| Popis: |
While political power in the British Empire was gained by military force, or its potential threat, and consolidated by the imposition of government bureaucracies with their associated legal frameworks, its moral authority was founded on much wider cultural resources. Numerous studies have explored how the pervading ideology of the ‘civilising mission’ with its promise of western education and medical advancement became accepted, or partially accepted, by at least a portion of the colonised populations. During the past decade, scholars have documented how imperial administrators innovated impressive ceremonies and ritual procedures to incorporate colonised groups into the mystical embrace of Empire.4 In this essay I explore how cultural production from diverse sources during the late-Victorian period interacted with political strategies to create a specific domain of discursive and material practices (adapted to local situations and changing contestations) which served to legitimate this global imperial regime. I focus on how scientists, politicans, writers, imperial administrators, missionaries and feminist reformers — those who generated the dominant discourses — constructed definitions of gender, sexuality and race, using the other terms as markers and metaphors. |
