Description
Book SynopsisBroad and engaging overview suitable for undergraduates in history, anthropology, cultural studies and fashion studies, as well as the general reader. Explains why we wear what we do, why most people in the world now dress very similarly and why those who resist Western dress do so.
Trade Review"A short book, and an easy read that adds a fresh perspective to studies of global history, colonialism, economic development, military history, and the history of costume."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History "No longer viewed as inconsequential, clothing has much to tell historians. Clothing fits very neatly within this new historiography."
Journal of Social History
"A model work of synthesis - lucid, lively, accessible, globally informed, stuffed with rich and fascinating examples, making good use of theory and comparison, and approaching its topic from economic, political, social and cultural points of view."
Peter Burke, University of Cambridge
"Robert Ross admirably weaves the history of dress into the broader contours of modernization and the rise and fall of western imperialism. Clothing offers the reader insights into the power of bodily adornment, both as a tool of western hegemony, and as a potential symbolic medium for nationalist aspirations of the colonized."
John Mackey, Birmingham University
Table of Contents1. Introduction.
2. The Rules of Dress.
3. Redressing the Old World.
4. First Colonialisms.
5. The Production, care and distribution of clothing.
6. The Export of Europe.
7. Reclothed in Rightful Minds: Christian missions and clothing.
8. Re-forming the body: reforming the mind.
9. The Clothing of Colonial Nationalism.
10. The Emancipation of Dress.
11. Engendered Acceptance and Rejection.
12. Conclusion
