Intellectual of Empire

Eric Dutton and Hegemony in British Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID8375358
AuthorsGarth Andrew Myers, Garth Myers (0000-0001-5370-2389, African Union, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume88
Issue1
Pages1-27
Publication date1998-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-8306.00082
OpenAlexW2018358337
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited42

This essay examines the career of Eric Dutton in five British African colonies from 1919 to 1952, with case studies of his work in Lusaka and Zanzibar. In analyzing Dutton's career, I use a Gramscian conception of the role of intellectuals in creating colonial hegemony, against the backdrop of recent research on the relationship of geography to colonial discourse. Dutton worked and corresponded with key players in Britain's African empire. He was a major force behind early urban-planning programs in East and Central Africa and author of four geographical books. Permanently disabled by war wounds, he was also permanently infatuated with the moral rightness of British imperial culture. A concern for geography's professional relationship with, and the geographical legacy of, colonialism has emerged in recent scholarship on Africa, largely through studies of travel writing, fiction, and nineteenth- or early twentieth-century exploration geography. Later scholar-officials like Dutton sought to apply their knowledge to the shaping of spaces to serve the Empire's direct and immediate needs in Africa, even while trying to win the hearts and minds of its subject peoples. Around Timothy Mitchell's (1988) concept of "enframing," I build an analysis of the spatial projects with which Dutton is most associated and show how Lusaka and Zanzibar were enframed by his plans. Through his publications and correspondences, as well as his seemingly omnipresent service, Dutton has an important legacy that has neither been articulated nor analyzed, one which points to the importance of contextualized biography for analyses of colonial discourse. I argue here for seeing Dutton as an intellectual in the service of colonial hegemony and its enframing spatial discourse, although the character of his agency exemplifies why that attempted hegemony failed. Keywords:: cultural hegemonycolonialismAfrica

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art history · Biography · British Empire · Colonialism · Empire · Ethnology · Geography · Hegemony · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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