Charterland: Rhodesia in British Culture, 1889-1939

This application is for twelve months’ full-time research leave to enable the completion of a monograph titled Charterland: The Image of Rhodesia in British Culture, 1889–1939 and a research visit at the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Beckett University, UK.

The monograph will establish the extraordinary influence of colonial-era Zimbabwe and Zambia on British culture between the formation of Rhodesia and the Second World War.

In recovering this archive, this study will establish that the public image of Rhodesia was uniquely shaped by domestic British concerns, notably gender, class, and racial anxieties.

Reconstruction of Rhodesia’s sprawling cultural presence, ranging from Scouting to million-selling women’s novels and popular cinema films, will additionally show how the territory was widely regarded as an embodiment of the British Empire despite its anomalous constitution as a chartered or private colony.

Six thematic chapters examine the colony’s symbolic and political impact on selected fields of cultural production: visual culture and spectacle, periodical publication, literature, and non-fiction prose writing.

In addition to making a major contribution to the scholarship on empire, this study provides a new historical context for current debates over the legacy of imperial relations in contemporary Britain.