Identity, Empire and the Phoenix Archive Project

Transcript

Identity, Empire and the Phoenix Archive Project

Prof. Katharine Tyler

I'm a social anthropologist with a research background in critical race and ethnicity theory, for want of a better word, studies. I've done fieldwork in different areas across England, in rural and urban and suburban places, looking at how people get along with each other or not, across ethnic, racial, & class differences. So looking at everyday forms of multiculturalism and racism and I'm using the kind of perspectives that I've learned from that work to think about this really significant moment in time, because this footage spans a turbulent time of history from the 1930s to the 1950s.

And, of course, if we think of that time in Britain that included the Great Depression, whereby there were over 3.5 million people were unemployed in the UK by 1932. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne and the current king's grandfather was crowned King George VI, which is captured in some of this footage. And this period, of course, included the Second World War, which is interesting thinking about what's absent in the footage. And of course, at the end of the war the process of decolonization of the British Empire began.

And that's kind of my starting point, looking at the narratives of how we might see film through ideas of empire, through ideas of class, through ideas of Englishness, Britishness and whiteness. So let me just start by, telling you then how I've approached these films.

In approaching this film archive, I asked [Phoenix Archive Project Manager Luke Hagan] to direct me towards footage that raised questions of Englishness, whiteness, social class, and the post-colonial.  I'm going to begin by setting up very briefly the framework that I've deployed to interpret this footage. And then I'm going to draw out some of the themes that I see by looking at it through that framework.

So my interpretation of this material is inspired by a body of disciplinary literature entitled Critical Whiteness Studies. The starting point for this literature is that too often than not, within predominantly white Western societies, white racial identity is racially unmarked, invisible, and unnamed. Whiteness thus becomes the universal norm that goes unnoticed and the point from which everything else is judged and takes meaning.

In my reading of these film clips, I set out to make white racial identities particular and racially marked as white, in the same way that black African-Caribbean identities are racially marked as particular and distinct within the footage. Now, this approach opens up a pathway to examine the reproduction of white racial privilege and power that underpins structural racism within British society in the 1930s and 50s, when the footage was filmed. 

Now, my interpretation of this footage of the Caribbean in the 1930s and 50s, filmed by a white British man, has also been guided by perspectives from within post-colonial studies. This is especially significant given that these film clips spanned the time of decolonization of empire. Reading this footage through the lens of post-colonial literature enables us to think about how the contemporary processes of racialization in Britain, unmediated by discourses of racial difference, can be traced to Britain's histories of colonialism and enslavement. So there's legacies of the way in which we think about difference today can be seen in this footage filmed in the recent past. 

Now, questions of social class are also at the forefront of my interpretation of this material. From this standpoint, we're given an insight into what constitutes upper class, wealthy white English notions of respectability and decorum, including gendered ways of dressing and comportment.

We also see how white upper class notions of respectability take meaning in relation to racialised and class others, including the representation of African Caribbean people, landscapes, and animals. Crucially, this British footage also shows this how wealthy, upper class white values, esthetics and ways of being become entwined with Englishness and Britishness. 

So I'm now going to turn to six emerging, and intertwined themes. But before I do, it's worth giving a little more relevant historical background to the time that the footage was shot. So I've already mentioned the Great Depression, but the British Empire was at its height in 1922. It was the largest empire the world had ever seen, ruling over 458 million people, the imperial project was vital in the establishment of everyday, racialised and class nations of difference that continued into the present. A point I've already made. After the Second World War, a process of decolonization began whereby those colonized sought independence, which opened the pathway for post-colonial migration into Britain. So this moment in time is absolutely fascinating. If you start to think about it,it's both the height of empire, its decline and then the process of decolonization. It's against this background that my interpretation then of these film clips is taking meaning. This is what I'm thinking of when I'm reading this material now. 

It's also important to note that I'm not straightforwardly criticizing the content of this footage for its whiteness, wealthy middle classness. Rather, I'm setting out to show how the content evokes wider social historical processes of difference that underpin aspects of white Britishness and how those wider processes are played out in the context of this family's footage. So, in this sense, I'm reading this one family's experiences as part of a wider social historical process of which we are all part of.

So the first theme: The English country garden, and empire.

You get that there's a sense of Englishness and Britishness as white and upper class now that strikes you, but this becomes apparent to me in the recurring image of white, upper class women and men in cultivated garden landscapes in the Caribbean that are reminiscent of English country gardens. These spaces are depicted as safe, tranquil, calm, ordered and set apart from the savannah and colonial cityscapes that lie beyond them. So we often see the family retreating, if you like, to these, very picturesque garden spaces throughout their travels.

Significantly, images of the English countryside became racialised as white in England in the context of post-colonial settlement from the former colonies in the 1940s and 50s. We can see in these film clips from the 30s and 50s how this image of Englishness is entwined with white, wealthy upper class values, habits and ways of being.

