Odor and Empire: Smell and 'Civilization' in Imperial India and the Philippines
- Andrew RotterDetails
19 January 2025/६ माघ २०८१ (आइतबार, दिउँसो ३ बजे)
Research Seminar Series
Odor and Empire: Smell and 'Civilization' in Imperial India and the Philippines
Andrew Rotter, Charles A. Dana Professor of History and Peace and Conflict Studies, Emeritus, Colgate University, USA
Abstract:
Understanding odor, as it is historically constructed, is vital to an apprehension of empires: British India (1858-1947) and the American Philippines (1898-1946). Agents of imperialism regarded their Asian subjects as inferior to themselves, in part because of their supposed violation of olfactory norms. Sanitizing their subjects--eliminating from their bodies the stench of sweat, excrement, and death--would help enable their subjects' civilization.
About the Speaker:
Andrew Rotter is Charles A. Dana Professor of History, Emeritus, at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, USA. A specialist in the history of US foreign relations, he is the author, most recently, of Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial India and the Philippines (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.