London 1900

Book Reviews London 1900 Jonathan Schneer. London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 336 pp. $39.95 A VENERABLE CLICHÉ, turning up in countless works of history , is that the specific age under consideration was "in a state of transition ." Robert Musil, in The Man without Qualities, a remarkable novel dealing with the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before war broke out in 1914, mused that overcrowded cities of the future would build ant-hills, "veined by channels of traffic, rising storey upon storey. Overheadtrains , overground-trains, underground-trains, chains of motor vehicles all racing along horizontally, express lifts vertically pumping crowds from one traffic-level to another..." (Bk. I, Chap. 8). Musil had in mind the example that New York was setting for the world; but to many in central London, even at the turn of the century, the hurly-burly described in his vision had already become a disturbing reality. Jonathan Schneer does seem to treat London as exactly this kind of city: troubled, restless, overcrowded, and both enormously rich (in at least the upper levels of society) and almost unimaginably poor. The choice of the year 1900 is, however, problematic, even if today we are facing a similar dilemma in deciding when to call the twentieth century quits. Thomas Hardy, for one, would not have approved of Schneer's choice; he originally titled his poem "The Darkling Thrush" "By the Century 's Death-bed," and affixed to the final version the date of December 31,1900. The year 2001 (chosen as a film-title by Stanley Kubrick) truly begins a new century, though it is understandable why 1900 resonates more strongly than, say, 1901. Even so, Schneer's decision to call his book London 1900, as if 1900 marks a clear line of demarcation between the Victorian Age and the modern world, or between yesteryear and tomorrow , seems commercially inspired rather than justified by the evidence he has amassed. The subtitle, which stresses the importance of imperialism in London life and thought, might more appropriately head a study of 1897, the year of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, a year which capped an astounding decade in which Great Britain had acquired new territories fifty times as large as itself; or of 1910-1911, when the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica assumed, in all its articles 331 ELT 43 : 3 2000 dealing with politics, history, or geography, that English imperialism would last longer than the Roman Empire, and perhaps forever; or 1914, when the English government seriously believed that defeating the Germans by Christmas was a certainty because its ideals were sound. Well, let us deal with what we have, and see how ably Schneer organizes his materials, and whether 1900 really stands for a pivotal moment in English history. After a preliminary essay on the picture that London presented to the world, as well as how its inhabitants saw themselves, we are presented with Part I, "Imperial London," which treats "the face of Imperial London," London as the nexus of Empire, the City ("sine qua non"), and a study of aspects of popular culture enjoyed by the entire population of the city; Part II, a set of essay-chapters on defiantly miscellaneous topics ("female gender boundaries," the "radical and Celtic fringe," Dadabhai Naoroji—whose search for respect for India helped to create a nationalist movement that would destroy English rule in less than a half-century—and the Pan-African Conference, first of its kind in English history); and a rather limp conclusion that concentrates on the Khaki Election of 1900, which Schneer concedes was a singularly indecisive and dispiriting event. If one infers from this listing of Professor Schneer's main concerns that we have here a series of weakly linked monograph-essays, one which has no overarching vision despite its wearisome repetition of variants of the word "imperial" (nine times in one notorious paragraph on p. 93), we would come closer to the way in which this book grew out of various teaching experiences (including Visiting Fellowships), interdisciplinary seminars, conferences, and grant opportunities. Nothing wrong with that; the end-product emerging from these eight years of research is a respectable, solidly...