getgro An Allegory of Imperialism Imperialism Imperialism Two Meanings 1 The Age of Imperialism European powers reaching out for new economic markets particularly in Africa and Asia making peoples and places part of a vast ID: 715696
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Babarhs-201-european-histor.delbarton-school.groupfusion.net/.../get_gro...
An Allegory of Imperialism?Slide2
ImperialismImperialism: Two Meanings
1. The Age of Imperialism European powers reaching out for new economic markets, particularly in Africa and Asia, making peoples and places part of a vast empire
. These conquered places are called
colonies
.
2.
In its second meaning the term describes the attitude of superiority -- the subordination of and dominion over foreign people
“Foreign-
ness
” often expressed through dominant views concerning race, “civilization”, and “progress”Slide3
ImperialismAllegory: A symbolic narrativeMaking a whole story into a metaphor
Metaphor: comparison of two objects when one object takes on the qualities, symbolically, of the other. Slide4
Imperialism: Causes and Motives
Emergence of “nation-states” and competition among themCompeting definitions of the nation—of who is and who is not part of the nation: constructing the relationship of “us” versus “them”
Popular theories of race influenced the new imperialism
held that the different peoples of the world not only culturally but biologically distinct
Darwin: theory misapplied to establish that each nation (and people) were involved in an unending competition in which only the "fittest" would survive
According to “survival of the fittest” argument, imperial powers could
point to their conquests as proof of their own "fitness"
rationalize their empires as altruistic efforts to bring the benefits of their "superior" civilization to “lesser” racesSlide5
Causes and MotivesThe White Man’s BurdenVisual and written culture at the turn of the 20th
century concerning Imperialism often focused on the relationship between light: western, Christian, civilizedand dark: eastern, African, savage Slide6
THE White Man’s BurdenRudyard Kipling, 1899
Take up the White Man's burden– Send forth the best ye breed–
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
.Slide7
Imperialism as Policy“The policy of colonial expansion is a political and economic system ... that can be connected to three sets of ideas: economic ideas; the most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and ideas of a political and patriotic sort.”
Jules Ferry, Prime Minister of France (1880-1881, 1883-1885)Slide8
Vocabulary of Imperialism"As we steamed into the estuary of Sierra Leone on November 18th [1889],
we found Africa exactly as books of travel had led us to anticipate--a land of excessive heat, lofty palm-trees, gigantic baobabs, and naked savages. At five o'clock we dropped anchor at Free Town, called, on account of its deadly fevers, the `white man's grave.' Immediately, our vessel was surrounded by boats filled with men and women, shouting, jabbering, laughing, quarrelling, and even fighting. ... Without exception it was the most confusedly excited and noisy lot of humanity I have ever seen.”
Source: William Harvey Brown,
On the South African Frontier: The Adventures and Observations of an American in
Mashonaland
and Matabeleland
(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970; London: Sampson Low,
Marstan
& Co., 1899), 3. Slide9
Vocabulary of ImperialismAccording to late 19th century science, human development took place in three stages:
Savagery marked by hunting and gatheringBarbarism
accompanied by the beginning of settled agriculture
Civilization
which required the development of commerce.
European scientists believed that Africans were stuck in the stage of barbarism because they lived in a place with such good soil and climate that it provided "tropical abundance."Slide10
Categorizing the “other”“Various ‘natives’ and ‘savages’ abroad were blithely tarred as inferiors and identified as prime candidates for a brand of ‘uplift’ that entailed, among other things, a strict lesson in modern modes of desire and habits of consumption.”
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. (2000)Slide11
Imperialist ImagesSlide12Slide13
The first step towards lightening
The White Man's Burden
is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.
Pears' Soap
is a potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth as civilization advances, while amongst the cultured of all nations it holds the highest place -- it is the ideal toilet soap.
