Details

Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation

Passengers, pilots, publicity
Studies in Imperialism

von: Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie
134,99 €
Verlag:	Manchester University Press
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	01.02.2017
ISBN/EAN:	9781526118479
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	264

In den Warenkorb

Als Gutschein

DRM-geschütztes eBook, Sie benötigen z.B. Adobe Digital Editions und eine Adobe ID zum Lesen.

Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.

Titelkurzbeschreibung

Looks at the new activity of transcontinental civil flying in the 1930s and its extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Gathers new evidence to distil the age, class, gender and occupational profiles of people who used private and commercial aircraft and looks at how flying in the period was and is romanticised and caricatured.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

General editor’s introduction
1. Introduction
PART I Private flying
2. Aerial adventure
3. Seeking supremacy
4. Imperial encounters
PART II Commercial flying
5. ‘PAX’ Britannica
6. Imperial journeys
7. Personifying Empire
PART III Virtual flying
8. Imperial plumage
9. Imperial passages
10. Re-flying Empire
11. Conclusion
Index

Autorenportrait

Gordon Pirie is Deputy Director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town

Flap copy

Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation assembles an unprecedented mass of scattered evidence to examine the social exclusivity of people who used private and commercial aircraft to circulate though the empire in the 1930s. While airline publicity stressed flying patriotically and in style, flying was not always slick, romantic or modern. It did not end danger or delay, nor was it necessarily progressive. Imperial flying was mobility laced with imperious assumptions and prejudices. It reinforced social rank and continued to depend on the subservience and muscle of colonised people for regular and emergency travel assistance.

Complementary biographical material, illustration and narrative illuminate the atmosphere, meaning and significance of imperial civil flying. Imperial cultures and caricatures were tenacious in the face of new technology, and Pirie shows that imperial attitudes and values framed the experiences and interactions of the (mostly) male British metropolitan and expatriate elites who flew, whether for adventure, prizes or leisure, or for colonial administration, business or research. The book also reveals the imperial sensations, sights and sensibilities experienced by those in less-privileged roles that served aviation. Drawing upon contemporary airline publicity and flying travelogues, he highlights the reproduction and (dubious) ‘elevation’ of imperialism in new spaces, which survives today as iconography in nostalgic re-enactments and sanitised commemoration of late British empire.

Engagingly written by an established expert in the field, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of imperial, cultural and transport history.