Secure Sites: Empire and the Emergence of Security
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
English Language Notes 54.1 SPRING / SUMMER 2016 SECURE SITES: EMPIRE AND THE EMERGENCE OF SECURITY SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS: JEFFREY N. COX JILLIAN HEYDT-STEVENSON PAUL YOUNGQUIST Department of English 226 UCB UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER BOULDER, COLORADO, USA 80309-0226 ENGLISH.COLORADO.EDU/ELN English Language Notes © Copyright 2016, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. English Language Notes, under the sponsorship of the University of Colorado, is published twice per year, in Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. Institutional subscriptions are $70.00 for the United States and Canada, $80.00 for all other countries. Personal subscriptions are $45.00 for the United States and Canada, $55.00 for all other countries. Back numbers of ELN beginning with Vol. XX, Number 1 are available for $24.00 each from English Language Notes, Hellems 101, University of Colorado Boulder, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226. Periodicals postage is paid at Boulder, CO. Claims for undelivered subscription numbers will be honored if received within one year of the publication date. No refunds offered for cancellations. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to English Language Notes, University of Colorado Boulder, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226. ISSN 00138282 USPS 176-720 English Language Notes is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography. Contact Information: English Language Notes Department of English University of Colorado Boulder 226 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0226 [email protected] http://english.colorado.edu/eln/ Cover design: Karen Jacobs Printed on recycled paper Cover Art © Heirs of Aaron Douglas/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Credit: The Walter O. Evans Collection at Savannah College of Art and Design. English Language Notes Senior Editor Advisory Board Laura Winkiel Elizabeth Abel, University of California, Berkeley Adélékè Adéèkó,. Ohio State University Managing Editor Matthew Anderson, University of New England Jenny Cookson Jan Baetens, University of Leuven (Belgium) Sara Blair, University of Michigan Business Manager Rob Breton, Nipissing University (Canada) Grace Rexroth Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia Steven Bruhm, University of Western Ontario (Canada) Editorial Board Lennard Davis, University of Illinois, Chicago Katherine Eggert Madelyn Detloff, Miami University, Ohio Jane Garrity Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University Nan Goodman Laura Doan, University of Manchester (UK) Kelly Hurley Dino Felluga, Purdue University Karen Jacobs Cathrine Frank, University of New England William Kuskin Esther Gabara, Duke University Laura Green, Northeastern University Jennifer Green-Lewis, The George Washington University Elena Gualtieri, University of Groningen (Netherlands) Steffen Hantke, Sogang University (South Korea) Richard Hornsey, University of Nottingham (UK) David Kurnick, Rutgers University Doran Larson, Hamilton College Tirza Latimer, California College of the Arts Caroline Levine, University of Wisconsin-Madison Jill Matus, University of Toronto (Canada) David McWhirter, Texas A&M University, College Station Richard Menke, University of Georgia Kent Puckett, University of California, Berkeley David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University Table of Contents Introduction Here and There, Now and Then 1 Jillian Heydt-Stevenson, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Paul Youngquist, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Jeffrey N. Cox, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Queer Green Sex Toys 13 Timothy Morton, Rice University [email protected] DeLancey’s Tour: 25 Military Barracks and the Endo-Colonization of Englend in the 1790s Neil Ramsey, University of New South Wales [email protected] How Wordsworth Tells: Numeration, Valuation, and Dwelling in “We are Seven” 39 Miranda Burgess, The University of British Columbia [email protected] Chthonic Michael: Smithson, Levi-Strauss, Freud, Wordsworth 53 Orin C. Wang, University of Maryland [email protected] Lalla Rookh and the Afterlife of Allegory 71 Padma Rangarajan, University of Colorado [email protected] The Last Ruins of Palmyra 87 Jillian Heydt-Stevenson, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Optative Places 107: The Periodical as Site Christine Marie Woody, University of Pennsylvania [email protected] The “Police Report” Debates: 111: A Burgeoning Fantasy of the Modern Security State Grace Rexroth, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Refracted Artifacts: 115 The Honours of Scotland’s Illusion of Security Conny Cassity, University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] Print