I like the look of this lecture and will certainly be tuning in.
Description
This story of the adventures of two Indian travellers on a road trip round Britain in 1955 reveals how their touristic desires and itineraries were influenced by, and challenged, colonialism.Professor Uma Kothari, University of Manchester explains:
"In 1955 my parents embarked on a holiday of a lifetime. In their early 20s and recently married, they arrived in Southampton, England on a passenger ship from Mumbai, India, purchased a second-hand Morris Minor car and spent the next six months motoring overland back to India. The end of the war in 1945 and Indian Independence in 1947 had produced an epochal postcolonial moment in which exciting possibilities for travel adventures arose for middle-class Indians.
"The first part of their journey was spent fulfilling their long-standing desire to visit Britain and experience at first hand the familiar landscapes, literature and histories that swirled through their education under British colonial rule. Their travel stories help challenge historical descriptions of tourism and popular travel writing that almost exclusively focus upon Anglo-European travellers and their encounters in non-western places. Instead, it provides rare accounts of the adventures, experiences and perceptions of non-western travellers touring post-war Britain. Crucially, their narrative reveals how colonialism influenced their touristic desires and itineraries, yet also how new postcolonial affinities and alliances were forged during this extensive road trip."
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