Rhetorics of empire: Languages of colonial conflict after 1900 (Studies in Imperialism, 149)

Edited By Martin Thomas And Richard Toye. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Front matter 1 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of figures 10 Notes on contributors 11 Acknowledgements 14 Introduction: rhetorics of empire 16 ‘The people are grateful’: the discourse of modernization in the concentration camps of the South African War, 1899–1902 37 ‘We don’t want a pirate empire’: imperial governance, the Transvaal Crisis and the anxieties of Liberal rhetoric on empire 54 Civilization, empire and humanity: Theodore Roosevelt’s second corollary to the Monroe Doctrine 73 Franklin D. Roosevelt and America’s empire of anti-imperialism 90 ‘The real question at issue’: Mers el-Kébir and the rhetoric of imperial confrontation in July 1940 106 French late colonial rhetoric, ‘myth’ and imperial reason 123 ‘Boom! goes the Congo’: the rhetoric of control and Belgium’s late colonial state 136 The hard side of soft power: Spanish rhetorics of empire from the 1950s to the 1970s 157 Repression, reprisals and rhetorics of massacre in Algeria’s war 176 Arguing about Hola Camp: the rhetorical consequences of acolonial massacre 202 Extended families or bodily decomposition? Biological metaphors in the age of European decolonization 223 Rhetoric of the realm: monarchy in New Zealand, political rhetoric and adjusting to the end of empire 243 Index 264 Stirring language and appeals to collective action were integral to the battles fought to defend empires and to destroy them. These wars of words used rhetoric to make their case. That rhetoric is the subject of this collection of essays exploring the arguments fought over empire in a wide variety of geographic, political, social and cultural contexts. Why did imperialist language remain so pervasive in Britain, France and elsewhere throughout much of the twentieth century? What rhetorical devices did political leaders, administrators, investors and lobbyists use to justify colonial domination before domestic and foreign audiences? How far did their colonial opponents mobilize a different rhetoric of rights and freedoms to challenge them? These questions are at the heart of this collection. Essays range from Theodore Roosevelt’s articulation of American imperialism in the early 1900s to the rhetorical battles surrounding European decolonization in the late twentieth century.