Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (review)

In his preface to Ornamentalism, David Cannadine describes the United States as "the last authentic western imperial power" (xiii). In light of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and public interest in the nature of empire, the significance of Cannadine's book has increased since it first appeared as part of a larger Oxford University Press publishing venture that included the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire (1998-99) and Jane Samson's useful reader, The British Empire (2001). Nonetheless, it is important to go back to Cannadine's original purpose in writing Ornamentalism, for which he had wished to borrow the title of Joseph Schumpeter's Imperialism and Social Classes (1951). Like Schumpeter's quirky analysis of the atavistic mercantile and military nature of European imperialism, Cannadine's exploration of "social structure" and "social perceptions" (xviii) in the rise and fall of the British empire pursues an intriguing but contentious thesis about imperialism and social hierarchies.

Cannadine proposes an approach centered on the power and appeal of social hierarchy across metropole and colonies that he claims provides a better explanation of empire than one linked to Edward W. Said's critique of Orientalism and concerned with discourses of racial difference and inequality. A gifted writer, Cannadine drives his wide-ranging argument from beginning to end of Ornamentalism. Part 1, "Beginnings," examines British responses to the hierarchical nature of Native American and Mughal Indian societies and efforts to establish hierarchically ordered societies in Ireland and the Americas. Part 2, "Localities," brings out the hierarchical structure and image of the dominions, India, African and Asian colonies, and Middle Eastern mandatories. Part 3, "Generalities," focuses on the imperial scope and role of the honors system and the monarchy and then expounds Cannadine's argument at greater length. The British perceived their colonial subjects more often in terms of "rank" than "race" (123) and conceived of the empire as a traditional and even "anti-capitalist" (128) projection of their own society. This part of the book concludes with a consideration of some of the forces undermining imperial hierarchy, from the political opposition of metropolitan radicalism, dominion nationalism, and anticolonial nationalism to the technological developments of "imperial modernity" (149). Part 4, "Endings," connects the end of empire to the end of hierarchy in British society, although in Schumpeterian fashion Cannadine does note hierarchical survivals. An appendix, "An Imperial Childhood?," offers reminiscences of growing up and coming of age in Britain between the 1950s and early 1970s as this core society experienced the unnamed metropolitan variant of what we call decolonization in peripheral societies.

Ornamentalism clearly conveys the fact that the British and their far-flung collaborators developed flexible and, at least for a time, relatively stable modes of colonial rule. Cannadine's historical-sociological approach allows him to deal with such political forms as "indirect rule" and "responsible government" without descending into a dry constitutional account of the empire. Discussing architectural style, ceremonial display, royal travels, and the distribution of honors, Cannadine highlights the "dignified" side of the empire. As a result of this "essentially ornamental mode" of rule (122), local elites, both indigenous and settler, found accommodation and incorporation within a wider imperial hierarchy. Indeed, Cannadine holds up for inspection the hierarchical origins of supposedly modern egalitarian nations like Australia and New Zealand. Not confining himself to the boundaries of the nineteenth-century empire, he usefully reminds us of Britain's export of monarchy to Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and elsewhere in the Middle East after the First World War.

Ornamentalism is undoubtedly provocative, taking issue with some of the best scholarship in postcolonial studies and the "new imperial history." The trouble begins with the subtitle, "How the British Saw Their Empire," and its implication that the British as a whole subscribed to a hierarchical image of themselves and the world. By focusing on elites, Cannadine...