The Perilous Territory of Not Belonging

This article examines the role of ‘exile’ in constructing the boundaries of belonging to metropolitan Britain in the early nineteenth century. In the context of mass mobility and displacement caused by imperial expansion and revolutionary wars, ‘exile’ took on new meanings that focused on the sadness, suffering and loss. This new discourse of ‘exile’ configured the nation state as the only viable site of belonging, emptying all other spaces of affective meaning. Although ‘exile’ usually refers to a state of forced displacement, many British imperial elites used ‘exile’ to represent their own situations in the colonies. Focusing on the letters and diaries of the British imperial judge and Whig politician, Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), written from Bombay between 1804 and 1811, this article argues that his use of ‘exile’ enabled him to effect an emotional and ontological separation between himself and Bombay’s cosmopolitan population. By referring to his residence in Bombay as a period of ‘exile’, Mackintosh emptied Bombay of any positive meaning and configured Britain as the only possible site of belonging and of ‘home.’

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Anger · Archaeology · Art · British Empire · Context (archaeology) · Empire · Genealogy · Meaning (existential) · Period (music) · Population · Residence · Sadness · Sociology · State (computer science) · Australian History and Society · Demography · History · Psychology · Travel Writing and Literature

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