Tourists at the Ruins of London: the Metropolis and the Struggle for Empire (original) (raw)
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Richard Jefferies’ 1885 novel After London, or Wild England—a work John Fowles claims serves as a witness “to the central terror of [its] age: the spectre of determinism”—describes London 1000 years in the future. Here, London is a ruin completely submerged in filthy black water, “a vast stagnant swamp,” an “oozy mass” which exhales “so fatal a vapour that no animal can endure it” (37). While for many late-Victorian fantasy writers, like H. Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli, archaeology offered a way to investigate the deeply personal connections between themselves and ancient peoples, a method for envisioning themselves and their identities trans-temporally, allowing them to embody modern ideas like sexual liberality and cosmopolitanism. What Jefferies presents in After London, however, suggests a perspective in which archaeological ruin might serve instead as a blockage to trans-temporal identification and connection. Jefferies’ uniquely pessimistic and caustic depiction of London’s future ruin provides us with a window into “the central terror of their age: the spectre of determinism,” one in which the ruins of Victorian cities serve not as bridges between past and present, but as hostile forces obstructing historical continuity.
Art History, 1999
To assert its distinction, modernity has always looked backwards as well as forwards. During the eighteenth century London underwent a steady process of transformation as numerous ancient buildings were demolished in the name of urban improvements. As these modernizations went forward a concomitant rise of antiquarian sentiment prompted a plethora of engraved representations which aimed to keep the past in view. This essay considers the evolution, dissemination and reception of such cumulative antiquarian representations from the nostalgia for Hollar’s bird’s-eye view of pre-Fire London to the moral judgements implied in John Thomas Smith’s later etchings of dilapidated and impoverished sites of antiquity. By charting the changing aesthetics and interests of this genre, this essay discusses the ambiguous relationship between the publishing of antiquarian representations and the status and preservation of the sites that they depicted. It also asks whether the circulation of such representations helped to ground urban identity at a time when the city was in a constant and disorienting state of change.
"Modernity and meaning in Victorian London: tourist views of the imperial capital"
, Joseph De Sapio's first book, like the city it examines, is full of potential fascinating destinations. Examining the modalities of mid-to-late nineteenth-century tourism originating in multiple sites and converging on the British capital, Modernity and Meaning attempts to plot the ways in which colonial subjects, fellow Europeans, Americans, and British non-Londoners used London as a space to define themselves, each other, and the rising tide of modernity. De Sapio works to unpack the myriad ways tourists from these different points of origin envisioned and experienced Londonand how political, social, cultural, commercial, and technological ties to London and the British Empire writ large worked to construct tourists' experiences and uses for the city itself before, during, and after their visit. At the imperial crossroads, the author argues, these travelers actively searched for and ascribed multiple and often conflicting meanings to the city, its inhabitants, its layout, its environment, its social and political construct, and its very history. For those who could afford it, London was a space for self, societal, and imperial reflection and criticism. As suchas can be the case with histories of tourism, especially predating the 'mass' tourism of the mid to late twentieth century -De Sapio's subjects are for the large part wealthy and white. Fully aware that this will not be a 'history from below', the author attempts to justify his focus by pointing out the power and influence wielded by those who took the voyage: capitalists, politicians, journalists, and the social elite. Their privilege and positions, De Sapio suggests, meant that they wielded much clout in local and global debates surrounding definitions and visions of progress and modernity. Pulling from a wide and varied range of travel narratives and engaging in a considerable amount of secondary literature for a monograph of its size, the author carefully explores the ways in which the relationship between London and its tourist visitors effected, and was affected by, these questions of the future. While the book clearly does not struggle for source material -De Sapio fills his pages with contemporary travelogs and literature to great effecthis analysis is also deeply constrained by the singular nature of the sources. While the close readings of colonial, American, British, and continental narratives do point to certain general trends (which De Sapio picks up on and explores in each of his four chapters), they also promote a myopic vision of London. The spaces, movements, and activities of these narratives' authors are well compared and critiqued, but only so far as said authors made note of them to begin with. This issue is exacerbated by the structure of the monograph itself. De Sapio clearly means for each chapter to be centered around these authors' geographic point of origin and resultant discourse on modernity, but in following the writers' proclivities it seems as though he cannot help but tie each chapter to a specific theme as wellracial discussions appear in
