Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #168481 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like it or loathe it, there has never been any shortage of books about the British Empire. However, what David Cannadine's Ornamentalism shows is that until recently Britain itself has tended to be left out of the story. Serious academic research on the Empire has been dominated by specialists on Africa and India, or, in earlier generations, by experts on the 'white' colonies. Cannadine, the current Director of London University's Institute of Historical Research, and one of the most prolific historians of modern Britain, challenges this myopia in his provocative book. He argues that in its heyday--from the 1850s to the 1950s--the British Empire was based on a conscious effort to export a model of class hierarchy and status from home out to overseas possessions. The Indian Raj and the tropics of Africa were run as though they were the ornate stately homes or broad-acred landed estates of southern England. Readers of two of Cannadine's earlier bestselling books Aspects of Aristocracy and, more recently, on Class in Britain--will recognise and enjoy the extended airing he gives to these themes. As usual, Cannadine is at his best in chapters on the monarchy and honours system, when describing the whole flummery and symbolism of British imperial culture. Critics will no doubt complain that he marginalises the less flamboyant aspects of empire--race and economic exploitation most notably. And it might be objected that he has described only the "toffs'" view of empire. But whether you admire or abhor the Ornamentalism, there is plenty here to make you think.--Miles Taylor

Niall Ferguson, The Sunday Telegraph, 22 April 2001
"No historian has written more shrewdly and subtly on [...] upper-class culture and politics in modern Britain than David Cannadine..."

John Grigg, Times, 25 April 2001
'Cannadine is very funny, as well as informative, about the detailed workings of the system.'

Customer Reviews

The sunday suppliment of academic Empire study
This book is rather like an after dinner mint in comparison to other heavier tomes on Empire. It is not a heavy going academic study and falls into a class of other Cannadine recent works which is well suited to excerpts in Sunday suppliments. However, this is not to its discredit. Some other academic volumes on Empire are labrorious in their scope or tiresome in their detail and this is an excellent adjunct to heavier reading undertaken in many degree courses. Although lacking in a tightness of argument it is interesting, amusing and stimulating. The most important stimulation being to help recognise some of the softer issues surrounding Empire. Cannidine captures well the 'fluff' that surrounded the imperial exercise which, though empheral by nature, does much to give insight into the psychology of the British management of informal rule and adoption of existing ruling elites into British class and ruling structures. In this case the explanation of the honours system is something rarely touched on in other general academic studies. This work does not break new ground, but it is a new format in that being and easy read makes this material explicit and accessible where otherwise you may have needed to dig. It demands however, a greater knowledge of the subject of Empire to ensure its proper context is maintained.

Useful re-examination for the popular history market
David Cannadine's acclaimed 2001 study of British attitudes to empire is a fascinating counterpoint to the accepted wisdom of works such as Edward Said's _Orientalism_ - but, hampered by its popular history format, it is too brief, and at times frustratingly short on detail.

It has become a truism that the British empire was an embarrassing edifice of institutionalised cultural hegemony and racism, aimed at civilising a world that is fundamentally uncivilised (seen so because since it lacked great British virtues like honour, cricket, tea and stiff upper lips). Of course, even the most cursory look at the period will tell you that a) such a judgement is, if not without foundation, vastly unfair, and b) seeing an empire of three and a half (or so) centuries as one unified 'period' ruled by unified attitudes is a touch on the silly side anyway.

Cannadine, whose primary scholarly interest is in the nineteenth century social class system in Britain, advances an interestingly different take on Empire: that, far from seeing the exotically-distasteful Other - degenerate examples of uncivilised, different people - everywhere they looked, the British were much more inclined to seek correspondance in the societies they encountered. Fundamentally, Britain was a deeply hierarchical society, and it was in such milieux that the British felt comfortable. They were enormous snobs, essentially. Thus, the Englishman Abroad, far from feeling a lofty superiority on racial grounds, sought (what he perceived as) his social equivalents and betters, and treated them accordingly. As the author puts it:

"They exported social perceptions on the presumption of sameness as much as they exported social perceptions on the assumption of difference. [...] Their empire existed overseas: but the British tried to make it seem like home. They saw what they were conditioned, what they wanted, and what they expected, to see."

Across the world, the British looked for (and expected to see) a class system. Expecting to see it, they saw it, however misguidedly - in the Indian caste system, for example, or the institution of the zamindar, both of which they gravely misunderstood as a result. When the British ruling classes looked to India (and elsewhere), they saw there a mirror of Britain. Their assessment was flawed, but it shaped the way in which they dealt with the society: through elaborate social rituals aimed at reinforcing hierarchies, and bolstering the power of local authorities - whom they saw as their equals. These rituals are what Cannadine calls 'ornamentalism'. ("For ornamentalism was hierarchy made visible, immanent and actual.")

Cannadine makes an interesting case, but the book is rather too short (200 pages) to provide enough detail to back up the argument fully. Certain counter-examples are skimmed over very abruptly: Cecil Rhodes, surely one of the biggest arguments to the contrary, gets barely a mention. As Cannadine admits in his concluding chapter, ornamentalism was only one way in which the British viewed their empire; it existed _alongside_ the aspects we're more accustomed to, including hierarchy on racial lines which put British society and values at the centre of the world, to be evangelised at the cost of all else.

Nevertheless, a useful re-examination.

irrelevantism
This is not a good book. At best it is derivative of other scholarship, a populist rendition of works by Bayley and A. P. Thornton, spread extremely thin over many pages, and denunded of content and focus. At worst it is a sort of conceited extra to the unreadible Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy illustrating the same sort of oddities in methodolgy and measurement. The author's discovery of social snobbery and Empire as an alternative to race is superficial, it ignores the dynamic of race and class, and exaggerates the power of the very social class he is fascinated with. He cannot really believe that his linkage between the history of Empire and British soceity is new? In the section entitled Limitations even he is moved to discount some of the more absurd claims to originality made in the earlier part of the text. The title is an obvious play on a book he has not probably read (or even necessarily comprehended). Like Burke's apolgia for the French aristocracy, Cannadine's view of the British is narrow, he admires the plumage but ignores the dead bird.