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So...what if I turned this conference paper on stamp design into an article on imperial iconography and nationalism? Political history is still political science and I think the case study of British imperialist symbolism in the 1930s could be fascinating...
One of the biggest findings of my conf. paper was that India's commemoration of George V's silver jubilee basically involved a last ditch effort to hybridize British symbols of empire and the monarch with domestic Indian landmarks and symbols.
It largely failed in the Indian case where there was already a nascent and developing nationalist movement which rejected the alien nature of British imperial occupation. But elsewhere in the Empire, there's evidence it had the opposite effect: reminders of empire strengthened it
I feel like there's a good thread I can tease out here: when the state co-opts national symbology, does it do *more* harm than if the state celebrates its own imperial nature? That's the key difference between India and, say, New Zealand in terms of commemoration.
Guess I'm going to the library after class tomorrow.