Rematerialising metropolitan histories? People, places and things in modern London
Crossing Paths or Sharing …, 2009
"In recent years historians have begun to show renewed interest in studying ‘the material’ dimensions to urban life. This shift has opened up a space for new dialogues between historians and post-medieval archaeologists working on British cities. It offers the potential for reassessing approaches to studying the urban past and for experimenting with fresh methodologies. Noting that archaeological perspectives have been largely absent from recent historical accounts of the modern metropolis, in this chapter we explore the potential for pursuing collaborative research that fuses archaeological evidence and thinking with other forms of historical practice to write material histories of London. The discussion divides into three parts. First, we sketch the post-war development of urban post-medieval archaeology in London, and the range of archaeological collections and excavation sites that relate to the Georgian and Victorian city. Second, we consider some of the ways in which the analysis of these sources might be used in interdisciplinary urban historiography, especially in the light of methodological approaches developed in North American and Australian urban archaeology. Third, we present a case study that explores how nineteenth-century household archaeologies in London might be developed, examining some of the complexities and challenges of integrating archaeological methods into the study of households and localities in the nineteenth-century metropolis. In conclusion we consider the prospects for the development of interdisciplinary approaches to the material remains of London’s modern past."
2022
This comprehensive history of the Museum of London traces the ways that the relationship between Britain and its imperial past has changed over the course of three decades, providing a holistic approach to galleries' shifts from Victorian nostalgia to equitable representations. At its 1976 opening, the Museum of London differed from other museums in its treatment of empire and colonialism as central to its galleries. In response to the public's evolving social and political attitudes, the museum's 1993-1994 'The Peopling of London' exhibition marked a new approach in creating inclusive displays, which explore the impact of immigration and multiculturalism on British history. Through photos, planning documents, and archival research, this book analyses museums' role in enacting change in the public's understanding of history, and this book is the first to critically engage with the Museum of London's theme of empire, particularly in consideration of recent exhibitions. Legacies of an Imperial City is a useful resource for academics and researchers of postcolonial history and museum studies, as well as any student of urban history.
The invention of heritage has become an important, yet highly fragmented, field in nineteenth-century studies. The conference aims to shed light on what has so far remained under-explored in the scholarly literature, the links between preservationism and imperialism. So far most research on preservationism has been divided into necessary and insightful area studies or test-cases within the British Isles. The aim of this conference is to bring together specialists on preservation in Britain and the colonies (from a range of countries and disciplines) to map a more entangled picture of preservation in the British Empire. Taking into account the importance of competition between different European imperial powers, the conference focuses in particular on the relationship between metropolis and dependant heritages. The underlying and most general questions might be put most crudely like this: what response did an Imperial authority take towards the heritage of a dependent area, how did imperial and indigenous preservationism interrelate, and how did this come to affect or interact with attitudes towards the heritage of the home country?
Mantas N. (2011), London’s Transformation through the Metaphor of Trafalgar Square’s Four Plinths
There is a large literature that deals with the identity of London throughout the ages of its existence. Many characterizations have been applied to London: capital of the Empire, world city, city for tourism, mythical city (Gilbert, 2002). Each characterization is the relevant outcome of the historical facts that are considered to be the corner stone of the research. This essay chooses decolonisation as the determinant of London’s identity transformation, it uses colonial and post-colonial as temporal terms and seeks London’s spatial characterization in these two time periods. Furthermore, after examining the possible characterizations of London, this essay is inspired by Deborah Cherry’s (2006) article “Statues in the Square: Hauntings at the Heart of Empire” and uses it as a metaphor for understanding post-colonial anxiety in the contemporary global city of London.