European Empires and the People

This is the first book to survey in comparative form the transmission of imperial ideas to the public in six European countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters focusing on France Britain the Netherlands Belgium Germany and Italy provide parallel studies of the manner in which colonial ambitions and events in the respective European empires were given wider popular visibility. The international group of contributors who are all scholars working at the cutting edge of these fields place their work in the context of governmental policies the economic bases of imperial expansion major events such as wars of conquest the emergence of myths of heroic action in exotic contexts religious and missionary impulses as well as the new media which facilitated such popular dissemination. Among these media were the press international exhibitions popular literature educational institutions and methods ceremonies church sermons and lectures monuments paintings and much else.