Archaeological Perspectives on the British and Their Empire
Introduction: Archaeological Perspectives on the British and Their Empire
The British identity is complex and variable, encompassing people of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish descent, as well as those of Huguenot, Flemish, Jewish, South Asian, West Indian, and African ancestry.
The British diaspora includes descendants of these groups and indigenous people from various former colonies.
The ubiquity of the British has often led to them being an unproblematized category in archaeological studies.
This volume aims to critically evaluate the category of 'British'.
Britishness is historically contingent, shaped by territorial gains and losses.
It is also situationally defined, with regional and ethnic affiliations sometimes outweighing a broader British identity.
Colonials might claim a British identity to distinguish themselves from other groups, while also fighting for Britain and being considered loyal subjects.
Resistance to the United Kingdom's hegemony was directed against the collective entity of the British.
Archaeological studies of British people exist, but few explicitly focus on 'the British' as a global cultural system.
British colonial context is often taken for granted or used for comparisons with other empires.
Systematic archaeological study of the British has been hindered by a lack of detailed work on recent periods in Britain and its former colonies.
Increased awareness of global historical processes and communication among archaeologists has made it possible to consider archaeologies of the British as archaeologies of empire.
This approach contributes to debates about imperial processes and provides a historical context for studies of British settlement areas.
Renewed debate surrounds the scope of archaeological inquiry and definitions of historical archaeology, post-medieval archaeology, and industrial archaeology.
While some advocate a unified 'modern-world archaeology,' others criticize its Euro-centric bias.
Resisting rigid classification may be more productive, allowing for diverse perspectives and flexible approaches.
The essays in this volume are global in scope but emphasize the variety of experiences touched by 'Britishness'.
The British Empire provides the broader scale within which detailed local studies are situated.
The studies explore the interplay between social developments at the scale of empire and material consequences at the local level.
Authors consider themes such as status, race, ethnicity, gender, domination, resistance, consumption, and trade.
Identity and Ethnicity
'Britishness' is a central theme, encompassing politics, geography, citizenship, race, legal and administrative structures, moral values, cultural habits, language, and tradition.
However, it is not fully defined by any single attribute.
Ethnicity is fluid and negotiated according to circumstance.
Social construction of identity arises from recognizing difference in others.
Jones (1999) utilizes Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. Individuals are socialized within cultural systems that inform individual practice. This shared habitus informs ethnic identity formation. (Jones 1999: 225–7).
The constitution of the 'other' influences which elements of habitus are included in ethnic identity.
The variability of Britishness is historically and geographically contingent.
In the British Isles and Empire, those identifying as British encountered diverse 'others'.
Linda Colley argues that in the 18th century, being British meant 'not French' (Colley 1996: 5–6).
Wars with France fostered a new national identity based on language, politics, and religion.
Imperial expansion introduced new 'others', adding race, citizenship, and 'civilisation' to the definition of Britishness.
The Orient provided further contrasts, situating the British as part of the Occident (Said 1978).
Race, citizenship, civilisation, and sex were used to divide and exclude within the Empire.
Indigenous people and women could be legally defined as 'non-persons'.
White Australians remained British citizens until 1949, while Aboriginal people were not included in the census until 1967.
Indians traveling to England in the 19th century found a sense of belonging.
Britons negotiated identity in various ways.
Merchants in Newcastle prioritized regional identity over Britishness in North Sea trade.
Welsh laborers in Pembrokeshire enacted ethnicity in relations with English landlords.
Local identities like 'Welshness' or 'Scottishness' could be more meaningful than 'British'.
Colonials creating pageants found empire and Britishness more significant.
Burial practices demonstrate the geographic spread of shared cultural practices with roots in Great Britain.
Britain has always been home to foreigners who negotiated Britishness with their English neighbors.
British identity is composite, juxtaposing English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish elements.
Symbols of the British monarchy and military draw on regional elements to serve pan-national purposes.
The Prince of Wales is a member of the English royal family and the British monarchy, and Highland regiments fight imperial wars.
The more distant from the United Kingdom, the more generically 'British' identity becomes.
Historian P.J. Marshall (1996: 320) suggests that settlers experienced a greater sense of undifferentiated Britishness than those at home.
This Britishness could be self-identified or projected back onto those in the British Isles.
Australians constructing a new identity used Britishness as the 'other'.
Ethnicities are not mutually exclusive; people can identify with multiple ethnic groups.
Australians, Canadians, and Indians could consider themselves both colonial and British.
They could also recognize Welsh, Scottish, Irish, or Indian ancestry without surrendering allegiances.
Residents of the United Kingdom could be both Welsh (not English) and British (not French).
Material culture could be flexible, with meaning dependent on context.
Goods might be of English manufacture but with Welsh motifs, used in locally meaningful ways, or be English gardens with German plants.
Material culture provided symbols to unite the diverse elements of the British Empire, such as statues of Queen Victoria, monuments to fallen soldiers, flags, maps, and portraits of monarchs.
These markers also defined who was excluded from the Empire.
There are few monuments to indigenous people who died defending their lands.
Subtle signs of Britishness included private architecture of landlords and laborers and public architecture of customs houses, courts, schools, legislatures, and town plans.
Administrative structures and manufactured goods also linked the colonies.
Goods were used to unite and divide those considered not British.
Empire
British identity cannot be discussed without referencing the Empire.
