An Allegory of Imperialism?
BABAR
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IMPERIALISM

Imperialism: Two Meanings
 1.
The Age of Imperialism European powers
reaching out for new economic markets, particularly
in Africa and Asia, making peoples and places part
of a vast empire. These conquered places are
called colonies.
 2. In its second meaning the term describes the
attitude of superiority -- the subordination of and
dominion over foreign people

“Foreign-ness” often expressed through dominant views
concerning race, “civilization”, and “progress”
IMPERIALISM

Allegory:
A
symbolic narrative
 Making a whole story into a metaphor
 Metaphor: comparison of two objects when one
object takes on the qualities, symbolically, of the
other.
IMPERIALISM: CAUSES AND MOTIVES

Emergence of “nation-states” and competition among them

Competing definitions of the nation—of who is and who is not part of the
nation: constructing the relationship of “us” versus “them”

Popular theories of race influenced the new imperialism

held that the different peoples of the world not only culturally but biologically
distinct

Darwin: theory misapplied to establish that each nation (and people)
were involved in an unending competition in which only the "fittest"
would survive

According to “survival of the fittest” argument, imperial powers could


point to their conquests as proof of their own "fitness"
rationalize their empires as altruistic efforts to bring the benefits of their
"superior" civilization to “lesser” races
CAUSES AND MOTIVES

The White Man’s Burden
 Visual
and written culture at the turn of the 20th
century concerning Imperialism often focused on
the relationship between
 light:
western, Christian, civilized
 and dark: eastern, African, savage
THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN
RUDYARD KIPLING, 1899

Take up the White Man's burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
IMPERIALISM AS POLICY

“The policy of colonial expansion is a political
and economic system ... that can be connected
to three sets of ideas: economic ideas; the
most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and
ideas of a political and patriotic sort.”
 Jules
Ferry, Prime Minister of France (1880-1881, 18831885)
VOCABULARY OF IMPERIALISM

"As we steamed into the estuary of Sierra Leone on November 18th
[1889], we found Africa exactly as books of travel had led us to
anticipate--a land of excessive heat, lofty palm-trees, gigantic
baobabs, and naked savages. At five o'clock we dropped anchor at
Free Town, called, on account of its deadly fevers, the `white man's
grave.' Immediately, our vessel was surrounded by boats filled with
men and women, shouting, jabbering, laughing, quarrelling, and
even fighting. ... Without exception it was the most confusedly excited
and noisy lot of humanity I have ever seen.”

Source: William Harvey Brown, On the South African Frontier: The
Adventures and Observations of an American in Mashonaland and
Matabeleland (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970; London:
Sampson Low, Marstan & Co., 1899), 3.
VOCABULARY OF IMPERIALISM

According to late 19th century science, human
development took place in three stages:
Savagery marked by hunting and gathering
 Barbarism accompanied by the beginning of settled
agriculture
 Civilization which required the development of
commerce.


European scientists believed that Africans were
stuck in the stage of barbarism because they lived
in a place with such good soil and climate that it
provided "tropical abundance."
CATEGORIZING THE “OTHER”

“Various ‘natives’ and ‘savages’ abroad were
blithely tarred as inferiors and identified as
prime candidates for a brand of ‘uplift’ that
entailed, among other things, a strict lesson in
modern modes of desire and habits of
consumption.”

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign
Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. (2000)
IMPERIALIST IMAGES
The first step towards lightening
The White Man's Burden
is through teaching the virtues of
cleanliness.
Pears' Soap
is a potent factor in brightening the dark
corners of the earth as civilization
advances, while amongst the cultured of
all nations it holds the highest place -- it is
the ideal toilet soap.
Here, Admiral Dewey, who led the Battle for
Manila at the start of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898, is pictured washing
with Pears’ Soap
JEAN DE BRUNHOFF





1889-1937
Trained as a painter
First Babar book
appeared in 1931
Brunhoff died of TB, his
son Laurent took on the
role of illustrating Babar
First 7 Babar albums
were reprinted and
millions of copies were
sold all over the world
Jean and Cecile de Brunhoff
QUESTIONS

Some things to think about as we “read” Babar:
 Did
Jean de Brunoff create an allegory that
supported French Colonialism?
 Children’s literature is usually didactic—seeking to
impart a moral lesson—what is the lesson that we
should take from Babar?
 Different national audiences have read Babar
differently. Is the “lesson” of Babar different from a
French perspective than from reading it in the U.S.?
BABAR THE KING

“Here is Celesteville! The elephants have just
finished building it and are resting or bathing.
Babar goes for a sail with Arthur and Zephir. He
is well satisfied, and admires his new capital.
Each elephant has his own house. The Old
Lady’s is at the upper left, the one for the King
and Queen is at the upper right. The big lake is
visible from all their windows. The Bureau of
Industry is next door to the Amusement Hall
which will be very practical and convenient.”
“Some left-wing
critics have read in
the Babar story an
implicit
endorsement of the
civilizing effects of
French colonialism.”
-New Yorker, 2008
“By now, of course, a
controversial literature is
possible about anything,
and yet to discover that
there is a controversial
literature about Babar is a
little shocking—faut-il
brûler Babar? (“Must we
burn Babar?”)”
BABAR AS PARODY

“those who would burn ‘Babar’ miss the true subject of the books”

“not an unconscious expression of the French colonial imagination; it
is a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination”

“France during the nineteen-thirties was in transition from an old,
unashamedly predatory model of imperialism to one that insisted
on…the…benevolent gathering of different races into one French
commonwealth—and, simultaneously, from a model of work and labor
as their own reward to one in which the reward of irksome labor was
French family leisure”

“Far more than an allegory of colonialism, the “Babar” books are a
fable of the difficulties of a bourgeois life. ‘Truly it is not easy to bring
up a family,’ Babar sighs at one point, and it is true.”

Adam Gopnik, “Freeing the Elephants; What Babar Brought” in New Yorker
BABAR AS IMPERIALISM

“Somehow, without losing his animal appearance, Babar will be transformed
into a polite and decent human being.”

“In contrast to his tiny admirers—first they were French, then British, then North
American—[Babar] is dealing with a native country that has not evolved along
with him and continues to be primitive, tribal, and naked.”

“That first contact between the now civilized (we might even say adult) Babar
and the other elephants, who are like reflections of the way he once was,
prophetically synthesizes the future of the country in which they were all born…”

“From now on, every inferior place or person will either follow Babar’s example
or remain condemned to immobility, regression, and ridicule.”

Ariel Dorfman, The Empire’s Old Clothes; What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other
Innocent Heroes do to Our Minds
BABAR AS REINFORCING IMPERIALISM

“Babar is born like any average pachyderm. He
grows up and plays in an idyllic world, along with the
other little animals. Nonetheless, this primitive
paradise must come to an end once a ‘wicked
hunter’ kills Babar’s mother. But even though this
initial contact with human adults and their
civilization is negative—leaving Babar an orphan—the
end result of such destructive activity turns out to be
highly beneficial: Babar escapes to the bedazzling
city, where fate rewards him with something even
greater than what it had taken from him. He comes
upon an ‘Old Lady,’ a female figure who takes his
mother’s place and eventually adopts him. .. From
that moment on, Babar is going to “progress.”

Ariel Dorfman, The Empire’s Old Clothes; What the Lone
Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes do to Our Minds
THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT BABAR
Is Babar a reflection of imperialist notions of
race and civilization or a parody of those
notions?
 What, if any, are the consequences of reading
Babar?
 Should we “burn” Babar?
 Are these consequences particularly American?
