Sites of imperial memory

Europe’s great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory – those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected.

Addresses imperial memory across various empires, different forms of commemoration and over two centuries

Europe’s great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory – those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected.

1. Beyond national memory. Nora’s Lieux de Mémoire across an imperial world – Dominik Geppert and Frank Lorenz MüllerPART I: Monuments2. Transmissible sites: monuments, memorials and their visibility on the metropole and periphery – Xavier Guégan3. Politics, caste and the remembrance of the Raj: the Obelisk at Koregaon – Shraddha Kumbhojkar4. The thirteen martyrs of Arad: a monumental Hungarian history – James Koranyi5. Heroes, victims, and the quest for peace: war monuments and the contradictions of Japan’s post-imperial commemoration – Barak KushnerPART II: Heroes and villains6. From the penny press to the plinth: British and French ‘heroic imperialists’ as sites of memory – Berny Sèbe7. Jan Pieterszoon Coen: a man they love to hate. The first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies as an imperial site of memory – Victor Enthoven8. The memory of Lord Clive in Britain and beyond: imperial hero and villain – Richard Goebelt9. David Livingstone, British protestant missions, memory and empire – John Stuart10. Freedom fighter and anti-tsarist rebel: Imam Shamil and imperial memory in Russia – Stefan CreuzbergerPART III: Remembering and forgetting11. From Nehruvian neglect to Bollywood heroes: the memory of the raj in post-war India – Maria Misra12. ‘Forgive and forget’? The Mau Mau uprising in Kenyan collective memory – Winfried Speitkamp13. Exploration and exploitation: German colonial botany at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin – Katja Kaiser14. Recollections of rubber – Frank UekötterSelect bibliographyIndex