Introduction

During the second half of the 19^th century, a curious and quiet invasion occurred in the pages of children’s literature: the animals of the tropics suddenly appeared in their picture books.  Jaguars, monkeys, giant snakes, tigers, hippos, and zebras were abruptly part of every child’s animal knowledge.  “E” was no longer for “Ewe,” but for Elephant, and “Z” could finally be solved by the Zebra.  The lucky child could even go to the London Zoo and pay a small fee to ride an elephant around the park.

This exhibit considers the relationship between the British Empire and the tropical landscape by investigating the portrayal of jungle animals in popular children’s picture books in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The newly-popularized images of jungle animals communicated crucial values about imperial power and the natural world.  But more than merely recasting the tropes of imperialism that have been identified in other genres, jungle scenes enabled a particular kind of discourse that intertwined lessons about power and lessons about nature.  The children of the British Empire were taught how to conquer, control, and scientifically know the natural world as a crucial part of their education as imperial citizens.  This exhibit will examine the discourse of nature and power as presented to young children through the depiction of jungle animals in their alphabet and picture books

The first section of the exhibit attempts to provide a broader historical context for the jungle imagery, and argues that the jungle appeared as an important trope in the 1860s due to the collusion of two intersecting strands of cultural history: the expansion of Britain’s tropical empire and the potential threats to that empire and the mounting interest in children’s education and publishing.  The first page (“The rise of tropical imperialism”) details the changing relationship between Britain and the tropical world, with particular attention to the rapidly expanding borders of empire and the increasing cultural and economic significance of the tropics.  The second page deals with “The visual evolution of children’s texts.”  While the broader themes of children’s education and publishing will be covered, the emphasis is on picture books as a technological and cultural product. 

The next three sections deal with the picture books themselves and their major ideological functions.  “Tropical legibility” argues that the inclusion of jungle animals in picture books made the distant tropical environment legible from the metropole.  The first page deals more broadly with “the imperial eye” and the function of legibility.  “Unlikely companions” considers the depiction of groups of animals from different geographies, as in Noah’s Ark books and alphabets.  The third page considers the scientific perspective of some images and the implied hierarchies embedded within them.

The fourth section explores the related project of domesticating the tropics.  It argues that these books rendered the tropics familiar and controllable for the English public.  The first page, “jungle pets,” describes the juxtapositions between extremely familiar domestic animals and livestock with the wild animals of the jungle.  It also deals with the less common depiction of wild animals dressed in English clothing or behaving as humans.  The final page considers the depictions of zoo animals behind bars as a more forceful vision of domestication.

The last section of the exhibit is concerned with the presence of danger in the child’s vision of tropical animals.  It argues that, despite the emphasis on scientific knowability and domestication, an element of danger persisted in children’s books and helped to demonstrate the need for imperial intervention.  The “Animal villains” page analyzes the cruel and scary depictions of jungle animals, while the “hunter heroes” page is concerned with the vision of hunting as a commendable and necessary act.  The bibliography for this exhibit is contained on separate page (above).

From this analysis of several tropes in British children’s books, I hope to assemble a tolerably complete idea of how British children encountered the jungle.  In Young England, a popular boy’s paper, an article describing the predatory cats of the jungle opened with these telling claims: “A certain lack of romance characterizes our British woods now-a-days—from a boy’s point of view…There is really almost nothing left to cause that thrilling sensation of danger which seems quite necessary to the perfect happiness of a healthy British boy.  Fortunately, however, he has always his imagination to fall back upon, and that should never fail to people a dark wood with outlaws, goblins, or strange beasts, according to taste.”[1]

In the dark woods of children’s imaginations, the jungle reigned supreme.  The next page of this exhibit details the historiographical position of this research.  Note that the exhibit may be navigated by using the menu above or by clicking the “next page” button at the bottom of the screen.

Notes