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. It analyses a selection of popular publications which provided visual instruction for white Anglophone audiences, promoting continuing British imperialism after the Allied victory. These publications were intended to be kept for posterity, acting as ‘domestic archives of empire’ for Anglophone audiences across the globe. Such publications represented the empire at war and in peacetime, 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. Today, they offer insights into a vernacular history of empire on the verge of fragmentation, presaging the challenges of reconstruction and decolonization and the development of imperial nostalgia.