Rating: 
Summary: Good as far as it goes, but...
Review: ...David Cannadine's _Ornamentalism_ isn't really a book about "how the British saw their empire". Cannadine has done a good job of describing how high-ranking British colonial officials saw the British Empire. He argues fairly convincingly that status and rank mattered as much to these men as race, and that they saw both Britain and its colonies as essentially hierarchical societies. In conscious opposition to Edward Said and his 'orientalism' thesis, Cannadine argues that these men saw similarities as well as differences between British society and indigenous societies, and between themselves and the members of indigenous elites. So far, so good. Cannadine's book is an interesting and useful analysis of (some aspects of) the "official mind" of British imperialism, and the attitudes of (some of) the men who actually ruled and administered the British Empire. This is a refreshing change from a lot of recent scholarship on this subject, which has relied perhaps too heavily on literary sources. One of my colleagues complained to me recently that he was tired of people who claim to be experts on imperialism, but can't name a single colonial governor. However, Cannadine takes his argument much too far, writing as if everyone in Britain shared the attitudes of the small (and extremely conservative) group of elite males that filled the Empire's top executive and administrative positions. Occasionally, Cannadine admits that, yes, there were people in Britain who did not share this tiny group's worldview; but considering that his book purports to be about "how the British saw their empire", Cannadine's focus is extremely narrow. His book is also pretty thin, both in terms of its number of pages and in the amount of evidence that he produces to prove his arguments. This makes _Ornamentalism_ a quick and easy, but not altogether convincing read.
Rating:
Summary: Good as far as it goes, but...
Review: ...David Cannadine's _Ornamentalism_ isn't really a book about "how the British saw their empire". Cannadine has done a good job of describing how high-ranking British colonial officials saw the British Empire. He argues fairly convincingly that status and rank mattered as much to these men as race, and that they saw both Britain and its colonies as essentially hierarchical societies. In conscious opposition to Edward Said and his 'orientalism' thesis, Cannadine argues that these men saw similarities as well as differences between British society and indigenous societies, and between themselves and the members of indigenous elites. So far, so good. Cannadine's book is an interesting and useful analysis of (some aspects of) the "official mind" of British imperialism, and the attitudes of (some of) the men who actually ruled and administered the British Empire. This is a refreshing change from a lot of recent scholarship on this subject, which has relied perhaps too heavily on literary sources. One of my colleagues complained to me recently that he was tired of people who claim to be experts on imperialism, but can't name a single colonial governor. However, Cannadine takes his argument much too far, writing as if everyone in Britain shared the attitudes of the small (and extremely conservative) group of elite males that filled the Empire's top executive and administrative positions. Occasionally, Cannadine admits that, yes, there were people in Britain who did not share this tiny group's worldview; but considering that his book purports to be about "how the British saw their empire", Cannadine's focus is extremely narrow. His book is also pretty thin, both in terms of its number of pages and in the amount of evidence that he produces to prove his arguments. This makes _Ornamentalism_ a quick and easy, but not altogether convincing read.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent change to the typical historiography
Review: Cannadine does an excellent job of presenting an alternative view point to the typical historiography of the British Empire. Race has always been considered a vital component of Britian's empire. However, Cannadine demonstrates the role class played in the Empire. While Cannadine may have over played the role of class; he does present an interesting theory. This text is well worth a read. It is concise and may give you a new perspective of the British Empire.
Rating: 
Summary: Elegy for Empire
Review: David Cannadine has added another well written volume to his studies of the British aristocracy, the British class system in general, and other related topics. Ornamentalism covers the British attitudes towards their Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cannadine argues that the British took a hierarchical view of their empire, ruling it on the basis of what they supposed to be traditional English government, which devolved from the monarch to the local nobility and gentry. In the empire colonial governments made use of local grandees, such as the numerous Indian princes, so that Britain ruled not so much over them as through them. Thus Cannadine disagrees with prevailing historical opinion, that the Empire was based on race, by demonstrating its basis in existing class structure As always, Cannadine writes clearly with few wasted words. He continues to be a master of the short biographical/historical sketch. A short but fascinating read.
Rating:
Summary: Elegy for Empire
Review: David Cannadine has added another well written volume to his studies of the British aristocracy, the British class system in general, and other related topics. Ornamentalism covers the British attitudes towards their Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cannadine argues that the British took a hierarchical view of their empire, ruling it on the basis of what they supposed to be traditional English government, which devolved from the monarch to the local nobility and gentry. In the empire colonial governments made use of local grandees, such as the numerous Indian princes, so that Britain ruled not so much over them as through them. Thus Cannadine disagrees with prevailing historical opinion, that the Empire was based on race, by demonstrating its basis in existing class structure As always, Cannadine writes clearly with few wasted words. He continues to be a master of the short biographical/historical sketch. A short but fascinating read.
