Empires of the Senses: How Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching ShapedImperial Encounters
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: I generally dislike essays that apologize for their limitations—they offer merely “preliminary findings,” or a “first take” on an issue, or they move “toward” something, as if actually getting to the point is impossible. So, with humility, I'll begin by saying that this essay is based on preliminary findings, a first take on a subject new to me and probably to most readers of this journal, and a gesture toward what I hope will some day be a more complete understanding of my subject. In anthropologists' terms, these are “field notes” on my research thus far. I hope the essay will make up in interest and curiosity value whatever it lacks in the certainty of its conclusions. Herewith two recollections of imperial life, offered by a European and an American. The first is from Deborah Dring, an Englishwoman who grew up in India: “Our parents always thought we'd catch something if we went down to the bazaar. But my brothers and I always looked upon the bazaar as being too exciting. All those lovely stalls covered with sticky sweets and silver paper and piles of fruit and those little flares they lit, the old boys sitting stitching clothes or boiling things in huge dekshis. I'll never forget the smell—partly a very strong spice, an incensy smell—and all that heat and the movements and the people and the colour. There was a little temple which had rows and rows of little brass bells all round. If you were a good Hindu you jingled all the bells as you passed, and I remember thinking, ‘Now that's marvelous! If only I could go past and jingle a few bells.’ But … the bazaar was a forbidden land when I was a child.”1 The second recollection is that of Mary Fee, an American who came to teach in the Philippines in the first decade of the twentieth century. She arrived at Manila, and took a horse-drawn cart, a carromato, into the city: “The carromato wheels were iron-tired, and jolted…. We rattled up [the] street.” They pulled up at a church, just at noon: “Instantly there burst out such a clamor of bells as we had never before heard—big bells and little bells, brass bells and broken bells—and brass bands lurking in unknown spots seemed to be assisting. I do not know whether the Filipinos were originally fond of noise or whether the Spaniards taught them to be so. At any rate, they both love it equally well now.” Then, to lunch: “We entered a stone-flagged lower hall where several shrouded carriages would have betrayed the use to which it was put had not a stable odor first betrayed it…. It was a bare, cheerless apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday. The tables were not alluring. The waiters were American negroes. A Filipino youth, dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour, was beating out ‘rag time’ at a cracked piano.” As for the food, “the vegetables were canned, the milk was canned, the butter was canned.” Only the dessert was locally sourced—an “acid, flavorless banana and … gummy, sticky [guava] jelly.”2 The significance of these passages? Both mention stimuli to all five human senses. Empire was many things. One of them was an encounter between authorities and subjects, an everyday process of social intercourse, political negotiation, policing and schooling and healing. It meant the imposition of control and accommodation or resistance to it. All of these interactions were on some level intellectual, having to do with what people thought about each other. But they were also in significant ways mediated by the senses, perceptions of others formed through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. My subject here is the sensory history of the British in India from the formal imposition of their rule to its end (1857–1947) and the Americans in the Philippines from annexation to independence (1898–1946). My premise is that all human relationships, including imperial ones, are shaped by all five senses; how we understand others, even more how we feel about them, emotionally, and thus how we act toward them, have a good deal to do with how we apprehend them through every sense. We have long assumed that how we see others, literally, and how we read the texts we generate about them, tell us all we need to know about our relations with them. To believe that, however, is to privilege sight above the other senses, as if our hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching of others and their cultures have no importance. “The project of imperialism…. could not be effected by sight alone,” as Mark M. Smith has written. The entire human sensorium was engaged in the acts of making and accommodating and resisting empire.3 This work falls within the realm of the social and cultural history of empire; it is unapologetically interested in life on empire's quotidian ground. In part, it hopes to figure out how the senses helped to create mutual impressions of the agents of imperialism and their subjects. People in imperial India and the Philippines apprehended each other—“saw” doesn't work as a verb here—through their sense organs and their skins. They did not necessarily agree on the relative importance of their senses. They had different ideas from the start about what looked, sounded, smelled, tasted, and felt good or bad. Moreover, the senses themselves were not stable or static things: to echo the tiresome but nevertheless valid dictum, the senses are socially constructed and historically contingent. The senses are not “strictly biological” but are, according to Anthony Seeger, “given different emphases and different meanings in different societies.” To some extent, then, what I am proposing here is a departure from what historians of foreign relations or empire normally do.4 Yet I am unwilling to depart completely from the practices of our field. I take the senses not as my subject but as my methodology, and I remain interested in understanding the deployment of state power and the response to it. While a portion of this essay will describe sense perception and human interaction in imperial India and the Philippines, the piece will end up hinting at grander claims about the ways in which studying the senses helps us understand how empire functioned, or did not, and especially how it came to an end. My argument is that both the British and the Americans saw themselves, among other things, as the civilizers of backward societies, and believed that a vital part of the civilizing process was to put the senses in the right order of priority and to ensure them against offense or affront. People without manners who respected the senses were unfit for self-government. Societies that looked shabby, were noisy and smelly, consumed unwholesome food, and (literally) felt wrong, were not prepared to stand on their own. It was the duty of more sensorily advanced Westerners to put the senses right before withdrawing the most obvious manifestations of their power. Perhaps needless to say, Indians and Filipinos had different ideas of what constituted sensory civilization, and they pushed back against