Britishness is now largely confined to the British Isles, a consequence of the Empire's fragmentation.
However, the historical roots of Britishness are embedded in imperial history.
J.P. Marshall (1996: 319) notes that empire helped to focus and develop Britishness.
Britishness grew with the Empire and its associated upheavals.
Before the Empire, there was no united nation called British.
Britain and Britishness are creations of Empire.
Britishness and Empire are deeply entangled.
Archaeological consideration of Britishness must include the imperial 'other'.
This includes settler societies and those who resisted Britishness, such as indigenous peoples, indentured laborers, and African slaves.
All of these people helped to define Britishness (Stoler 1995).
Elements appropriated from the colonies were incorporated into British identity.
Artists and architects drew inspiration from conquered lands.
Ethnographic and archaeological objects reinforced notions of savagery and civilisation.
Experience gained in the colonies shaped policy in Britain.
British manufacturers depended on raw materials and markets in the colonies.
British expertise built railways worldwide.
British consumers relied on the colonies for tea, coffee, sugar, and soap (Shammas 1990).
Perspectives from archaeologies of empire enrich the archaeology of modern Britain and its former colonies.
Comparison with other parts of the empire enriches understanding of local sites.
Increased understanding of material culture and behavior within the imperial heartland assists in interpreting the archaeology of migrants and settler societies.
Divergence of British and American politics and society during the 19th century means that archaeologists in the former Empire must seek models in Britain.
Considerations of Empire could help to re-invigorate the archaeology of the recent past.
Links with locally based avocational associations have produced detailed local studies.
However, the significance of these studies is sometimes defined in narrow local terms (West 1999: 6).
Local-history approaches overlook the global significance of Britain as a world power.
Deposits relating to the last 400-500 years are integral components of a global archaeology.
There is difficulty in convincing heritage managers, developers, and rescue archaeologists of the value of deposits less than 500 years old.
Within an imperial analysis, archaeology in Britain takes on new significance and raises questions.
How did ways of life in the colonies differ from those in Britain itself?
Were migrants better off than those who remained behind?
How did life in Britain influence the traditions that migrants took with them?
To what extent can patterns in the colonies be attributed to regional or ethnic background in Britain?
How were experiences of domination and resistance translated to the colonies?
The interplay of goods and capital is crucial in this analysis.
The Empire provided increased access to consumer goods.
How were the effects of these imports distributed across the landscape in Britain?
Factories in Britain produced goods for a world market.
Making explicit links between colonial artifacts and their places of manufacture may help to refine understandings of marketing and distribution networks and consumer preference.
Knowledge and experience also flowed in both directions.
16th-century Ulster plantations have been cited as models for imperial expansion in the New World (Orser 1996).
The relationship between frontier experiences in Africa, Australasia, and the New World and the imposition of model farms on the British countryside has yet to be traced.
The clearances in the Hebrides made way for farming methods similar to those employed in Tasmania and New South Wales.
Overview
The essays are the product of two conferences: the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, in January 1999, and the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Québec City, Canada, in January 2000.
The volume reflects the WAC’s continued commitment to approaches that are not confined to specific periods and are inclusive of the recent past.
The diversity of papers reflects emerging trends.
One trend is the increasing participation of American scholars in the global forum that the WAC provides.
Increasing global awareness is also evident within the Society for Historical Archaeology.
This volume is also indicative of the renewed dialogue between archaeologists in Britain and North America.
It is hoped that this volume will demonstrate the value of extending that dialogue into a conversation that includes voices from around the world.
The essays take up themes that are current within contemporary archaeological discourse.
Issues concerning consumption patterns and trade are addressed.
Issues of status and class, as well as modernisation, are also considered.
Gender informs the analyses.
The migration of people within the Empire and its consequences is considered.
Dimensions of the settler societies are explored.
The British Empire as an institution is directly the subject of essays.
Race and non-Anglo-Celtic responses to Empire are considered.
Concern with ethnicity and identity shapes all the essays.
The essays are organised by time period, with the first section covering the First British Empire (ended in the 1770s) and the second section covering the Second British Empire.
This framework enables the effects of chronological change on Britishness to be made more apparent.
Conclusion
Matthew Johnson has written that ‘if an archaeology of the colonial encounter is to be part of a world historical archaeology, let us give historical and cultural depth to all parties in that encounter’ (1999: 29).
This volume is an attempt to address that challenge.
Part of a post-colonial project is to reevaluate the colonisers as well as the colonised, and to provide more subtle, nuanced analyses of who they were, where they came from, and how migration was experienced.
The breadth of approaches and peoples represented demonstrates the vibrancy that can be possible within a global framework.
It also demonstrates what an unwieldy construction Britishness is and mitigates against any simplistic attempts to depict it in stereotypical and normative terms.
Charles Orser (1996) has argued that archaeologists need to ‘think globally and dig locally’, and this strategy has been implicitly endorsed.
However, thinking globally does not need to mean thinking the same or ignoring the small-scale and particular historical contingencies that informed daily life.
Britishness has been taken as a unifying theme, but not because it is expected that it would provide analytical or interpretive unity or dictate the questions to be asked.
Britishness provides a broad framework for these studies because it is a category with historical relevance to the places and times being investigated, and in some way it shaped and was shaped by the lived experience of those whose material culture we study.