Rating:
Summary: An Empire where class trumps race
Review: David Cannadine, a self declared "Child of Empire" has what can only be described as an obsession with the British Aristocracy. Unlike some of his other works such as "Decline and fall oft the British Aristocracy" where he allows bittersweet emotions such as nostalgia to be evoked at the passing of an era, or the undisguised glee of an outsider indulging in schadenfreude in "Aspects of Aristocracy: grandeur or decline" this book presents a much more balanced analysis. His thesis is that there was a complex interplay of class and race in the Empire, but in most cases class trumps race. The defining example from the book is an exerpt from the "Raj quartet" where the british aristo identifies more clearly with his Indian counterpart who went to public school than to the uncouth white police constable. However the police constable viewed himself as superior to the Indian because of his race. Its thesis accords well with my experience in public school at Winchester College in England where I felt accepted as a peer despite being Asian. But my same peers were openly disdainful of poor uneducated Pakistani and Bangledeshi immigrants. (They welcomed the educated Indians much more easily) Perhaps these sentiments were what prevented mass support for Oswald Mosley and Fascism in the 1930s despite prevalent anti-semitism. It has been argued by John Lucas that Nazism as an ideology failed because Hitler had made his elite too small. The British extended their elites to the sultans, nawabs, emirs and kings all over the Empire and used them to bind the Empire together. This book provides an interesting contrast to America where race is so much more important. Black and white interracial marriages are quite commonplace in Britain. In my opinion it better to recognize nobility in another person and disdain the baseness in another person regardless of the colour of their skin.
Rating:
Summary: An Empire where class trumps race
Review: David Cannadine, a self declared "Child of Empire" has what can only be described as an obsession with the British Aristocracy. Unlike some of his other works such as "Decline and fall oft the British Aristocracy" where he allows bittersweet emotions such as nostalgia to be evoked at the passing of an era, or the undisguised glee of an outsider indulging in schadenfreude in "Aspects of Aristocracy: grandeur or decline" this book presents a much more balanced analysis. His thesis is that there was a complex interplay of class and race in the Empire, but in most cases class trumps race. The defining example from the book is an exerpt from the "Raj quartet" where the british aristo identifies more clearly with his Indian counterpart who went to public school than to the uncouth white police constable. However the police constable viewed himself as superior to the Indian because of his race. Its thesis accords well with my experience in public school at Winchester College in England where I felt accepted as a peer despite being Asian. But my same peers were openly disdainful of poor uneducated Pakistani and Bangledeshi immigrants. (They welcomed the educated Indians much more easily) Perhaps these sentiments were what prevented mass support for Oswald Mosley and Fascism in the 1930s despite prevalent anti-semitism. It has been argued by John Lucas that Nazism as an ideology failed because Hitler had made his elite too small. The British extended their elites to the sultans, nawabs, emirs and kings all over the Empire and used them to bind the Empire together. This book provides an interesting contrast to America where race is so much more important. Black and white interracial marriages are quite commonplace in Britain. In my opinion it better to recognize nobility in another person and disdain the baseness in another person regardless of the colour of their skin.
Rating:
Summary: Readable Scholarship
Review: Let's keep it short. The title is more than a cute pun. Old Boney once said, no doubt in fine French, that a man would do things for a piece of yellow ribbon that he would not do for all the gold in the world. This scholarly, but not too much so, study is about British uses not of glory but pomp: the deliberate distribution of honors neatly packaged by class; indeed, neatly packaged by the rank of various colonial states somewhat in the pattern of elborate dinner seatings of the middle ages. "I say is Fijii above or below the salt?" In an age of "postcolonial/subaltern/otherness" studies this is a readable guide to events and behaviors of our British cousins that those of us on this side of the pond sometimes find rather mysterious. It is a good addition to the personal library of anyone doing serious literary/social analysis.
Rating:
Summary: The discreet charm of the aristocratic historian.
