Making Ourselves at Home

Description

To conquer and possess other lands is only one part of the empire-building equation-the other part is to make those lands (and their peoples) conform to the dominant culture. This program shows how traders, soldiers, and settlers spread the British way of life around the world, and in particular how they created a very British idea of home. Viewers learn about early phases of the English presence in India, in which traders wore Indian attire and took Indian wives-until Victorian constraints put a stop to that. Visiting a Canadian town in which the inhabitants are still fiercely proud of their Scottish heritage, the film also travels to places where there is more ambivalence surrounding the history of colonization: a club in Singapore where British colonials often gathered and a Kenyan village where the descendants of white settlers are prominent.

Runtime

58 min

Series

Subjects

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

[2013], c2012

Database

Films on Demand

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