The Oriental Dimension

A review of Orwell and Empire by Douglas Kerr

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Among the more dog-eared editions in my ever-expanding Orwell library is an examination of Orwell’s writing by the influential critic Raymond Williams. Its somewhat tatty appearance betrays the fact that, since I acquired it around three decades ago, I have never quite been able to put it down. It was the first book that challenged me to think much more deeply about Orwell’s early literary development – in particular the social conscience that is often discussed in connection with his early published works. When I recently came around to tackling Douglas Kerr’s Orwell and Empire, I was at once delighted to discover that Kerr’s fine collection of essays turned out to be equally captivating, and suspect that its (as yet untarnished) appearance might well be destined for a similar fate.

In his excellent introduction Kerr makes clear his belief in the ‘strong oriental theme’ in Orwell’s work. He sets forth the argument that his ‘Orientalism’ – to mean ‘a western idea of the East shaped, consciously or not, by European political and economic dominance of the Middle East and Asia in the age of empire’ – had been ‘absolutely formative’ to Orwell’s intellectual and political development. The five years that Eric Blair spent in Burma became ‘a lifelong point of reference,’ and Burma was his school of politics and power,’ out of which had evolved ‘the paradigm for his idea of political injustice.’ Kerr reinforces his argument further with an assertion that ‘you could never take the Anglo-Indian out of Orwell.’ The equally essential second part of the introduction contains an excellent, meticulously researched ‘story’ of Orwell, the Empire, and the Orient, outlining a wealth of vital biographical information concerning Orwell’s ancestry, his upbringing and education, and critically, his service in the Indian Imperial Police.

As one would expect, Orwell’s first novel Burmese Days is discussed in many of these compositions, and features prominently in an essay titled Environment. Kerr highlights the critical fact that the viewpoint of Burmese Days is almost thoroughly Eurocentric, – ‘a novel of colonial life that rarely enters the private life or consciousness of local people.’ The Burmese hardly feature in the novel, with almost all of the action being focused through the central character’s European consciousness. Through the eyes of John Flory we discover the extent to which Orwell was at first fascinated by the natural environment and landscapes of Burma in many ways. He was a great naturalist, and took the time to take in his surroundings and the plants and wildlife that populated it. By the time he wrote The Road to Wigan Pier in which he states that ‘in all novels about the east the scenery is the real subject matter’, he is haunted by it – Kerr tells us it was something that he needed to exorcize through his writing.

Burmese Days also features in the opening essay titled ‘Animals’ which examines the relationship between the importance of animals in Orwell’s life, and their inclusion in his writing; with additional emphasis on ‘Marrakech‘ and Animal Farm. From a very early age, animals became connected with how he thought about human beings; Kerr explains how he uses these observations of animals and landscapes in the natural world as a technique to clarify what was hard to imagine or discuss in human terms. In Burmese Days Orwell had a constant tendency to describe his fictitious characters in terms of their animalistic features. I would add that it became a habit that he typically extended to figures in authority – the tramp-major in ‘The Spike’ was described as a ‘bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog,’ while in a review of Mein Kampf Hitler is described as having ‘a pathetic, dog-like face.’

We are shown instances in ‘Marrakech’ where Orwell is describing a place where people ‘with brown skins’ seemed insignificant alongside the animals – especially when the animals were being ill-treated. He vents his fury against the practice of overloading the donkeys, while hardly noticing the passing women ‘bent double under loads of firewood.’ The evolution of his realisation that animals are exploited in much the same way as humans likely relates to his observations of how the animals he had observed in the East were being treated – it was a similar relationship between rulers and ruled. Kerr suggests that Orwell’s equating animals with oppressed humans had much to do with his family background, and how being a child in an imperial family might have taught him to think of non-Europeans in an ‘unflattering way.’ Orwell’s experience of, and his fascination with tropical landscapes, appear to have conditioned him to become almost desensitized towards the plight of the natives – ‘where human beings have brown skins, their poverty is simply not noticed.’ One can’t help remembering here, Orwell’s comment in his essay that he found it difficult to believe he was walking among other human beings – ‘are they really the same flesh as oneself? – do they even have names?’

When tackling Orwell’s much discussed essay ‘Shooting an Elephant, Kerr deals with explicit points that the author intends to make in his work masterfully, by showing us how ‘the unnatural history of empire could not have been illustrated more succinctly.’ In such a situation the Assistant District Superintendent Eric Blair feels there is no other course of action, rather than to act in accordance with his status. There had to be ‘a performance of superiority,’ played out before the natives; a moment which leads Orwell to conclude ‘that when a white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.’ Kerr’s analysis of ‘Shooting an Elephant brought to mind instances when Orwell’s experience of having to act in accordance with his status, returned to haunt me on a number of occasions in the poorer regions of Southern Africa. Being an affluent-looking tourist among such desperate poverty similarly leads one to feel ‘hated by large numbers of people,’ a situation in which I felt compelled to walk and stare ahead with the same deliberate air of superiority. To adjust ones behaviour in such a way as to reinforce a dangerously fragile boundary of status seemed to me to be not too far removed from Orwell’s sudden realisation of the dehumanizing effect that imperialism has upon colonizer, rather than the colonized. I had the same feeling again later in an overcrowded township in Kwazulu Natal, having effectively imprisoned myself inside a locked BMW motor car. Even though I had no power over them, the resentful looks from the hundred or so local youths circling a vehicle containing a solitary white man made me suddenly realise that I was again on the dangerously uncomfortable side of a wide gulf of circumstantial privilege.

Kerr proceeds to question the extent (if any) to which Blair’s five years in Burma might have caused him to re-evaluate his ideas of class, given that it had been a sensitive issue throughout much of his younger life. The answer appears to be not very much, given that he recognised most of his colleagues in Burma as ‘temporary gentlemen’ enjoying privileges they would not normally have had access to at home. When he returns and gets down among the underclass to, among other things, ‘unlearn superiority’ his observations are often patronizing – particularly towards the plongeurs of Paris and their inability to think and maybe improve their position. We see this again in ‘The Spike’ where Orwell’s sympathies with his fellow inmates reflect an upbringing that instilled in him a recurring paranoia that, whether they were in work or not, the working class were not his equals – he pitied the uneducated men for their inability to think during the long hours of idleness while in the charge of the tramp major. This line of reasoning stuck with him throughout the remainder of his literary career – in Nineteen Eighty-Four the ‘Proles’ were granted intellectual freedom because they had no intellect. Any ideas that Burma had purged him of his class prejudice are shown by Kerr to have been premature, although he warns us against condemning Orwell’s tone without considering the historical context. We discover later in the book that being an anti-imperialist in his time was not so straightforward, as Kerr exposes the dilemma that Orwell faced between his championing of independence for India, and his dislike of the obsessive nationalism displayed by the pro-independence leaders We are reminded more than once in Orwell and Empire that Orwell is not our contemporary.

In another essay ‘Empire’ the focus is on the reasons why Orwell despised being ‘a cog in the machinery of despotism.’ As early as 1929 he published an article in Paris called ‘How a Nation in Exploited’ outlining his understanding of the economics of empire in which he accuses his fellow countrymen of ‘robbing and pilfering Burma quite shamelessly,’ – effectively rubber-stamping his anti-imperialist position. It was the economic rape of nations by the imperialists that typically underscored Orwell’s arguments against it, something he had witnessed at close quarters – in Burmese Days he remarks that ‘the official holds the Burman down while the businessman goes through his pockets.’ Kerr asserts that Orwell had both a quarrel with empire and a quarrel with capitalism. Each enabled the other which ultimately led him towards equating anti-imperialism with Socialism. ‘Britain’ Orwell tells us ‘cannot become a genuinely Socialist country while continuing to plunder Asia and Africa.’ Later, in ‘Literature’, Kerr reminds us that Burmese Days is a novel in which the central character has also lost his faith in empire; and that such a character as John Flory would never appear in anything written by Rudyard Kipling, whose alleged blindness to the economic motives of imperialism is also discussed.

In ‘Geography’ Kerr takes a closer look at the war commentaries that Orwell transmitted to India during his period of employment with the BBC. He shows us how Orwell’s broadcasts encouraged the Indian’s to view the world in broader terms – his commentaries were ‘like a restless searchlight’ into every theatre of war throughout the world in order that they might share in the ‘strategic vision.’ Orwell felt that Indians could only understand the war if they could see it in its true perspective, and his newsletters could help to ‘clarify India’s own interests and global obligations.’ To achieve this, he effectively ‘reconfigured the map of the world as Indocentric’ in order to illuminate India as a key player in the fight against the Axis enemy who would ultimately delay her independence ambitions if it won. Such a view would enable the Indians to see that their interests could prevail if they could find the will to resist. Orwell always proclaimed that the liberation of the colonised was in their hands, but he struggled to imagine them accomplishing it.

Eric Blair, third from left at the rear

Among other subjects covered are examples of how Orwell’s experiences in Burma might have rubbed off on how he objectified and characterised the female characters in his novels. Kerr reminds us that in Burmese Days, the power of the Englishmen was reinforced by servants addressing them with the pronoun ‘the god,’ and that Orwell’s life in Burma among the dull memsahibs and local whores was not the best environment in which to nurture a respect for women. The essay begins with a selection of descriptions, experiences and behavioural traits that one might attribute to the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and provides examples in his work that frequently invite accusations of sexism and misogyny. This is particularly evident in his portrayal of Julia in the above novel who is shown to be not so much a rebel; rather she is promiscuous, and ignorant ‘with a desirable body, but an apparently negligible mind – the male chauvinist’s fantasy’ who Winston accuses of being a rebel ‘only from the waist downwards.’ This leads Kerr to question the credibility of the illegal relationship, and thereafter leads the reader into considering deeper questions about other women in Orwell’s final novel, particularly certain aspects pertaining to the ‘lost mother’ dream figure and the gulf that his own upbringing in an Anglo-Indian family had created between himself and his own mother.

There is so much more I could have written in praise of this combination of fine essays, and still feel as though I had failed to afford the work its appropriate merit. Additionally, I am sufficiently cognizant that it would take more than a single reading for me to fully internalise everything that this book has to offer. Having said that, I can comfortably conclude that this is among the most enjoyable books on the subject of Orwell that I have discovered in a long time, and without doubt the finest work on Orwell’s connection to empire and the east that it has been my privilege to read.

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Orwell and Empire by Douglas Kerr (Oxford University Press, ISBN13: 9780192864093)