Empire of Sentiment
The Death of Livingstone and the Myth of Victorian Imperialism

An innovative study proposing a new history of the British Empire in Africa by exploring the emotion culture of imperialism.

Joanna Lewis (Author)

9781316648230, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 October 2020

304 pages, 16 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.451 kg

'The especial value of what Lydon and Lewis offer rests in their detailed historical accounting: the particularity of the circumstances they survey in Australia and Africa, respectively. Both monographs contribute to a larger and more complex history of how feeling was manipulated across the British Empire.' Jason R. Rudy, Victorian Studies

This is the first emotional history of the British Empire. Joanna Lewis explores how David Livingstone's death tied together British imperialism and Victorian humanitarianism and inserted it into popular culture. Sacrifice and death; Superman like heroism; the devotion of Africans; the cruelty of Arab slavery; and the sufferings of the 'ordinary man', generated waves of sentimental feeling. These powerful myths, images and feelings incubated down the generations - through grand ceremonies, further exploration, humanitarianism, Christian teaching, narratives of masculine endeavour and heroic biography - inspiring colonial rule in Africa, white settler pioneers, missionaries and Africans. Empire of Sentiment demonstrates how this central African story shaped Britain's romantic perception of itself as a humane power overseas when the colonial reality fell far short. Through sentimental humanitarianism, Livingstone helped sustain a British Empire in Africa that remained profoundly Victorian, polyphonic and ideological; whilst always understood at home as proudly liberal on race.

Prologue
Introduction
1. 'A Parliament of philanthropy': the fight to bury Livingstone
2. Laying to rest a Victorian myth: The 'lost heart of the nation', Victorian sentimentality and the rebirth of moral imperialism
3. A perfect savagery: the Livingstone martyrs and the tree of death on Africa's 'highway to hell'
4. The graveyard of ambition: missionary wars, bachelor colonialism and white memorials, Chitambo, 1900–1913
5. White settlers, frontier-chic and colonial racism: how Livingstone's three Cs fell apart
6. 'The hearts of good men': 1973, the one party state and the struggle against apartheid
7. 'Chains of remembrance': Livingstone, sentimental imperialism and Britain's Africa conversation, 1913–2013
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]