Entertaining the Empire

The British Empire rang with comic songs performed byresplendently dressed, idling dandies and young women winking cheekily at lyrics laden with innuendo.

Making innovative use of digitised sources from many countries, this book reveals how stage charactersoriginating in Victorian London's boisterous, alcohol-soaked music halls became the empire's popular culture.

London songs and sketches reached settlers as fast as ships, trains and wagons travelled, enabling amateurs from Montreal to Melbourneand Bulawayo to perform shows that recreatedthe music halls of Home. Audiences were transported imaginatively to the metropolis, making them feel more British and less isolated. Professional performers soon followed, knowing there was adulation and money to be found in imperial outposts.

Music hall performances revolved around fast-changing deliberately disposable songs and sketches sending-up social class, political opinions and other beliefs. But shards of evidencecollected from throughout the empire show that the imperial context changed the meanings and messages in these London creations. Stage characters were transformed into paragons of an idealised imperial capital. Songs and sketches were rewritten to parody colonial conditions and to proclaiman exclusive, increasingly racialised settler identity. Impresarios whounderstoodhow music hall alleviated yearnings for Home and buttressed Britishnessimported London stars and createdglobal tours.

Music hall fostered and maintained British identity in the empire across generations, whileperformers forged transnational links that still connect English-language global popular culture.