Download Full Book

Staging Governance O'Quinn, Daniel Published by Johns Hopkins University Press O'Quinn, Daniel. Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770–1800. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.60320. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60320 [ Access provided at 30 Sep 2021 18:04 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Staging Governance This page intentionally left blank Staging Governance theatrical imperialism in london, 1770–1800 Daniel O’Quinn the johns hopkins university press Baltimore This book was brought to publication with the generous assistance of the Karl and Edith Pribram Endowment. © 2005 the johns hopkins university press All rights reserved. Published 2005 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 987654321 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data O’Quinn, Daniel, 1962– Staging governance : theatrical imperialism in London, 1770–1800 / Daniel O’Quinn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8018-7961-2 (hardcover : acid-free paper) 1. English drama—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Imperialism in literature. 3. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—18th century. 4. Theater—England— London—History—18th century. 5. Political plays, English—History and criticism. 6. Theater—Political aspects—England—London. 7. Colonies in literature. I. Title. PR719.I45O59 2005 822′.609358—dc22 2004026032 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. For Gabriel This page intentionally left blank contents acknowledgments ix introduction The Supplementation of Imperial Sovereignty 1 part one Ethnographic Acts 33 chapter one Empire’s Vicious Expenses Samuel Foote’s The Nabob and the Credit Crisis of 1772 43 chapter two “As Much as Science Can Approach Barbarity” Pantomimical Ethnography in Omai; or, A Trip round the World 74 part two Women and the Trials of Imperial Masculinity 115 chapter three Inchbald’s Indies Meditations on Despotism circa 1784 125 chapter four The Raree Show of Impeachment 164 chapter five Molière’s Old Woman Judging and Being Judged with Frances Burney 222 part three A Theatre of Perpetual War 259 chapter six Starke Reforms Martial Masculinity and the Perils of Indianization 269 chapter seven War and Precinema Tipu Sultan and the Allure of Mechanical Display 312 afterword Recreational Alterity 349 notes 359 index 401 viii contents acknowledgments this project was supported by a generous three-year research fellow- ship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Like many other Canadian scholars, I am grateful to the various scholars willing to commit their time to SSHRC’s many initiatives and whose intensive peer review gave me the confidence to write this book. Funding from SSHRC allowed me to employ a small cadre of superb research assistants. Mark Stephen, Michelle Lobkowicz, Nasrin Gilbert, and Rory McClellan immersed themselves in the relevant archives, and I owe a great deal to their intellectual curiosity and their enthusiasm for late eighteenth-century newspapers. At crucial stages of the research, I received valuable assistance from staff members at the University of Guelph, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the National Library of Australia, and, perhaps most impor- tantly, at the British Library, especially those librarians working in the India Office and Records Collection. Eva Soos at the J. Morgan Pierpont Library in New York, Martin Durant at the Victoria and Albert Museum, David Rhodes in the Prints and Drawings Collection at the British Mu- seum, and Sylvia Carr at the National Library of Australia were extraor- dinarily helpful when it came time to collect the illustrations. I am also in- debted to the College of Arts at the University of Guelph for financial assistance in procuring images and for facilitating my research in general. In its early stages, this project was developed on three separate occa- sions as a graduate course in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. The students’ enthusiasm for, and frustration with, the issues surrounding imperial performance at this historical juncture played no small part in shaping this project. For their patience, their candor, and their curiosity, I am grateful. Deidre Lynch, Donna Andrew, and an anonymous reader for the Johns Hopkins University Press read the entire manuscript with extraordinary care. Their advice, their commitment, their encouragement, and, most of all, their intellectual generosity has been invaluable. I owe special thanks to Deidre and Donna, for they have been receptive listeners and astute crit- ics of the project from its inception to its completion. Several colleagues with a special interest in Romantic theatre and/or British imperial cul- ture–Betsy Bolton, Julie Carlson, Jeffrey Cox, Michelle Elleray, Mary Favret, Theresa Kelley, and Gillian Russell–agreed to read and comment on sections of the manuscript at different stages of its composition. I couldn’t have asked for a more thoughtful and rigorous group of inter- locutors. To a person,they raised crucial questions and provided me with vital information and suggestions without which certain chapters would be much less successful. All these contributions were timely and helpful, but I bear the responsibility for any residual errors. To Julie, Jeff, Gillian, Michael Gamer, and Jane Moody, I owe special thanks for helping me understand by their example how to conduct research in Romantic theatre. Natasha Eaton offered important assistance with some of the images and deserves my thanks. To Orrin Wang, Teresa Kelley, Sonia Hofkosh, Ian Balfour, Sarah Zimmerman, Reeve Parker, Mary Jacobus, David Clark, Laura Brown, Patrick Holland, Jennifer Schacker, Susan Brown, Alan Shepard, and Donna Pennee, my debts are more various and general, but no less important. Their relentless encouragement, careful critique, and timely advice had a significant impact not only on my schol- arly activities but also on the composition and revision of this book. Sections of this work were presented at a meeting of the Washington Area Romantics Group, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, at the Romantic Orientalism conference at the University of Aberistwyth, at the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, and at various meet- ings of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. I would like to thank all of the audiences and organizers for their interest, questions, and suggestions. Early versions of some of the materials in chapters 6 and 7 first appeared on two highly innovative electronic resources: my discussion of Starke’s The Sword of Peace was solicited by Michael Eberle-Sinatra and Tom Crochunis for the British Women Playwrights around 1800 website and my analysis of Ramah Droog was published by Romantic Praxis. x acknowledgments During the past two years, I have been grateful to Michael Lonegro at the Johns Hopkins University Press for treating both my manuscript and my concerns with care and respect. Thanks to Juliana McCarthy, Kimberly Johnson, Alexa Selph, and Brian MacDonald for bringing the book through its final stages. Finally, I want to thank Anne Lyden, Michelle Elleray, Arthur Irwin, Liz Noble, Jennifer Henderson, Jim Ellis, Glenn Mielke, Roger Seamon, and Barbara Seamon for their unwavering support and affection over the years. To my parents, Leo and Celeste O’Quinn, and my sister, Jennifer, I owe more than I can say. Jo-Ann Seamon’s sense of fun, her political commitment, and her love infuse everything I am and everything I do. Our son Gabriel is roughly the same age as this project and this book is ded- icated to him. acknowledgments xi This page intentionally left blank Staging Governance This page intentionally left blank introduction The Supplementation of Imperial Sovereignty between 1770 and 1800, transformations in the rela- tionship between metropolitan British society and its colonial holdings, as well as changes in the concept of the nation itself, precipitated crises in governance that left Britons with a new sense of themselves. By the mid- dle of the eighteenth century the successes of British mercantilism had ef- fectively expanded sovereignty well beyond the shores of the British Isles. Although economically the nation and the empire were mutually consti- tutive, that was not the case politically.1 In fact, this very expansion posed significant problems for the theory and practice of sovereignty and con- tributed to its supplementation by new governmental tactics that eventually dispersed power over a wide range of institutions. These tactics both added to and substituted for juridical sovereignty in such a way that the state form eventually made the empire the target of its operations. This book is vitally concerned with this double process, for it argues that one can track important shifts in governmentality in the theatricalization of imperial affairs in late eighteenth-century London. It is my claim that nightly plays and the discourse surrounding them not only commented on but also orchestrated national reactions to the recalibration of imperial sovereignty in the late eighteenth

Load more