{"title":"纪念碑是保护伞:殖民主权与坎普尔纪念井纪念碑的解构","authors":"Swati Chattopadhyay","doi":"10.1016/j.jhg.2023.11.009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article addresses competing visions of sovereignty that underwrite recent debates about monuments. It turns to a well-known monument built to commemorate the loss of British lives in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–59: the Kanpur (Cawnpore) Memorial Well Monument. The memorial stood over a well in which the bodies of 200 British women and children killed by Indian sepoys lay buried. A large landscaped enclosure was built around the memorial and only European visitors were given access to the site. On August 15, 1947, the day of Indian independence from British rule, a crowd overran the site and defaced the monument. Much of the monument was subsequently dismantled and moved to a more secluded site within the Kanpur cantonment. The desire among the British stakeholders to leave no trace of its former identity focused attention on those aspects of meaning ascribed to the monument that could not be erased. Building on the Hobbesian idea of passion as a key element of sovereignty, this article argues that the monument may be viewed as an aegis — an <em>apotropaion —</em> that deflects gaze more than it enables attentive looking.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47094,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Historical Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Memorial as aegis: Colonial sovereignty and the unmaking of the Kanpur Memorial Well Monument\",\"authors\":\"Swati Chattopadhyay\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.jhg.2023.11.009\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<div><p>This article addresses competing visions of sovereignty that underwrite recent debates about monuments. It turns to a well-known monument built to commemorate the loss of British lives in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–59: the Kanpur (Cawnpore) Memorial Well Monument. The memorial stood over a well in which the bodies of 200 British women and children killed by Indian sepoys lay buried. A large landscaped enclosure was built around the memorial and only European visitors were given access to the site. On August 15, 1947, the day of Indian independence from British rule, a crowd overran the site and defaced the monument. Much of the monument was subsequently dismantled and moved to a more secluded site within the Kanpur cantonment. The desire among the British stakeholders to leave no trace of its former identity focused attention on those aspects of meaning ascribed to the monument that could not be erased. Building on the Hobbesian idea of passion as a key element of sovereignty, this article argues that the monument may be viewed as an aegis — an <em>apotropaion —</em> that deflects gaze more than it enables attentive looking.</p></div>\",\"PeriodicalId\":47094,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Journal of Historical Geography\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":1.3000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-12-14\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Journal of Historical Geography\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"98\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748823001123\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"历史学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"GEOGRAPHY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Historical Geography","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748823001123","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
Memorial as aegis: Colonial sovereignty and the unmaking of the Kanpur Memorial Well Monument
This article addresses competing visions of sovereignty that underwrite recent debates about monuments. It turns to a well-known monument built to commemorate the loss of British lives in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–59: the Kanpur (Cawnpore) Memorial Well Monument. The memorial stood over a well in which the bodies of 200 British women and children killed by Indian sepoys lay buried. A large landscaped enclosure was built around the memorial and only European visitors were given access to the site. On August 15, 1947, the day of Indian independence from British rule, a crowd overran the site and defaced the monument. Much of the monument was subsequently dismantled and moved to a more secluded site within the Kanpur cantonment. The desire among the British stakeholders to leave no trace of its former identity focused attention on those aspects of meaning ascribed to the monument that could not be erased. Building on the Hobbesian idea of passion as a key element of sovereignty, this article argues that the monument may be viewed as an aegis — an apotropaion — that deflects gaze more than it enables attentive looking.
期刊介绍:
A well-established international quarterly, the Journal of Historical Geography publishes articles on all aspects of historical geography and cognate fields, including environmental history. As well as publishing original research papers of interest to a wide international and interdisciplinary readership, the journal encourages lively discussion of methodological and conceptual issues and debates over new challenges facing researchers in the field. Each issue includes a substantial book review section.