Anglo-American efforts to impose their version of sense order. In the end, a synthesis of sorts would emerge that involved compromises between these nations' sensory regimes. I will have more to say about this presently. The senses have a vigorous historiography. I won't belabor it, but there is one element of debate worth noting. In his book The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Marshall McLuhan made the claim that, with the invention of moveable type and the advent of the Enlightenment, vision as the sense without the of as and especially the other senses importance in between sight and the other senses, as “The has by for of which I would mention from and the in of have to on all their senses, to sense of their This is and it the of the senses to each other. to all other senses is to other ways of the As Mark Smith has put it, the history of the senses according the the of the senses to the very people in the past we to understand in were the of of the deployment of sensory by their more to to and to the or of the senses through and Yet what McLuhan was the process by which the to the sense of others who had not by themselves of The of the senses and the sense organs was part of the or civilization, of the As has a people had good manners and to the senses. It was not to In his in on of the and its There be no in the Only and their on their or their people their into a It was to with but if the the be with the and If you are to do in that are do it in … and do not into on in and came from not a to to in the of other to do up his clothes in their the it is not a when something in the as to at to and point it out to It is to out the for the other to as some are who even the other to do the to his and to know how that where it would be to say, it do not has not the point of to “the came also to the of people their before is not very to offer something to and little to from the and put it back on the If you a piece of food, and it In an the use of a to with the was and other manners would be by the British and Americans in their where they with their by their the sensory of I would offer a for a to the subject. the British in India to the Americans in the Philippines has several is part of we not that the of any or is imperial us to the that civilizing others by their senses was in a or at an There was a of between and in the first and in the political also between them. for the of the British in India and the Americans in the Philippines in different by different and for different British through the of the India the Americans as the of with and with hopes about what they make of the others in white Americans came to the Philippines having the at and thus they their efforts and toward and the British to their imperial at the in Americans were that they were the perception is up with the history of the and the and with the and the of social is shaped by all the senses, especially when there is a felt need to where vision This was the Mark Smith in the American where Americans could by to be white but could not, according to the or it was by vision to from in India and the for some Filipinos were more others, Americans know them by at their those of and thus to be of more at the of their the of their more are also The lower senses, and are with and with things that the of in the based on seeing, thus use of with and the to the tropical of India and the Philippines, the feel of both was especially on thought that European and were into a they and and many to the from heat of and of the was with the senses. was what we were lower the according to of and and meant that the of the with strong to the or The very by people as or those the of the the very long it took my … that the lower and the things the having as the British and Americans could or to between for others based on or they the of their imperial for and and them to the in the They bad. They looked or and and by They were in their for and in in that no sense is on its in the work of us nevertheless take the senses one by one and how each was and each in these imperial We begin with One need not the to the importance of others and them by what is empire was a vision of imperial a for the of the of were by and of empire formed their impressions of how it was all by them, even in from where they could or feel India or the of imperial that the well the actually to at others, this in the and of The was or The of in and the involved of the of a the were of in and of control the as has written. Westerners them among the they to British especially were at the of their “The Filipinos are to his They having a about their to their and all the imperial too they to the The tropical could Westerners and some of them and in the of the on the with and Indians and Filipinos it to and the to for and regimes. Indians and Filipinos could from in a part of their The Filipinos who between and the imposition of American control their in the from they and Filipino their by to their or Indians and Filipinos seemed to on their British were by the in which a to and a by to the the British to it it to the use of or on the or that it at they a of Americans Filipinos of the by making what they the of which have a and which the of the the most in were the of The British and Americans their at the of some Indians and especially the in both more were within the most of and were within only when by it was too to the of their to from the British came to Indians with that could into Indians and the at in and as we understand them, are not to the which to the of as of as the of and being with in that, by in the twentieth the Americans had to all Filipinos as of They were and of the with which they had from of one or and thus never to be even if they A in that no five Filipinos were by the his are … to all as of to The British and Americans also to create their in the of the European first in the has to and cultural the into a This in India and the Philippines of project in and the was to impose on which with the noise of and the of the lower if not to others, at to for that which their As the put it, “the of a in be by a in the of which it Westerners about the in their in were … by a of who with all their and by a of as and as the most to from and at Hindu the of the British In the Philippines, an American to a of boys who to bells in the of their put a to the but only with the are them bells at all of the day and it has on my is to me that there are no in in “The and a was with the of Filipino brass into being by the Spaniards and of but that of them a Filipino the in the on the to the for a at all in for the of the In both India and the Philippines, to impose The American that “the by and for the and are of … the of and of in Filipino all the studying making a The British and the Americans for their to them to teach them to what was out and to make and more in the American this work very to teach these to also taught such as the of or in according to in stimuli to the senses, is of things and are in the before at the portion of the go to the where they are and more other sensory to and put this more in his are and to make As India had for the