Circuit Security and the Writers’ Buildings 117 in Early Nineteenth-Century Calcutta Chris Kelleher, University of Toronto [email protected] Antinomian Spaces and Godwin’s Thieves 121 Eric Pencek, Boston College [email protected] Citing and Siting in the Nineteenth-Century British Census 123 Sophia Hsu, Rice University [email protected] Securing the Romantic Body: 125: The Politics of Vaccination Travis Chi Wing Lau, University of Pennsylvania [email protected] Contagious Revolution and Colonial Securitization 129 Lenora Hanson, University of Wisconsin-Madison [email protected] Contributors 133 De Lancey’s Tour: Military Barracks and the Endo-Colonization of England in the 1790s1 Neil Ramsey n Rings of Saturn, W. G. Sebald describes a walking tour across modern day Suffolk that reveals a region haunted by its militaristic past. Seemingly devoid of inhabitants, the region Iis filled instead with innumerable vestiges of Britain’s violent history of military power, war and colonialism. At one point, the unnamed narrator locates relics of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), observing that while the coast between Orford and Felixstowe had been defended for centuries by Orford Castle, the wars saw a series of Martello towers built along the coast in response to the threat of French invasion.2 Built to withstand naval bombardment with brick walls up to thirteen feet thick, Martello towers were austere and simple round forts that uncannily resembled the pillboxes and bunkers of two world wars.3 Historians of eighteenth-century Britain have had little to say about such military geographies or the ways that they foreshadowed modern military architecture. As a commercial and comparatively liberal nation with deep suspicions of its standing army, Britain has been seen to stand in stark contrast to its autocratic European neighbours. A growing body of research has, however, revealed the full extent of British military power in the eighteenth century, albeit a power linked to finance, taxation, and naval technology as much as to an extensive army.4 Sebald’s tour helps reveal how militarism does not simply manifest in overt displays of martial grandeur, but can function through austerity, secrecy, and familiarity, that it also has a presence just beneath the surface of everyday life. The Martello towers were not the only military buildings constructed in England at the end of the eighteenth century. The 1790s also saw the widespread establishment of military barracks across the country. While barracks had long been used in Europe, they were not common in England prior to this time. Antagonism toward the standing army was firmly established with the revolution of 1688, and it was commonly believed throughout the eighteenth century that in order to resist monarchical tyranny, English soldiers must not be separated from the people in barracks. At the start of the 1790s, an estimated twenty thousand soldiers were stationed in barracks across Great Britain, almost wholly in the Highlands and the southeast coast of England around naval ports (although barracks were used much more extensively in Ireland). Soldiers were normally billeted at inns or private properties. However, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, well over one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were stationed in almost two hundred barracks.5 This is a development that historians largely ascribe to the increasing size 26 | English Language Notes 54.1 Spring / Summer 2016 and professionalism of the British army, viewing barracks as a military necessity for Britain as it faced the growing military power of France.6 This article revisits the development of barracks in England by examining an earlier tour than Sebald’s, one undertaken by Britain’s Deputy Adjutant General, Colonel Oliver De Lancey, in the summer of 1792 that was instrumental in the British government’s decision to commence construction of barracks across the country later that year. In part, the widespread use of barracks at the end of the eighteenth century can be seen in relation to Michel Foucault’s work on the dawning of a disciplinary society. As innumerable studies have reiterated, barracks represent the prototype of the disciplinary institutions of supervision that proliferated in the nineteenth century such as factories, hospitals, prisons and schools. By examining De Lancey’s tour and the underlying rationale for constructing barracks, this article reveals that they were, however, more than simply sites of discipline. By drawing on Paul Virilio’s conceptualization of military mobilization and the ways in which he argues for the significance of speed, space, and logistical developments in a militarized society, this article proposes that barracks help reveal a thoroughgoing militarization of Britain in the 1790s. The construction of barracks played a significant role in the overall counter-revolutionary politics of the