Here, Admiral Dewey, who led the Battle for Manila at the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898, is pictured washing with Pears’ SoapSlide14Slide15Slide16Slide17Slide18
Jean de Brunhoff
1889-1937Trained as a painterFirst Babar book appeared in 1931
Brunhoff
died of TB, his son Laurent took on the role of illustrating Babar
First 7 Babar albums were reprinted and millions of copies were sold all over the world
Jean and Cecile de BrunhoffSlide19
QuestionsSome things to think about as we “read” Babar:Did Jean de Brunoff create an allegory that supported French Colonialism?
Children’s literature is usually didactic—seeking to impart a moral lesson—what is the lesson that we should take from Babar?Different national audiences have read Babar differently. Is the “lesson” of Babar different from a French perspective than from reading it in the U.S.?Slide20Slide21Slide22Slide23Slide24Slide25Slide26Slide27Slide28Slide29Slide30
Babar the King“Here is Celesteville
! The elephants have just finished building it and are resting or bathing. Babar goes for a sail with Arthur and Zephir. He is well satisfied, and admires his new capital. Each elephant has his own house. The Old Lady’s is at the upper left, the one for the King and Queen is at the upper right. The big lake is visible from all their windows. The Bureau of Industry is next door to the Amusement Hall which will be very practical and convenient.”Slide31
“Some left-wing critics have read in the Babar story an implicit endorsement of the civilizing effects of French colonialism.”
-
New Yorker
, 2008
“By now, of course, a controversial literature is possible about
anything
, and yet to discover that there is a controversial literature about Babar is a little shocking—
faut-il brûler Babar
? (“Must we burn Babar?”)”Slide32
Babar as Parody
“those who would burn ‘Babar’ miss the true subject of the books”“not an unconscious expression of the French colonial imagination; it is a self-conscious comedy
about
the French colonial imagination”
“France during the nineteen-thirties was in transition from an old, unashamedly predatory model of imperialism to one that insisted on…the…benevolent gathering of different races into one French commonwealth—and, simultaneously, from a model of work and labor as their own reward to one in which the reward of irksome labor was French family leisure”
“Far more than an allegory of colonialism, the “Babar” books are a fable of the difficulties of a bourgeois life. ‘Truly it is not easy to bring up a family,’ Babar sighs at one point, and it is true.”
Adam
Gopnik
, “Freeing the Elephants; What Babar Brought” in
New YorkerSlide33
Babar as Imperialism
“Somehow, without losing his animal appearance, Babar will be transformed into a polite and decent human being.”“In contrast to his tiny admirers—first they were French, then British, then North American—[Babar] is dealing with a native country that has not evolved along with him and continues to be primitive, tribal, and naked.”
“That first contact between the now civilized (we might even say adult) Babar and the other elephants, who are like reflections of the way he once was, prophetically synthesizes the future of the country in which they were all born…”
“From now on, every inferior place or person will either follow Babar’s example or remain condemned to immobility, regression, and ridicule.”
Ariel
Dorfman
,
The Empire’s Old Clothes; What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes do to Our MindsSlide34
Babar as Reinforcing Imperialism
“Babar is born like any average pachyderm. He grows up and plays in an idyllic world, along with the other little animals. Nonetheless, this primitive paradise must come to an end once a ‘wicked hunter’ kills Babar’s mother. But even though this initial contact with human adults and their civilization is negative—leaving Babar an orphan—the end result of such destructive activity turns out to be highly beneficial: Babar escapes to the bedazzling city, where fate rewards him with something even greater than what it had taken from him. He comes upon an ‘Old Lady,’ a female figure who takes his mother’s place and eventually adopts him. .. From that moment on, Babar is going to “progress.”
Ariel
Dorfman
,
The Empire’s Old Clothes; What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes do to Our MindsSlide35
Thinking Critically About BabarIs Babar a reflection of imperialist notions of race and civilization or a parody of those notions?What, if any, are the consequences of reading Babar?
Should we “burn” Babar?Are these consequences particularly American?