- Email: [email protected]
Buildings of Empire
Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 47 (2015) 94e120
whichdalong with a 2010 conference at Royal Holloway, University of Londondsought to unravel the relationship between domestic and institutional life. Each chapter examines a different type of institution, and the volume as a whole is roughly organized by how much autonomy the inmates of these various institutions had over their stay there. This selection allows for a cross-organisational approach which, the editors argue, allows the book as a whole to ask bigger questions about the role of institutions in the lives of individuals as well as wider societal power structures. The questions which the contributors ask about these roles centre upon the ways in which inmates negotiated their own identities in relation to the institutions of which they were part across a period of almost 250 years. Traditionally, the residents of asylums and workhouses have been left mute, often unassisted in their silence by the Foucauldian notion of the panoptic and an implicit understanding that the institution as a space was inherently designed to stifle and oppress. Although, as the editors concede, this theory has resulted in much ‘productive provocation’ (p. 5), the rhetoric which defines the observer and the observed has also tended to render inmates as shadowy, ill-defined figures. This volume asserts early on its desire to move past the theories of Foucault and Goffman on institutions, and to see space as being written and understood by the quotidian movements and negotiations which made up institutional living, rather than as a result of a top-heavy enforcement of authority. Indeed, the book does this extremely well, and each essay provides a new insight in to how the institution as an architectural and imagined construct shaped and was shaped by the lives of those who knew its walls. Jeremy Boulton and John Black’s essay on life in an eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century workhouse, for example, moves beyond a simplistic analysis of space and away from the definition of the workhouse as an instrument of oppression. The authors conclude that although life was ‘rarely easy’(p. 90), the meanings which individuals attached to institutions were not fixed; understandings of how the workhouse could be used and by whom were protean, and the way space was conceived and used was constantly in flux. Mary Clare Martin’s contribution demonstrates, meanwhile, that the institutions founded by the Mental Deficiency and Lunacy Acts of 1913 had the scope to work as a ‘haven’ for the young girls who lived there (p. 75). This essay, like many in the collection, complicates our understanding of the institution as a space through defining is as creating social cohesion with the outside world rather than as a segregative space. The book’s desire to complicate our understanding of the relationship between institutions and inmates is arguably one of its greatest strengths. Essays by as Mary Clare Martin, Louise Hide, and Stephen Soane, particularly, place emphasis on the institution as a space of permeability. Asylums, workhouses, homes for those perceived to be mentally or physically unwell were porous both physically, in terms of patient and visitor movement, and ideologically. Conceptions of the domestic family home did not stop outside the door of the institution. Rather, they were translated and subverted by the residents within them, and ideas about what made a home a home were continually being remodelled in relation to the spatial realities of the institution. As Soane remarks, an understanding of this porosity is required in order for historians to complicate the tenacious binary decision of home-asylum. The volume tackles, moreover, the relationship between the spatial and the material remarkably well. The material and spatial turns, although both extremely pervasive in recent historical scholarship, have tended in much work to appear separately. How objects fill spaces, and how their meanings mutate depending on
109
the ways they are appropriated within different spaces, has often remained underexplored. Here, however, in the discussion of what ‘home comforts’ truly meant to individuals within the institution, the relationship between space and material culture is unravelled, revealing the ways in which objects of domesticity could take on new and unexpected meanings when placed within an institutional setting. Louise Hide demonstrates the negative dimensions which cheery household decorations could take on when appropriated within a London County Council Asylum. This fact is counterpointed with the far more positive outcome which members of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps during the First World War experienced when they were encouraged to personalize their living space. Although Kriztina Robert notes here that this form of material improvement was class-contingent, her chapter demonstrated the ways in which women hundreds of miles from home were able to integrate in to the British army through manipulating the material environment in which they lived, thereby galvanizing an identity which achieved both ‘military and feminine attributes’ (p. 153). Hamlett and Preston’s essay also engages directly with the link between materiality and spatiality, using the material culture of the institution to reflect on working class home life, an area of history which has traditionally been neglected through lack of a historical record. Using understandings of spatiality and materiality as analytical tools in tandem has allowed the authors of this volume to cast a light on those who have traditionally been perceived as outcast and oppressed, and allows us to continue to challenge the idea that the institution as a space was always defined by those not confined within it. The only criticism here lies in the chronological weighting of the essays, as all but one have their focus in the late nineteenth-century and beyond. However, allowing that this period was one which saw an explosion in ‘live-in’ institutions, and the medicalization of mental illness, the omission is perhaps explainable. Overall, in exploring both expectation and experience of domesticity within the institution, the authors have advanced our understanding of the social and cultural worlds of those who inhabited such buildings, as well as demonstrating the merit in the synthesis of material culture and spatial analysis. Elin Jones Queen Mary, University of London, UK http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.08.015
