Rank Over Race?

Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire by David Cannadine; pp. xxiv + 264. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism, set off an academic firestorm in the late 1970s—one that still burns today. His book argued that the nature of imperial thought in Europe was borne out of a doctrine of racial superiority that eventually colored all Western scholarship of the East. David Cannadine, a staunch opponent of this “simplistic” argument, characterizes it in this way: “Britons saw society in their ‘tropical’ and ‘oriental’ colonies as enervated, hierarchical, corporatist, backward—and thus inferior.” (p.7) And, while Cannadine does not dispute the fact that racist ideologies were in play in the making of the British Empire, he presents an argument that is different but equally compelling.

Cannadine undermines the arguments of Said—and other noted historians—not by trashing their merits, necessarily, but by questioning their historical scope. Cannadine writes that “it is the argument of this book that these attitudes, whereby social ranking was as important as (perhaps more important than?) colour of skin in contemplating the extra-metropolitan world, remained important…for the British long after it has been generally supposed they ceased to matter.” (p. 8) Class distinctions, he argues, were at least as important as racial distinctions—an argument that would certainly draw the ire of adherents to Said’s Orientalism. This is not to say that the British Empire was in any way affiliated with a broad-based movement toward a more equal society; much to the contrary, British society was notably inegalitarian. His contention, however, seems to be that their fashioning of imperial societies abroad was based upon the assumption of graded upward mobility—that, with a little help, everyone could be British. And so, he sets out writing what amounts to a brief history of the rise and fall of British hierarchical society at home and abroad.

In short, Cannadine argues that the British saw their empire as merely an extension of their society back home. That is, during the 100 or so years after the British regained control of India following the Sepoy Rebellion, Imperialists took special care to fashion the Empire on the basis of a very familiar rubric. This rubric was replete with hierarchical class distinctions that, for all intents and purposes, remade British society in their far-flung colonies. This, as Cannadine argues, was not the simple “us versus them” mindset that has been represented in a great deal of the scholarship on Imperial Britain post-Orientalism. This wholly visible attempt to order colonial societies by structuring the preexisting unequal social gradations under the control of the Monarchy is, in a nutshell, Cannadine’s Ornamentalism. In this way, the monarchy came to be the source of unity amongst many in the colonies.

Cannadine’s uniquely descriptive prose allows the reader to fully grasp the extent to which British Imperialists took pains to, at varying times, place rank ahead of race in their structuring of colonial societies. One way in which Cannadine supports his argument hits pretty close to home. He makes the point that in the post-revolutionary colonies, colonists set up their fledgling societies not on the imperial structure of Britain, but on “constitutional republicanism and egalitarian social perceptions.” (p. 15) Cannadine here makes the claim that it was this lesson of history, the American Revolution, that provided British Imperialists with the impetus to fashion colonies along hierarchical lines in order to stave off further revolutions. (p. 15)

Another major theme that follows throughout the course of this book is involved in the projection of British grandeur in the colonies—the Pomp and Circumstance March of the Empire. In this way, the power of the throne of Britain was exported to the colonies to reinforce their budding social hierarchies. The famous durbars in India and jubilees in Africa had the affect of making empire seem more real to the new subjects of the Crown. This was the British honors system writ large. But, even beyond these regal ceremonies were the day-to-day projections of British Imperialism that attempted to create in their colonies the effect of oneness: “An amalgam of names, places, buildings, images, statues, rituals and observances…made it impossible for anyone to forget or ignore the fact that they were subjects of a sovereign rather than citizens of a republic.” (p. 105) This, it should be noted, would have been impossible to pull off in an intrinsically racist society. However, the extent to which individuals in the colonies felt a connection to the British Monarchy is certainly debatable.
This concept of hypothesizing perception is why Cannadine’s scholarship is somewhat less scholarly, in my view, than many who have come before him. Perceptions, obviously, are more difficult to account for in any truly empirical manner. One could compose a similar critique of Said in that his argument for “otherness” as the thoroughgoing modus operandi of empire was generalized to the point of being destructive.

Another argument that is made by Cannadine, and others, involves the use of preexisting social relations in the colonies to reinforce monarchical control of the Empire. In order to achieve this, the emirs, sheiks, Indian princes and tribal leaders who had already some level of endemic legitimacy were accorded a great deal of prestige in the imperial structure of Britain. In this way, a native tribal chief in New Zealand or South Africa could achieve—or exceed—the status of many high ranking Britons. It was Britain’s universalist approach to governing its empire; an approach which, at times, left many Britons who stayed home during the age of imperialism wondering if colonial life was actually superior to that of the homeland—this was, perhaps, an unforeseen consequence of indirect rule.

Cannadine’s arguments, on the whole, seem reasonable in that they present a legitimate second way of looking at the British Empire. But, inasmuch as Said’s arguments are stereotypical, Cannadine’s seem to be incomplete. The projection of British power in the colonies, with the aim of creating Neo-Britains, can certainly not be accounted for solely on the basis of ideologies and ornaments. The use of force, military, economic and social, seems to have been overlooked in the creation of colonial hierarchies—or at least underreported. This could have the effect of trading one stereotype for another—or at the very least downplaying the complexities of the relationship between the British Crown and it colonies.
Cannadine’s work is hardly post-modern in its presentation or conclusions. Not only is the simplification of rank versus race not particularly helpful, but his use of the term “British” with respect to how they perceived their Empire seems a bit problematic. With the term he appears to be only referring to the landed aristocrats in Britain—and certainly not the majority of Britons. This certainly prevents him from making an earth-shattering theory of one perception of one empire by one people. If only his analysis were as graded as British society; then he might be on to something.

Jared Field