage of port cities for reflections on multiple vernacular modernities, multiculturalism, cultural hybridization and race relations in postcolonial societies? (3) Possibilities of cultural heritage as resistance: How is it possible for cultural heritage to operate as forms of resistance against displacement, neoliberalization and undemocratic decision-making processes? How can the “depoliticized” face of cultural heritage be used as the channel to smuggle in dissent from the dominant paradigm of society? By discussing these themes, the dissertation argues that critical negotiation with the histories embedded in heritage, place-based memory and sense of place associated with heritage, and the association of heritage with “right to city” are significant for the preservation of cultural heritage to function as a project of resistance and decolonization.

An account is given of the molluscan assemblages recovered from fluvial deposits beneath the ‘Upper Floodplain terrace’ of the River Thames in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square, central London. A total of 37 aquatic and 28 terrestrial taxa have been recorded, a diversity indicative of full interglacial conditions. Palaeobotanical and vertebrate evidence suggests that these fossiliferous sediments belong to the Last (Ipswichian) Interglacial, a conclusion strongly supported by molluscan evidence. The combination of the presence of certain species, such as Belgrandia marginata, Potomida littoralis and Margaritifera auricularia, together with the absence of other taxa that no longer live in Britain, such as Pisidium clessini, Corbicula fluminalis and Unio crassus, imparts a distinctive character to the fauna. These temperate molluscs were not only present in the Trafalgar Square Sands and Silts, but also in the underlying Spring Gardens Gravel, showing the latter to be an interglacial aggradation that did not accumulate during the late Wolstonian, contrary to previous interpretations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Revolutionary Narrative of European History: Bonneville's <i>History of Modern Europe</i> (1789–1792)

Under Scan, described as an 'interactive video art installation for public space',1 was presented in Trafalgar Square, a tourist attraction in central London, from 15 to 23 November 2008 as part of the Relational Architecture series by the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Apart from its credentials as the largest interactive video installation and the longest-running event to be presented in Trafalgar Square (Vanagan, 2009, p. 86) it constitutes an interesting case study for this chapter in order to demonstrate the ways in which screen-based works can function in a 'media city' (McQuire, 2009). Moving away from an art exhibition milieu (such as a museum or a gallery) or a cultural space where they can interact with various arts genres (such as a projection space, a music concert or a theatre performance) screens that operate 'out in the open', especially when they are meant to serve a purpose of interactivity, need to entertain and engage a very heterogeneous crowd.

Redefining Semi-Colonialism:A Historiographical Essay on British Colonial Presence in China Taoyu Yang Introduction The tumultuous relationship between Britain and China in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century has attracted considerable attention and continues to pique scholarly interests. Many existing older studies pertaining to Sino-British relations advanced multi-pronged analysis into the entangled economic, political, and diplomatic relations between the two. However, despite this notable body of scholarship on the various types of Sino-British interaction, China was largely ignored for some decades in the literature on the British colonial history.1 The reasons for China's relative low profile in scholarship on British imperial history stemmed from scholars' understandings of China's minor significance within the British Empire and from practical difficulties such as limited access to primary sources and lack of linguistic skills. More importantly, the very designation of China as a "semi-colony" provided scholars of colonialism with justifiable reasons for downplaying China's relevance in colonial studies on the ground of its partial and incomplete coloniality. However, in the last two decades, scholars have made remarkable progress in incorporating China into the academic literature on British colonial history. Such a scholarly trend has taken place in a changing intellectual milieu. The conscious efforts by historians of China to move beyond the "China-centered approach," a methodological orientation popularized by Paul Cohen,2 have propelled scholars to reexamine the role of British imperialism in the modern history of China. In particular, the studies of Sino-British interaction have changed because of the significant revisionist works on the Qing Empire and the increasingly transnational focus in works on the late Qing and Republican period.3 Additionally, the rise of "New Imperial History" and the continual growth of postcolonial studies have lent scholars new analytical tools to explore Sino-British interactions.4 Another important factor that has contributed to the upsurge of studies on British colonialism in China lies in improvements in access to archival sources in China and beyond. As a result, instead of dismissing the sui generis coloniality of China, a growing number of scholars have, as James Hevia advocates, brought China into colonial studies.5 The goal of this essay is to synthesize and analyze recent scholarship on British colonialism in China through a conceptual approach. In doing so, I choose to revisit and redefine the notion of "semi-colonialism," a term favored by many American and Chinese scholars. The concept of "semi-colonialism," or "semi-colony," has its distinctive genealogy. It was originally coined by Vladimir Lenin and later adopted by Mao Zedong in the 1920s and 1930s. They both underscored semi-colonialism as a unique social formation characterized by the coexistence of colonialism and native feudal structure.6 Although semi-colonialism, as used by these two Marxist critics, helped legitimize their respective political and ideological agenda, it did reflect the need to modify the term "colonialism" in the Chinese context. The subsequent generations of scholars, most notably Jürgen Osterhammel and Shu-mei Shih, have used this term to conceptualize China's distinctive coloniality vis-à-vis other colonial settings. As Osterhammel explains, semi-colonialism can be used "to make sense of a historical process in which 'feudalism' obviously disintegrated, but no significant transition to capitalism took place."7 In a somewhat different vein, Shih uses semi-colonialism to "describe the cultural and political condition in modern China to foreground. . . [the] incomplete and fragmentary nature of China's colonial structure."8 Moreover, scholars like Tani Barlow and Bryna Goodman have suggested that the outcomes of semi-colonial rule were distinct from those of other total colonies and that "semi," as a qualifier, remains useful to explain the specific colonial conditions in China.9 Previous discussion of semi-colonialism has attached importance to the partial and incomplete penetration of imperial powers in China, and this concept has often been used to stress the qualitative differences between China and other colonized settings. Instead, this essay throws new light on and offers a more nuanced understanding of the concept of semi-colonialism by drawing on recent scholarship on British imperial history in China. This newly defined notion of semi-colonialism highlights...