Ashley Jackson, Buildings of Empire. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, xiv þ 317 pages, £30 hardcover. In his new book, Buildings of Empire, Ashley Jackson is quick to point out that he is not attempting ‘an architectural history of the British Empire’ (p. viii). Potential readers may, however, be forgiven for thinking so after seeing the title. But a cursory glance at the contents page will soon disabuse anyone with a knowledge of the subject that it could possibly be a systematic architectural history. Nevertheless, the book is not necessarily the worse for itdindeed, what Jackson offers instead of an architectural history of the empire is a potentially more interesting, wide-ranging social and cultural history of aspects of Britain’s imperial experience as filtered through the facades and spaces of some of its most representative buildings. In this respect he has been able to contextualise his subject in a way that
110
Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 47 (2015) 94e120
more conventional forms of architectural history have either been unwilling or unable to dodthis, in itself, is an achievement of sorts. For a start, Jackson should be congratulated for avoiding the usual and most obvious suspects in his line-up. This is very refreshing, but comes with its own problems. Again, seeing the title, many will have expected a ‘greatest hits’ account of imperial monuments. Moreover, the fact that the word ‘Britain’ or ‘British’ does not appear anywhere in the title might mislead some into believing that it is a wider, pan-European accountda problem that could easily have been rectified with an appropriate subtitle. Instead, the author offers twelve discrete examples (or case studies), each forming a separate chapter. The chronological and geographical coverage is wide, including both what were once termed ‘settler dominions’ and ‘imperial dependencies’, ranging from Australasia, South East Asia, India, the Caribbean, and Africa, to places closer to ‘home’, such as Malta, Ireland, and Britain itself. Here we find buildings and urban environments from as early as the middle ages, such as Dublin Castle; through the early and late modern periods, including the settlements of Spanish Town (Jamaica) and Williamsburg (Virginia); to nineteenth- and twentiethcentury examples such as the Gezira Sporting Club (Cairo), the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station (Malaya), Raffles Hotel (Singapore), the Gordon Memorial College (Khartoum), and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters building by Foster & Partners. The only building typology missing here is one relating to religion. This is a shame because Christianity was an important aspect of Britain’s self-confessed imperial ‘mission’, and the inclusion of such an example would have given the book greater depth and nuance. Jackson’s analysis is actually quite reticent on matters of architecture per se (perhaps why the term ‘buildings’ is used in the title instead). Because of this the book will no doubt frustrate those looking for some detailed discussion of style, patronage, or construction processes and techniques. But what the book lacks in terms of any kind of overarching thesis, it makes up for in the way it reminds us constantly of the fact that ‘architecture’ is a living thing, a social construct that both shapes and is witness to behaviours and events that open a window onto a particular stratum of society in a given time period, also becoming a conduit through which cultural and political change is enacted. It is the emphasis placed on this particular aspect that is the most interesting (and engaging) feature of the bookdthe buildings become an anchor to which a narrative structure is attached, revealing at once something about the nature of the architecture and the interface it established between its users and colonial/imperial society at large. Each account comes with its own cast of anecdotes, intrigues, and tales that both enlighten the reader and enliven the text, and Jackson tells the story well. There is a serious side to this, too, for at the end of most chapters (and in the conclusion) the author discusses the post-colonial implications of this diverse building stock, and the very real heritage issues that confront it. In some cases, such as the Raffles Hotel, an extensive refurbishment programme has given the building a new lease of life, allowing it to remain one of the city’s principal attractions, despite perceptions of it under colonial rule. Whereas, in other casesdsuch as that of the old Viceregal Lodge, Simlada more troubled afterlife awaited, with underuse and significantly less resources for maintenance. The search after alternative meaning and significance for such buildings is obviously fraught. As fascinating as this book is, I was left wondering exactly who the target audience is supposed to be. Although of some appeal to academics, it is not scholarly or ground-breaking enough, methodologically speaking, to engage or excite experts in the field (either historians of empire or architectural historians) beyond casual interest. If for a more general audience, which would seem to be the level at which it is pitched, it is not illustrated nearly enough.
