Visions of Empire: Patriotism, Popular Culture and the City, 18701939

(Hardback)

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Description

The emergence of a vibrant imperial culture in British society from the 1890s both fascinated and appalled contemporaries. It has also consistently provoked controversy among historians. This book offers a ground-breaking perspective on how imperial culture was disseminated. It identifies the important synergies that grew between a new civic culture and the wider imperial project. Beaven shows that the ebb and flow of imperial enthusiasm was shaped through a fusion of local patriotism and a broader imperial identity. Imperial culture was neither generic nor unimportant but was instead multi-layered and recast to capture the concerns of a locality. The book draws on a rich seam of primary sources from three representative English cities. These case studies are considered against an extensive analysis of seminal and current historiography. This renders the book invaluable to those interested in the fields of imperialism, social and cultural history, popular culture, historical geography and urban history. -- .

Reviews

Visions of Empire is a welcome addition to
the debate about British cultural imperialism.
With the advent of the global, paying heed
to the local can add much to historical
understanding. A new history of empire is
developing which highlights the ambiguity
and elasticity of popular imperialism. Beavens
work advances this and presents a
serious challenge to recent national and transnational
studies of the cultural dispersal of
imperial ideas.

Author Bio

Brad Beaven is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth