EH.N: ANN: Commodities of Empire Working Paper No.7

[Jonathan Curry-Machado]

*Commodities of Empire Working Papers*

The Commodities of Empire Project 
(http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/) is 
pleased to announce the publication of the latest edition in the 
Commodities of Empire Working Papers series:

*Deana Heath (Trinity College, Dublin), 'Obscenity, Empire and Global 
Networks'*

This can be downloaded from the Commodities of Empire Project website at 
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/working-papers/abstract-deana-heath-april08.htm.

/Abstract:/

The expansion of the material networks in the British Empire in the 
second half of the nineteenth century, while facilitating the global 
conveyance of commodities ranging from tea to textiles and bayonets to 
bodies, also made possible the spread of books, magazines, and other 
print matter—including obscene publications. By the end of the 
nineteenth century the British Empire had thus come to serve as a vast 
network for the purveyance of obscene publications and other print 
matter, not simply between metropole and colonies but between colonies. 
This paper explores the role that national, imperial and global networks 
of traders played, on the one hand, in disseminating such print matter 
and the role of vigilance networks, on the other, in trying to put a 
stop to its distribution. It argues that, through transforming the 
regulation of obscenity into a project of imperial hygiene, the goal of 
such vigilance networks was to erect a /cordon sanitaire/ around the 
empire in order to protect it from becoming 'corrupt' and 'degenerate.'


Dr Jonathan Curry-Machado
Coordinator
Commodities of Empire Project
j.currymachado at londonmet.ac.uk

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