Description
Book SynopsisThe first transnational history of cinema's role in decolonization.
Using popular cinema from the United States, Britain, and France, Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 19461959, examines postwar Western attitudes toward colonialism and race relations. Historians have written much about the high politics of decolonization but little about what ordinary citizens thought about losing their empires. Popular cinema provided the main source of images of the colonies, and, according to Jon Cowans in this far-reaching book, films depicting the excesses of empire helped Westerners come to terms with decolonization and even promoted the dismantling of colonialism around the globe.
Examining more than one hundred British, French, and American films from the postWorld War II era, Cowans concentrates on movies that depict interactions between white colonizers and nonwhite colonial subjects, including sexual and romantic relations. Although certain conse
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I The Persistence of Empire
1. The White Woman's Burden
2. Heroes of Empire
3. Westerns
Part II Coming to Terms
4. The British Empire and Decolonization
5. The French Empire and Decolonization
6. American in Postwar Asia
Part III Dangerous Liaisons
7. Miscegnation in Westerns
8. Romance across the Pacific
9. Black-White Couples and Internal Decolonization
Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Notes
Index