Indeed, the publisher has missed a trick here. This book could easily have become the next, most up-to-date publication of its kind, in the genre of Jan Morris’s Stones of Empire (1983) and Robert FermorHesketh’s Architecture of the British Empire (1986), if only it had been produced in a slightly larger format and lavishly illustrated. This was perhaps all the more necessary given that it did not deal with the most familiar monuments of empire. As it presently stands, it falls between stools. However, as someone who teaches a special subject at university level on architecture and the British Empire, I can see its merits and usefulness as a teaching aid. I will certainly be recommending my students read particular chapters from it, as they provide introductory and, at times, challenging/ provocative accounts of architecture in context. There are very few publications out there that do this in bite-sized chunks. For this reason alone, Jackson’s account is valuable. Well written and informative throughout, the book allows one to dip in and out, with each chapter providing a concise account, revealing, in the process, a different facet of the imperial enterprise each time. This is both the book’s strength and its weakness. G.A. Bremner University of Edinburgh, UK http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.08.007
Roy Kozlovsky, The Architectures of Childhood: Children, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Postwar England. Farnham, Ashgate, 2013, xii þ 292 pages, £65 hardcover. Several existing architectural studies of post-war Britain have focused on the planners and architects responsible for rebuilding Britain after the war, discussing the patrons and policy which enabled the government’s aspirations for a new society to become a built reality. In The Architectures of Childhood, Roy Kozlovsky offers a different framework for viewing the changes which took place: an understanding of the child, both as user and influencer of the built environment. Identifying a child-centeredness in both education and social policy at the time, Kozlovsky argues that the ‘seminal buildings of the post-war period were educational buildings’ (p. 1), providing architects with both the possibility for experimentation and the opportunity to show an awareness of the specific needs of children for the first time. Kozlovsky then goes on to demonstrate how this emphasis on the perceived needs of the child, together with the use of an imagery of childhood for promotional ends, was employed by architects to justify the new buildings required by the welfare state and an agenda of social democracy. The book takes the form of a series of chapters visiting the various spaces associated with the experience of childhood, in the form of neatly demarcated but thematically related case studies. Although the book stops short in 1959 and could, perhaps, have benefited from a discussion of developments in the later post-war years of the 1960s, Kozlovsky effectively demonstrates the lineage of ideas which gained currency in the post-war perioddsuch as the drive to undertake empirical observation of children’s activities, needs, and behaviour and to respond accordingly when planning buildingsdby starting his study in the inter-war period with a chapter on the experimental Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham (1935e1951). The book then goes on to describe how new architectural and educational ideas were put into practice in places such as schools. Kozlovsky discusses Hertfordshire County Council’s innovative experiments into system-building to achieve light, spacious, airy open-plan spaces for education quickly and cost-effectively, along
whichdalong with a 2010 conference at Royal Holloway, University of Londondsought to unravel the relationship between domestic and institutional life. Each chapter examines a different type of institution, and the volume as a whole is roughly organized by how much autonomy the inmates of these various institutions had over their stay there. This selection allows for a cross-organisational approach which, the editors argue, allows the book as a whole to ask bigger questions about the role of institutions in the lives of individuals as well as wider societal power structures. The questions which the contributors ask about these roles centre upon the ways in which inmates negotiated their own identities in relation to the institutions of which they were part across a period of almost 250 years. Traditionally, the residents of asylums and workhouses have been left mute, often unassisted in their silence by the Foucauldian notion of the panoptic and an implicit understanding that the institution as a space was inherently designed to stifle and oppress. Although, as the editors concede, this theory has resulted in much ‘productive provocation’ (p. 5), the rhetoric which defines the observer and the observed has also tended to render inmates as shadowy, ill-defined figures. This volume asserts early on its desire to move past the theories of Foucault and Goffman on institutions, and to see space as being written and understood by the quotidian movements and negotiations which made up institutional living, rather than as a result of a top-heavy enforcement of authority. Indeed, the book does this extremely well, and each essay provides a new insight in to how the institution as an architectural and imagined construct shaped and was shaped by the lives of those who knew its walls. Jeremy Boulton and John Black’s essay on life in an eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century workhouse, for example, moves beyond a simplistic analysis of space and away from the definition of the workhouse as an instrument of oppression. The authors conclude that although life was ‘rarely easy’(p. 90), the meanings which individuals attached to institutions were not fixed; understandings of how the workhouse could be used and by whom were protean, and the way space was conceived and used was constantly in flux. Mary Clare Martin’s contribution demonstrates, meanwhile, that the institutions founded by the Mental Deficiency and Lunacy Acts of 1913 had the scope to work as a ‘haven’ for the young girls who lived there (p. 75). This essay, like many in the collection, complicates our understanding of the institution as a space through defining is as creating