Review: Monarchs and aristocrats are not very pleasant people. Rulers like Wilhelm II, Victor Emmanuel III and Hirohito have all played their part of making their country safe for fascism and dictatorship. Even the British ruling house are not a nice lot; more often than not they are philistine, reactionary and unimaginative. But the historian of aristocracy-AH, there's a different subject altogether. David Cannadine in his various books and collections of essays have portrayed in subtle, mordant detail the world of the declining aristocracy. Whether it is discussing the inability of Winston Churchill to get off the London Metro, or George V's inordinate admiration for shooting small birds and collecting stamps; whether it is the fact the George VI had one of the five greatest art collections on the planet but was too dull to appreciate it, or whether it is how the British monarchy moved from the amateurish funerals of George IV and William IV to the top notch rituals of the Late Victorian era, Cannadine provides a humorous sceptical eye on the world of monarchist kitsch. Cannadine's latest book is fundamentally flawed, but it is based on wide reading, is gracefully written and contains many fascinating details. The book has been advertised as a new approach to understanding empire: instead of it being based, as Edward Said supposedly argues, on racial hierarchy, it was really based on class superiority. Actually Cannadine argues that class "was as important as (perhaps more important than?)" race. And so Cannadine discusses how in the "white dominions" the British sought to ensure strong governor generals, aristocratic upper houses, and elaborate new orders. We go to India where the British treat the hundred or so princely states with elaborate tact and generosity. We see the British working with local princes and rules from Fiji to Malaya to Zanzibar to Ghana. In the twenties and thirties we see the British prop up new quasi-independent monarchies in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. All over the world we see among the British officials and the local rulers the world of the countryhouse, the fox hunt and the cricket match. Naturally enough this imperial order was obsessed with giving itself honors and glories, such as the Irish Lord Dufferin, who eventually got a "proper" English peerage, as well as the governor generalship of Canada, the viceroy of India and the knighthoods of six separate orders. There are no fewer than six Lake Victorias, while cities and towns and every conceivable form of geological and geographical body was christened after the queen from British Columbia to Belize to Rhodesia. This effusion of monarchist kitsch is very interesting, but what is its larger significance? Cannadine himself has to admit that despite their endless appetite for royalist cant, conservatives in Canada and Australia never gave their aristocrats more than an ornamental position. He also admits that in the "white dominions," including South Africa, there was no pretence of any arrangement with the indigenous population, who were dispossessed and disinherited. He also agrees that the British exaggerated the effects of caste, that many local rulers were venal puppets. But the major flaw with Cannadine's argument is that Said and his colleagues will not fit into Cannadine's misleading race/class dichotomy. Said focuses as much on religious, technocratic and Zionist prejudices as much as race. And as Barbara Fields has pointed out in two brilliant essays (which Cannadine has mysteriously ignored) "racism" is not something separate from class. After all, what unites the subordinate status of African-Americans in pre-1865 law is not their skin colour, which varies considerably, but the fact that they are almost all slaves, ex-slaves or the descendants of slaves. The development of racist ideology cannot be viewed separately from the class struggles of the past. As Fields puts it, the English were not enslaved in the 17th century because they benefited from centuries of previous struggles. By contrast Africans could claim no such benefit. Racist ideology is as much a mutation of class ideology than it is an alternative. And so larger questions of the effect of Britain on their colonies and the effect of colonialism on British life and society are not really developed. In order to do that, we would have to look at the overwhelming colonial majority, not the small elites that the British flattered. And we would have to look at racial ideologies, the economic impact of empire, and the "wages of whiteness." Some imperialists may have preferred the "stability" and "organic" nature of colonial India. But most Englishmen viewed this stability as stagnation and treated Hinduism and Islam with contempt. Why else would the British churches concentrate so much on missionaries? And Cannadine makes no mention of miscegenation, a taboo that has been a theme of Forster and Scott and many others. The British may have admired their puppet monarchies in the Middle East. But the most important effect of their mandates was, as Tom Segev has pointed out, to insure the formation of Israel, whose socialist and nationalist ideology was as far from Ornamentalism as one could get. Edward VII, as Prince of Wales, may have stood up for the King of Hawaii, but that did not prevent the King's sister from being overthrown in a vulgar coup by the Americans. There are some errors in the book. Kwame Nkrumah was not a Marxist, South Yemen was not a Soviet satellite, and Canadine refers to "pre-1776" Ontario when he obviously means "post-1776". The ending, however, is interesting as Cannadine discusses what the empire meant during his childhood, less a home of racial others than as an abstraction of power that was slowly dissipating away into irrelevance.
Rating: 
Summary: Superficial and sycophantic account of Empire
Review: Professor Cannadine has already produced several loving portraits of the British aristocracy and a biography of one of its earlier chroniclers, G. M. Trevelyan. Now he adds a celebratory image of the British Empire, puffing it as the greatest show on earth. But there is nothing original in this book. It is based entirely on secondary sources and anecdotes; for instance, he recycles the ancient jokes about the CMGs, KCMGs and GCMGs of the hugely tedious honours system. This is an imperial-minded study of the Imperial mentalite. He displays (and himself clearly shares) the British ruling class's hierarchical and rural fantasy world, which they clung to in fear of the real world of industry, cities and democracy. He tells us of the British-imposed Viceroy of India, who in the 1930s had no fewer than 6000 servants! Like all too many historians, he indulges in abject hero-worship of Churchill the bugler of Empire. In an extraordinary passage he writes, "For as the British contemplated the unprecedented numbers massed together in their new industrial cities, they tended to compare these great towns at home with the `dark continents' overseas, and thus equate the workers in factories with coloured peoples abroad." So `the British' observed the workers in Britain's factories, who in the eyes of Cannadine, and of the ruling class, were obviously not British at all! In a book about Empire and class, Cannadine manages to write the phrase `ruling class' just once, and avoids the term working class altogether. As active subjects, he much prefers terms like `the British' and `the official mind'. The word `domination', when he uses it - rarely - is always in inverted commas. Cannadine's October 1998 article in the Financial Times showed what a Blimp he is. He claimed that England - he meant Britain - was not `a particularly unequal society', and seriously suggested that "the best way to make our nation a classless society" would be "that we all stop talking about class." This book reveals the same crass idealism; not surprisingly, the Thatcherite bigot Niall Ferguson praises it fulsomely!
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