British a strong with and according to a of and or the of down the of the odor of human from the the old India “the land of and In the Philippines, one not which you you see of at their and the of that Americans to The at and that were and thus made according to the most and one could to if Westerners that were not more in the that, as with the of a and the British first came to most to an or of the of the the American with Filipino in the of in such tropical as and had to Yet were with and the at the of odor the British and Americans in the to One was to or and put thus from human was and a of where and were “the state of with in to the “The was the and with The Spaniards had to in in the but the in the twentieth that the of in meant that and were being The the even it to Filipinos of that and with the and in “The are and the are all and covered with a But odor was the people themselves thought to the they on their of the sense of in what the British and Americans as the and of India and the Westerners or their Yet they generally the they as the British of the India at first themselves some of the of The and a of through their book on in the was by in that and was for the to a tropical I we and among who from India the of its food, and not with them to their the British in India their their tables to with and the according to the British and a in in a British that “the and of the … have from our The British came to in by the Indians who prepared them. were not in India to the for a but to its backward and people the of “The to out this to be of they to their and it was a of their to remain and to British and American toward Filipino we an American will as and as they Filipinos and as of or and by the in the for American At the in Americans in what has a from to was offered a Filipino She was a well prepared with of but made hot with that I it into the some of in and of it went in the the a of and with made the of the She the of what as American my of and and made for and Filipinos about just this of a to by in the of to of a by the formed to the a Filipino But The is We to the Americans that we are to be and we be if we banana it very to from banana some about and is to the realm of the lower senses, even and But there is to say about it. know the old saying is but few that the went touching is the other senses, was and were most with others, such as be by or Filipino or with “the by touching others against what one as black in and “the of that were in of a The feel of the in India and the Philippines British and American and was for making them The of and white very to them that be of a as and of and the Philippines on a a of with a of their just the but the of white curiosity and white As Mark Smith has believed that was and In and the the to be to and their In people or especially made it a of Filipino seemed and according to one it was with and out against the was to the tropical or an of and by of empire were to the of backward The in India were and and with who the India by that to this with little at on a little and up and down in my the in the Philippines in “The between American and is more on the the of where the are to the and where they are most there were and no and generally a We had to up and the the of the and would begin … and and and the or between and was an British and American authorities were and about in their for between white and of societies, and to especially with which they believed to be in Yet both and to that would be and that the to with to of both and and of even In the of from authorities between Anglo-American and for arrived from at in the of with had his and several put a to it. In a of and in of the British took into their to them and their as the as they were were socially in British well into the century. As has “the of as a of its with with with and with it something to be and The of the if and of in and to the Philippines, the a for of and their British and American authorities generally of their and They as has put it, that “the was the and of their thus would have and would have involved touching and to touching that was of an in the and of was the for as felt for not one but of their was of however, in Indians by British especially when to but even when British to the the of the the British with Indians by to and and to their against and its the to be to and too did Americans in the Philippines hope that their at would and They were to through was in the of when those were to at as put they put a to the by all those to a on where they out their without into with no by Westerners to the of of the was or in the Philippines were when they were a act by when by those they their and of were some of the ways in which the five senses were involved in imperial I that the making and of empire in India and the Philippines had something to do with the deployment of the senses and sense organs according to a version of for good manners and I would to to that point as I It would be to claim that the of empire in was by British and American that their had sensorily to their political In the British the of made that a could no in a people to have their The British were in to India and The Americans had the Philippines independence within in with the of imperial the ways to the Philippines without formal and it was this that the Americans their in in The by on and to the But as Indians and Filipinos their their could take in the they they had to the senses in both The British and the Americans had in their of and to in ways through their senses. The of and Filipino seemed to see the as Westerners as of at the if not always in the ways as and Americans They and things right they the in both India of and the Philippines of of they their people to themselves and on of and against They with and not and some were as as or their they and they efforts to the and the with the others of their lower as as the British and Americans had to touching them. to not to the senses. the of an in would She a who as his book of when I could read it, I to be of about which to use for and how to into a piece of and put it into a to but white did This not that an new sensory was on Indians and as the for political control of their involved resistance and accommodation and were efforts to a order of the senses on with a to do things with the that all sensory cultures were by the and Americans for an for and Filipino practices that involved touching came to were to their white in or more those they in or Americans in the Philippines from with and the one Mary had from among them and in a of to the by the and the too did brass including that of the and in in with their from India to would and “the most in the others “the of the in the or “the of a long when the first the end of the in their of little in India and to create little in their British They to the and and and of and themselves the of their past life in the of and All of these of offered of the They that, in the and vital to understand the deployment of power and resistance to it, there is to be by to our
Source: Diplomatic History
Author: Andrew J. Rotter
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2109825585