The following books are under consideration in this review: Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market, by Mary Wilson Carpenter; pp. xxii + 206. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003, $39.95. Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission, by Rhonda Anne Semple; pp. xvii + 285. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003, £60.00, $110.00. The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914, edited by Andrew Porter; pp. x + 264. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003, $45.00, £32.99. Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire, edited by Brian Stanley; pp. x + 313. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003, $45.00, £32.99. Religion versus Empire?: British Protestantism, Missionaries, and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914, by Andrew Porter; pp. xviii + 373. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Palgrave, 2004, £60.00, $74.95, £18.99 paper, $29.95 paper. Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940, by Jeffrey Cox; pp. ix + 357. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, $55.00. Critical reflections on the connections between religion and empire building have been central to the rekindling of interest in the history of the British Empire over the past two decades. In the early 1980s, the study of empire was in crisis. Imperial history, an approach that took the Empire as a whole as its analytical field and that was generally seen as both distinct and distant from British history, labored under three significant impediments. First, the growth of [End Page 427] national historiographies in each of the former colonies threatened the viability, and even desirability, of imperial history. In a landmark 1984 essay, David Fieldhouse stressed the impossibility of any imperial historian being able to keep up with all the significant research being produced about each colony, making it increasingly necessary for future research to be grounded in a single colonial site that could be used as a vantage point on the Empire as a whole. Certainly given the growing volume and vitality of these national historiographies, the broad history of the Empire and the perspective of imperial history were less likely to appeal to historians based in these former colonies. Second, and following from this, in the early 1980s imperial history as a teaching field often had limited appeal outside British universities. Generally the Empire was not made central in the teaching of British history in colleges in the United States, and imperial history had largely been displaced in other former British colonies, where, as Ann Curthoys has pointed out, national history had become the staple of undergraduate classrooms and where graduate students and academic historians labored to build up detailed pictures of the national past. Third, and to my mind most importantly, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson's work from the 1950s on the economics of the Empire had come not only to dominate imperial history but also threatened to smother it. Robin Winks suggests that Gallagher and Robinson initiated a "historiographical revolution" that not only set the key grounds for academic debate about the imperial past but also dictated the essential approach of two generations of imperial historians (653). Historians following in their wake repeatedly asked the same questions Gallagher and Robinson had—albeit very significant ones about "informal" imperial influence, the role of indigenous "collaborators," and the dynamics of both expansion and decolonization. Graduate students pursued very similar questions whether they were working on Punjab or Rhodesia, and historians used the same kind of sources in the same ways. As a result, imperial historians followed narrow channels of research, testing the Gallagher–Robinson thesis—which had seen imperial expansion as emerging out of local crises in the periphery rather than being driven by any metropolitan ideology—for its applicability to various locales and at various points in time. This focus in turn pushed a range of other important research areas—including...

Since 1999 the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has seen the installation of a range of contemporary artworks that have prompted a national discussion about national identity, tolerance, diversity and history in the context of Trafalgar Square. This article explores aspects of the narrative around the Fourth Plinth scheme since 2005 to discuss the relationship between different versions of national identity and public place, and how the use of historical narratives can shore up contemporary versions of national identity.

