Popular culture

• The average person was extremely disconnected from the Empire and the concepts surrounding it.

  
  

  This is because a large proportion of the population was illiterate and could not afford concerts and education.
• Children literature: increased literacy had produced a new market for books and comics and the young were fed with imperial themes.
• Children literature examples:

  • Howard Handley Spicer published "Boys of Empire" magazines.
  • Robert Baden-Powell established the "Boy Scout Movement" in 1908. Like a military cadet school which was very successful in mobilising young people.
• Popular literature:

  • Rudyard Kipling highlighted religious beliefs in the Empire and the superiority of the British race.
  • He wrote the poem "The White Man's Burden".
• The Popular Press: 1890-1914 was a 'golden age' for newspaper publication as advances in printing helped fuel new mass audiences.
• The Popular Press examples:

  • Alfred Harmsworth created a new form of cheap newspaper in 1896, the "Daily Mail".
  • During the Second-Anglo Boer War it sold over a million copies a day, condemning the Boers whilst praising British troops.
• Music and Jingoism examples:

  • Edward Elgar wrote an "Imperial March" for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
• Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee 1897

  • 3 million people attended
  • 50,000 troops were involved in a huge military display