• Empire on a Board: Navigating the British Empire through Geographical Board Games in the Nineteenth Century

    Author(s):
    Koca Mehmet Kentel (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Group(s):
    British History, History
    Subject(s):
    Imperialism, History, British territories and possessions, Games, Play, Orientalism, Great Britain, Nineteenth century, Cartography, Geography
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    board games, maps, Colonial history, British empire, History of games and play, 19th-century British history, Colonialism
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6JW86M71
    Abstract:
    While board games had been around for millennia, their popularization as a market commodity, with specilal themes and branding, had coincided with the formation of the global dominance of the British Empire as a maritime juggernaut. Early board game producers in the second half of the eighteenth century were mapmakers, and the board games shared many of the epistemological and material tenets of the Enlightenment cartography and the business of Empire. This paper argues that through its structural and narrative formation, geographical board games proved to be the quintessential imperial entertainment for the middle-class British children especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. With the transformation in the imperial discourse and imperial forms, board games came to change through the end of the century as well.
    Notes:
    Received the Honorable Mention at the 2017 Ristow Prize for Academic Achievement in the History of Cartography. Based on K. Mehmet Kentel, “The Board Games of Wallis Family: Empire, Nation, Instruction in Childhood Entertainment at the Turn of the Nineteenth-Century (M.St. diss., University of Oxford, 2011).
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Magazine section     Show details
    Pub. URL:
    http://www.washmapsociety.org/TPJ2.htm
    Pub. Date:
    Fall 2018
    Magazine:
    The Portolan
    Section:
    102
    Page Range:
    27 - 42
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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