Ephemera and the British Empire

Book section

This chapter explores the role of printed ephemera in transmitting ideas and messages about the British Empire and the non-European world. Ephemera - the ‘minor transient documents of everyday life’ - were one of the most important media that introduced ideas about empire and the wider world to the public. Yet perhaps surprisingly the field of ephemera studies has not been firmly integrated into the study of the British Empire’s engagement with popular culture. The study of ephemera involves the history of design and of printing, especially colour printing, which led to a flowering of colourful ephemera in the nineteenth century. Colonial printers and engravers imported British equipment and used the same manuals, a significant element in extending the range of printed ephemera into the colonial world itself. As such, ephemera of this period allow us to examine social and cultural aspects of imperial history through the study of original printed material produced at the height of the British Empire. This chapter reviews some aspects of scholarship in the field of ephemera studies before considering what one of the world’s most important collections of printed ephemera can tell us about the range of ephemera relating to the history of the British Empire and the representation of the non-European world. This collection, the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, has been mined by numerous scholars examining imperial themes, such as the representation of non-Europeans in commercial advertising. The Collection contains a range of different types of items that relate to the Empire and depictions of the non-European world, including programmes, postcards, tickets, posters, playbills, paper bags, cigarette cards, food labels, and advertisements. Sometimes representations of imperial events in such material will have been consciously appropriated in order to market produce or appeal to a certain type of audience, while other references to imperial themes may have been more incidental, almost ‘accidentally’ expressing some association with empire. Either way, such ephemera cannot help but reflect the era in which they were created and, by extension, the society for which they were produced. Here a typology of ephemera will be outlined together with a sample of the different types of material that the collection offers the scholar of British imperial and cultural history.

Authors: Tomkins, D; Jackson, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Host title: Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of display and the British Empire
• Pages: 142-167
• Series: Studies in Imperialism
• Publication date: 2015-10-01
• ISBN-10: 0719091098
• ISBN-13: 9780719091094
• Keywords: Colonies; Commercial art; Printed ephemera; Marketing; Collectors and collecting; Imperialism; British Empire; Trade and commerce; Advertising