Tag: Tourism

The Victorian Origins of Will and Kate’s Visit to India

Published on by CIGH Exeter3 Comments
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at India Gate, a memorial to Indian service in the First World War, its foundation stone laid by the Duke of Connaught in 1921 Credit: @PARoyal
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at India Gate, a memorial to Indian service in the First World War, its foundation stone laid by the Duke of Connaught in 1921. Credit: @PARoyal

Charles V. Reed
Elizabeth City State University
Editor, H-Empire

As the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visit south Asia this week, doing the sorts of things that royals are expected to do whilst abroad in the former empire – attend fancy social events, commemorate, inaugurate, and patronize, play cricket, and so on – the celebrity-obsessed global media has enthusiastically followed their every move. An even cursory glance at the tweets tagged #RoyalVisitIndia reveals the performative and visual character of the royal tour – so essential to its purpose since the first visits of the nineteenth century. William and Kate’s touring ancestors would find much familiar in their itineraries, the ceremony, the responses. It’s a quite odd thing, when we think about it, considering nearly seventy years of Indian independence from British rule. Of course, the present Queen’s dedication to the Commonwealth and maintaining the monarchy’s role in the former empire — as chronicled in Philip Murphy’s Monarchy and the End of Empire — explains much of it. But the Victorian history of the royal tour is of equal significance. Continue reading “The Victorian Origins of Will and Kate’s Visit to India” →