Political and Sartorial Styles : Britain and Its Colonies in the Long Nineteenth Century

This book starts with the premise that clothing is political and that analysing clothing can enhance understanding of political style. It offers an examination of how dress formed political identities and communicated social and political messages during the period when imperial and colonial empires assumed their modern form. -- . Front Matter Contents List of plates List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Jim Crow’s tuxedo Part I: Between metaphor and materiality Smock frock farmer or smock frock radical? Political interpretations of one garment in nineteenth-century England A delicate balance of power: Victorian tailors and their gentlemen clients Second-hand clothes, second-hand politics: sartorial exchange, social reform, and the work of the novel in Walter Besant’s Children of Gibeon Part II: Reading appearances ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat’: manliness, power, and politics via the top hat Dressing for disinterestedness: Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and John Morley Sartorial subversion and the House of Commons: political identities, meanings, and the responses to MPs’ dress, c. 1850–1914 Dressing for the vote in Ford Madox Brown’s Work Part III: Global connections and entanglements Spectacles of grandeur and fabrics for the brave: the West India Regiments’ dress until 1900 ‘The philosophy of clothes’: politics and dress in Melbourne Punch, 1860s–1870s Gertrude Bell, femme impériale Index Plates Starting with the premise that clothing is political and that analysing clothing can enhance understanding of political style, this collection explores the relationships among political theory, dress, and self-presentation during a period in which imperial and colonial empires assumed their modern form. Organised under three thematic clusters, the volume's chapters range from an analysis of the uniforms worn by West India regiments stationed in the Caribbean to the smock frock donned by rural agricultural labourers, and from the self-presentations of members of parliament, political thinkers, and imperial administrators to the dress of characters and caricatures in novels, paintings, and political cartoon. With its interdisciplinary approach, the book will appeal to nineteenth-century cultural and social historians and literary critics as well as advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students whose research and teaching interests include gender, politics, material culture, and imperialism.