social cohesion with the outside world rather than as a segregative space. The book’s desire to complicate our understanding of the relationship between institutions and inmates is arguably one of its greatest strengths. Essays by as Mary Clare Martin, Louise Hide, and Stephen Soane, particularly, place emphasis on the institution as a space of permeability. Asylums, workhouses, homes for those perceived to be mentally or physically unwell were porous both physically, in terms of patient and visitor movement, and ideologically. Conceptions of the domestic family home did not stop outside the door of the institution. Rather, they were translated and subverted by the residents within them, and ideas about what made a home a home were continually being remodelled in relation to the spatial realities of the institution. As Soane remarks, an understanding of this porosity is required in order for historians to complicate the tenacious binary decision of home-asylum. The volume tackles, moreover, the relationship between the spatial and the material remarkably well. The material and spatial turns, although both extremely pervasive in recent historical scholarship, have tended in much work to appear separately. How objects fill spaces, and how their meanings mutate depending on
109
the ways they are appropriated within different spaces, has often remained underexplored. Here, however, in the discussion of what ‘home comforts’ truly meant to individuals within the institution, the relationship between space and material culture is unravelled, revealing the ways in which objects of domesticity could take on new and unexpected meanings when placed within an institutional setting. Louise Hide demonstrates the negative dimensions which cheery household decorations could take on when appropriated within a London County Council Asylum. This fact is counterpointed with the far more positive outcome which members of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps during the First World War experienced when they were encouraged to personalize their living space. Although Kriztina Robert notes here that this form of material improvement was class-contingent, her chapter demonstrated the ways in which women hundreds of miles from home were able to integrate in to the British army through manipulating the material environment in which they lived, thereby galvanizing an identity which achieved both ‘military and feminine attributes’ (p. 153). Hamlett and Preston’s essay also engages directly with the link between materiality and spatiality, using the material culture of the institution to reflect on working class home life, an area of history which has traditionally been neglected through lack of a historical record. Using understandings of spatiality and materiality as analytical tools in tandem has allowed the authors of this volume to cast a light on those who have traditionally been perceived as outcast and oppressed, and allows us to continue to challenge the idea that the institution as a space was always defined by those not confined within it. The only criticism here lies in the chronological weighting of the essays, as all but one have their focus in the late nineteenth-century and beyond. However, allowing that this period was one which saw an explosion in ‘live-in’ institutions, and the medicalization of mental illness, the omission is perhaps explainable. Overall, in exploring both expectation and experience of domesticity within the institution, the authors have advanced our understanding of the social and cultural worlds of those who inhabited such buildings, as well as demonstrating the merit in the synthesis of material culture and spatial analysis. Elin Jones Queen Mary, University of London, UK http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.08.015
Ashley Jackson, Buildings of Empire. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, xiv þ 317 pages, £30 hardcover. In his new book, Buildings of Empire, Ashley Jackson is quick to point out that he is not attempting ‘an architectural history of the British Empire’ (p. viii). Potential readers may, however, be forgiven for thinking so after seeing the title. But a cursory glance at the contents page will soon disabuse anyone with a knowledge of the subject that it could possibly be a systematic architectural history. Nevertheless, the book is not necessarily the worse for itdindeed, what Jackson offers instead of an architectural history of the empire is a potentially more interesting, wide-ranging social and cultural history of aspects of Britain’s imperial experience as filtered through the facades and spaces of some of its most representative buildings. In this respect he has been able to contextualise his subject in a way that
110
Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 47 (2015) 94e120
more conventional forms of architectural history have either been unwilling or unable to dodthis, in itself, is an achievement of sorts. For a start, Jackson should be congratulated for avoiding the usual and most obvious suspects in his line-up. This is very refreshing, but comes with its own problems. Again, seeing the title, many will have expected a ‘greatest hits’ account of imperial monuments. Moreover, the fact that the word ‘Britain’ or ‘British’ does not appear anywhere in the title might mislead some into believing that it is a wider, pan-European accountda problem that could easily have been rectified with an appropriate subtitle. Instead, the author offers twelve discrete examples (or case studies), each forming a separate chapter. The chronological and geographical coverage is wide, including both what were once termed ‘settler dominions’ and ‘imperial dependencies’, ranging from Australasia, South East Asia, India, the Caribbean, and Africa, to places closer to ‘home’, such as Malta, Ireland, and Britain itself. Here we find buildings and urban environments from as early as the middle ages, such as Dublin Castle; through the early and late modern periods, including the settlements of Spanish Town (Jamaica) and Williamsburg (Virginia); to nineteenth- and twentiethcentury examples such as the Gezira Sporting Club (Cairo), the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station (Malaya), Raffles Hotel (Singapore), the Gordon Memorial College (Khartoum), and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters building by Foster & Partners. The only building typology missing here is one relating to religion. This is a shame because Christianity was an important aspect of Britain’s self-confessed imperial ‘mission’, and the inclusion of such an example would have given the book greater depth and nuance. Jackson’s analysis is actually quite reticent on matters of architecture per se (perhaps why the term ‘buildings’ is used in the title instead). Because of this the book will no doubt frustrate those looking for some detailed discussion of style, patronage, or construction processes and techniques. But what the book lacks in terms of any kind of overarching thesis, it makes up for in the way it reminds us constantly of the fact that ‘architecture’ is a living thing, a social construct that both shapes and is witness to behaviours and events that open a window onto a particular stratum of society in a given time period, also becoming a conduit through which cultural and political change is enacted. It is the emphasis placed on this particular aspect that is the most interesting (and engaging) feature of the bookdthe buildings become an anchor to which a narrative structure is attached, revealing at once something about the nature of the architecture and the interface it established between its users and colonial/imperial society at large. Each account comes with its own cast of anecdotes, intrigues, and tales that both enlighten the reader and enliven the text, and Jackson tells the story well. There is a serious side to this, too, for at the end of most chapters (and in the conclusion) the author discusses the post-colonial implications of this diverse building stock, and the very real heritage issues that confront it. In some cases, such as the Raffles Hotel, an extensive refurbishment programme has given the building a new lease of life, allowing it to remain one of the city’s principal attractions, despite perceptions of it under colonial rule. Whereas, in other casesdsuch as that of the old Viceregal Lodge, Simlada more troubled afterlife awaited, with underuse and significantly less resources for maintenance. The search after alternative meaning and significance for such buildings is obviously fraught. As fascinating as this book is, I was left wondering exactly who the target audience is supposed to be. Although of some appeal to academics, it is not scholarly or ground-breaking enough, methodologically speaking, to engage or excite experts in the field (either historians of empire or architectural historians) beyond casual interest. If for a more general audience, which would seem to be the level at which it is pitched, it is not illustrated nearly enough.
Indeed, the publisher has missed a trick here. This book could easily have become the next, most up-to-date publication of its kind, in the genre of Jan Morris’s Stones of Empire (1983) and Robert FermorHesketh’s Architecture of the British Empire (1986), if only it had been produced in a slightly larger format and lavishly illustrated. This was perhaps all the more necessary given that it did not deal with the most familiar monuments of empire. As it presently stands, it falls between stools. However, as someone who teaches a special subject at university level on architecture and the British Empire, I can see its merits and usefulness as a teaching aid. I will certainly be recommending my students read particular chapters from it, as they provide introductory and, at times, challenging/ provocative accounts of architecture in context. There are very few publications out there that do this in bite-sized chunks. For this reason alone, Jackson’s account is valuable. Well written and informative throughout, the book allows one to dip in and out, with each chapter providing a concise account, revealing, in the process, a different facet of the imperial enterprise each time. This is both the book’s strength and its weakness. G.A. Bremner University of Edinburgh, UK http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2014.08.007
Roy Kozlovsky, The Architectures of Childhood: Children, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Postwar England. Farnham, Ashgate, 2013, xii þ 292 pages, £65 hardcover. Several existing architectural studies of post-war Britain have focused on the planners and architects responsible for rebuilding Britain after the war, discussing the patrons and policy which enabled the government’s aspirations for a new society to become a built reality. In The Architectures of Childhood, Roy Kozlovsky offers a different framework for viewing the changes which took place: an understanding of the child, both as user and influencer of the built environment. Identifying a child-centeredness in both education and social policy at the time, Kozlovsky argues that the ‘seminal buildings of the post-war period were educational buildings’ (p. 1), providing architects with both the possibility for experimentation and the opportunity to show an awareness of the specific needs of children for the first time. Kozlovsky then goes on to demonstrate how this emphasis on the perceived needs of the child, together with the use of an imagery of childhood for promotional ends, was employed by architects to justify the new buildings required by the welfare state and an agenda of social democracy. The book takes the form of a series of chapters visiting the various spaces associated with the experience of childhood, in the form of neatly demarcated but thematically related case studies. Although the book stops short in 1959 and could, perhaps, have benefited from a discussion of developments in the later post-war years of the 1960s, Kozlovsky effectively demonstrates the lineage of ideas which gained currency in the post-war perioddsuch as the drive to undertake empirical observation of children’s activities, needs, and behaviour and to respond accordingly when planning buildingsdby starting his study in the inter-war period with a chapter on the experimental Pioneer Health Centre in Peckham (1935e1951). The book then goes on to describe how new architectural and educational ideas were put into practice in places such as schools. Kozlovsky discusses Hertfordshire County Council’s innovative experiments into system-building to achieve light, spacious, airy open-plan spaces for education quickly and cost-effectively, along