Domestic Archives of Empire: Photographing Burma and Reconstructing British Imperialism for the Postwar Moment

Abstract

This article examines how photography documenting the military campaign in Burma was mobilized in efforts to reconstruct the image and idea of the British Empire at the end of the Second World War and for the postwar moment. It analyses a selection of popular publications whichalthough largely overlooked todayprovided visual instruction for white Anglophone audiences in the late 1940s on the rectitude and importance of continuing British imperialism after the Allied victory. These encompass the commercial periodicals, Hutchinson's Pictorial History of the War and The War Illustrated, as well as Phoenix, a photo-magazine produced by and for South East Asia Command, and The Campaign in Burma, a photo-book issued by the Central Office of Information. These publications were intended to be kept for posterity in the family home, acting as what we term 'domestic archives of empire' for large, dispersed Anglophone audiences across the globe. Such publications represented the empire at war and in peacetime, circulating carefully calibrated images that reconstructed an ideology of imperialism supposedly fit for the postwar moment.At the time of their publication, these 'domestic archives of empire' exhorted white Anglophone readers to view the British Empire as embodying a liberal and tolerant mission 2 with a central role to play in post-conflict rebuilding. Today, they offer fascinating insights into a vernacular history of empire on the verge of fragmentation, presaging the challenges of reconstruction and decolonisation and the development of imperial nostalgia.