Phantom Time: Literary History at the Edge of the Nation

Ever since its conception in 1824, the 'much loved friend' in Trafalgar Square has been part of national life to an extent unmatched by any other great museum. Established, housed and maintained directly by their representatives in parliament, the British gallery was always owned by the people. And they exercised their ownership rights in ways that could surprise and confound the Trustees and staff charged with the Gallery's administration: from Victorian working-class matrons enjoying gin-fuelled picnics to the postwar teenagers who made Trafalgar Square their 'snogging shop'. While the site gave the Gallery a ring-side seat on some of the most violent political demonstrations of modern times, its location at the heart of the capital also made it a place of refuge in times of national crisis - and never more so than during World War II, when thousands of Londoners thronged the famous one-picture shows and free concerts organized by Kenneth Clark.Extensive new research reveals the close personal and often highly political interest taken in the Gallery's affairs by the Trustees, who included many well-known figures: from Sir Robert Peel and William Ewart Gladstone, through Curzon and John Maynard Keynes, to Noel Annan and Isaiah Berlin. But its phenomenal success in becoming a national symbol also made the Gallery a tempting target for those seeking political change - from the Suffragette who slashed Velazquez' Rokeby Venus in 1914 to the Birmingham man who stole Goya's Wellington in 1961. first history of the Gallery ever published, The Nation's Mantelpiece traces the development of an institution whose superlative collections often set the pace in art history, but whose dependence on parliamentary funding regularly implicated it in debates surrounding education, social cohesion and national heritage. story of the Gallery's paintings offers an intriguing opportunity to follow the changes in taste and connoisseurship that have helped create the Old Master canon we know today. building itself has been a test of taste, and its carbuncle-strewn history also receives unprecedentedly close attention.Copiously illustrated with a fascinating selection of previously unseen architectural plans, cartoons and other images that illuminate every aspect of the Gallery's history, as well as sixty of its most significan paintings, The Nation's Mantelpiece deserves a place on the mantelpiece of everyone interested in British history or in the history of art.

Reviewed by: The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History Stephen Heathorn (bio) The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History, by J. G. A. Pocock; pp. xiii + 344. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, £17.99, $29.99. J. G. A. Pocock is a name instantly recognizable to many readers of Victorian Studies, despite the fact that most of his considerable scholarly output over the past fifty years has dealt with early-modern Britain. As one of the founders of the so-called Cambridge school of intellectual history in the 1960s, Pocock established his reputation in a series of pathbreaking books that rigorously contextualized the political thought of James Harrington, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. But he is probably more familiar to Victorianists for his call in the 1970s for the integration of the national narratives of "The Three Kingdoms" (Scotland, Ireland, England) into a "new British history"—a development that is no longer "new" and has been particularly noteworthy among scholars of the nineteenth century. Pocock's latest book, The Discovery of Islands, is a collection of linked essays written over the past fifteen years that ruminate on themes first raised in his seminal 1973 lecture (subsequently published in the Journal of Modern History in 1975), "British History: A Plea for a New Subject," the very essay that many see as launching the "new British history." The collection is divided into five sections: an [End Page 560] introduction which sets out the "new British history" both in the original 1970s formulation and in terms of Pocock's reflections on the historiography generated by it in the thirty years since; section 2 deals with the early-modern roots of the "Three Kingdoms" and, in particular, the role of the Tudor state; section 3 concentrates on viewing the developments of 1688 from a "British" as opposed to Anglo-centric perspective; section 4 views the period of the Second Age of Union (1801–1921), largely through the lens of this New Zealander's understanding of New Zealand history; lastly, section 5 concludes by examining the succession of Britain from its own imperial creation and turn towards a European future. While the book thus follows a more or less chronological structure, many of the essays are, in fact, meditations on the nature of historiography, the utility of history for the present, and both history and historiography's potential for the ordering of political identities in the future. For Pocock, British historiography ought always to consider the histories of the multiple nations that make up the Atlantic Archipelago (his term for the British home islands, which he admits, never really caught on) and the oceanic reach of the British Empire. But the first key to grappling with Britain's past lies in England's role in ordering the affairs of the core nations of the Atlantic Archipelago. The Statute of Wales of 1536 and the unions of 1707 and 1801 were all profoundly unequal arrangements that benefited the Anglo-British state, and in the nineteenth century, subordination to this state extended across the globe in the form of the Empire. While acknowledging the postcolonial critique of the Empire's operation, Pocock argues that for much of their history the neo-Britains that were settled around the world were based on and fostered an often positive and constructive British cultural and political identity. The relationship between Britain and its non-settler empire has been overemphasized, especially by recent nineteenth-century scholarship, which has occluded the historic relationship between the neo-Britains and the "home" islands. This is a theme also taken up by both sides of the recent debate over the depth of the domestic impact of empire on Britain, characterized by Bernard Porter's Absent-Minded Imperialists (2004) and Andrew Thompson's The Empire Strikes Back? (2005). Much of Pocock's book is actually concerned with the dissolution of Greater Britain and its Empire, which he sees as the consequences of imperial expansion beyond the settler colonies, and of Britain's industrialization and the subsequent collapse of the social and political forces that the industrial revolution begat. In this collection Pocock argues that a capacious and progressive British cultural and political...

<i>Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett</i> by Nels Pearson

Conjuring Up a King

It is a cold and wintry evening in central London. On the south side of the river, across the Millennium Bridge, crowds gather to watch an auspicious event. One could be forgiven for thinking a met...