So theme two is the urban landscape and empire. Following on from this image of the English country garden, we also see the ways in which the realities of empire are inscribed on the Caribbean cityscape. The Trinidadian city of San Fernando, is depicted as a developed city shaped by the institutions of empire. The camera's lens captures a red postbox, red fire engines, a Christian church, the civic buildings of the town hall, the Supreme Court and the police station. This part of the city looks prosperous, developed and developing. It forms a stark contrast to the poorer part of town, which looks polluted with cars and overcrowded with people living in rundown dwellings. The racial and class inequalities of empire are transparent in this division of urban space.

The third theme I pull out is the seascape and the evocations of histories of empire and enslavement. We see images of the sea that surrounds the Caribbean islands. The seascape is evocative of the international network of exploitation and transportation that constituted the transatlantic, slave trade and the British Empire from the 16th century onwards. Many enslaved people were brought to the Caribbean from Africa. Plantations were established and the production of sugar and cotton began. Ships sail to Africa from British ports, including the West Country ports of Bristol, Plymouth, Exeter and smaller ports across the region. So in seeing that sea, the seascape that the filmmaker is attracted to in the Caribbean, I'm reminded of of that history. Now, these ships carried goods from local areas, other parts of Europe and the wider British Empire that were exchanged for enslaved Africans who were then taken to the Caribbean.

Now, in one of the clips, we see two, well-dressed white upper class women and a man and a boy drinking milk from a coconut in a country garden. This image is juxtaposed to three African Caribbean men lifting bananas from a small boat onto a large ship, watched by white people. For me, this imagery illustrates how the racialised and class histories of enslavement structures the relations between the colonizer and the colonized in the 1930s. Indeed, the continued extraction of raw materials from the colonies, in this case bananas and in other clips we see oil, is also evocative of the movement of raw materials from the colonies to Britain that was intrinsic to the imperial project.

The perceived contrast between the cultivated landscape of the colonizer and the unruly landscape of those colonized is further reflected in the depiction of animals. We saw in one of the clips the family on safari. The filmmaker films hippos in the river and a small crocodile on the riverbank. Later on in this film, we meet a man who tames and kills snakes, which look poisonous. Here we are given a sense that the colonial landscape is populated by dangerous animals that threaten the safety of the white British colonizers.

This supposedly dangerous landscape forms a stark contrast to the Victorian English family home that we actually saw a bit of. Here the family play with their pet dog who, in contrast to the wild animals and the colonies, is portrayed as tame, safe, playful and loved.

Then I've got a fifth theme, which is Empire and Home. The construction of those colonized as racial others is reproduced in the articulation of racial difference at home in England. In this regard, there are moments in the footage when hierarchical, racialised differences are articulated within the rhythm and flow of everyday life. In England. For example, and we saw this during the lifeboat carnival in Essex Walton on the Naze, there are two white children dressed as indigenous Native American Indians. Their faces are brown and their arms are white. There are also two white women dressed in what looked like Japanese kimonos. These flash points are reminders of the ways in which stereotypical notions of racialised cultural difference seen in the colonies travel to England, and vice versa.

We've also seen footage of the coronation of King George VI, and that's actually the current king's grandfather. Now, there's a clip of South Asian soldiers in the procession and I'm looking at the figures and I'm thinking perhaps [they are] Gurkhas from Nepal or maybe Gurkhas who are part of the British army, but they're marching in procession to honor the new King. And it's worth noting that George VI and his wife were not only crowned King and Queen of the UK and the Commonwealth, but also Emperor and Empress consort of India. This is a further reminder of the intimate connection between the formation of Britishness and its empire at home.

And then the final theme I want to just flag up is the reproduction of nationhood. What also struck me about watching the coronation (actually, with my 14 year old son during the summer holidays, I had to pay him) was how familiar we both found the traditions we were witnessing, especially after watching Queen Elizabeth's funeral and the current King's coronation on the TV.

What also jumped out of me, and we saw one of these clips, was the footage of London streets showing Union Jack flags and bunting pinned on buildings. This reminded me of the flagging of the landscape during the King's coronation, including the high street in Exeter's city center, all of which is a reminder of the continuity of traditions of nationhood, which is central to the maintenance and control of nations.

So some final reflections. I'm reminded, [being here in the South West],  in watching this footage that historians and sociologists of empire in the West Country have reported that many imperialists came from the South West. Others that were not originally from the region settled in or brought second homes in the coastal towns and villages of the West Country in the 19th century and this particular class of person was drawn to living in the West Country, historians tell us, because of its relatively warm climate. Indeed, in the early 21st century, sociologist Caroline Knowles interviewed high ranking white British colonial administrators and their wives, who retired to a rural village in south Devon. Caroline Knowles, a sociologist, actually grew up in this village in south Devon and used to babysit these former colonialists children. And then she became a sociologist and some of us know in this room when you become a sociologist, you then go back and interview people. But she argues in her paper on this that these colonialists were attracted to this place because the rural and white upper class English structure or feeling of this locale resonated with their experiences in the colonies, and thinking of this I cannot help thinking that the seascape, the cultivated gardens, and even the more dramatic landscape of the Caribbean that features in this footage is reminiscent of the Devon coastline, the county's pretty villages and Dartmoor.