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‘Only a local affair’? Imagining and enacting locality through London's Boer War carnivals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2017

DION GEORGIOU
DION GEORGIOU*
Affiliation:
1 Edwards Mews, London, N1 1SG
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Abstract:

This article examines carnivals held in Greater London during the Boer War, as a prism through which to analyse the contemporary construction and enactment of locality in the metropolis. It argues that ideas of locality, class and citizenship were reshaped through advances in transport and communication, more active government and urban and then suburban growth. This was manifest in the carnivals, whereby a national and imperial cause stimulated local initiative and citywide replication, encouraged expressions of local identity but also instigated and exacerbated local rivalries, and illustrated the extent to which class identities were nested in local ones.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 100 - 127
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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