(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

I'm currently trying to read approximately a million pages worth of primary source material on colonialism in the Victorian Era, which at least gives me the benefit of thinking a lot about my colonial fantasy novel.

*twitches* It's interesting, there's just so much of it and I still don't know exactly what I'm writing about.

Comments

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

What books are you reading?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonization
Peter Cain (ed.), Empire and Imperialism: The Debate of the 1870s
John Stuart Mill, "Considerations on Representative Government"
John Clive, Macauley: The Shaping of the Historian
Rudyard Kiplin, Plain Tales from the Hills and various poems

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

*goes to look at library*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And by "Kiplin" I mean "Kipling", and that's also available here (http://ghostwolf.dyndns.org/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/).

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

What's classed as primary source material? At the mo' I'm reading Spies In Arabia (http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/19001945/?view=usa&ci=9780195331417), which is about how the British Empire dealt with the Middle East before and after WW1- from covert spying (which gave me a major headache, which I suppose was the point) to postwar bombing (their rationale for bombing the fuck out of Saudi Arabia and Iraq made me cry).

It's not Victorian, though. Guess it's the last gasp of old-fashioned British Imperialism.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Anything from the roughly the era -- there's a list up above. (The Clive is secondary, but still.)

Ooh, that looks interesting.

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Um, by covert spying I mean Britain and the Ottoman Empire were allies, so basically British military personell would "visit" for "fun" and disappear into the deserts. Also, British academics (archaeologists, geologists) would do unusually thorough surveys, and, wouldn't ya know it, Whitehall was just full of archaeology enthusiasts! Consuls were technically not meant to gather information, but if a British resident went to, say, a party, and just happened to overhear something interesting, they would mention it to their good friend the consul over tea. There were, like, three other unofficial agencies going too- some of them reported to the consuls, some (MI5) were completely on their own. Don't even get me started on the India Office.

I love it: the military guys didn't even try to hide what they were doing. One guy applied for a visa because he wanted to take a "walking holiday" and the consul (Cairo, I think) was like, uh, no. Guy reapplies saying he wants to visit Cairo for a month, for his health, no walking whatsoever, and the Consulate replied along the lines of "Sir, as we have no doubt that you still intend to go "walking" and you're a known spy, and we're allies with the Ottoman empire, we have to turn you down."

And then WW1 broke out, and the whole operation was streamlined and (unofficially) put into the hands of T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, D.G. Hogarth et al, who were mostly civilians (basically TEL went around correcting memoes and maps and showing off his superior learnings until he got himself shipped off to the Hejaz- and the rest is history). It sort of worked, considering the Arab Revolt was an asymmetrical conflict.

And then, after the war, the Brits bombed the hell out of the Middle East because "the only thing the Arab understands is a show of force" and "the deaths of women and children matter little to the Arab, because war supersedes family blah blah blah shitcakes." Violence is the only language those savages UNDERSTAND! It makes me sick, reading some of that stuff.

Sigh. And to think I got into all this because of a movie and an argument. I said Lawrence of Arabia was my favorite film, and my dad's Turkish friend went off, going on about how TEL was the cause of all the problems in the M.E. etc. and so on. I was taken aback, and told him I would totally get back to the argument when I'd read up some more. *sigh*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The first part of that is kind of hilarious. *grins*

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Topic: Victorian and Imperial influence in 20th century children's classics.

Victorian Mores and Through the Looking-Glass!

Was post-colonial fantasy literature (Narnia, LOTR) a nostalgic metaphor?

Empire, Liberation, Manifest Destiny and The Chronicles of Narnia

Actually, now I'm wondering if Narnia and it's ilk (which could be summed up as "British children (people) conquer a savage land and bring Jesus and milk and honey") are, um, nostalgia for the glory days when Britain ruled the world.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

That'd be lovely, if I wasn't writing a straight history paper. *sighs* Something about -- um, the white man's burden, how that affected colonialism/imperialism and how it was used in India.

[isweedan]

When I read the afterward of Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative I was ever so excited to learn that he'd served as a pilot in Burma. Instantly thought "OMG! Peter! Crossover!" Apparently, really deep down I think its possible to crossover Narnia with my political science books. <3

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*laughs* As we have already established, I cross Narnia over with anything and everything. (The immortal!Susan 'verse doubles back on itself by crossing over with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. *cough*)