British History
1856-60: 2nd Opium War
1858: India came under direct British government control
1869: Suez Canal opens.
1870-1: Franco-Prussian War
1873: Population of UK: 26 mil
18734: Bihar famine in India
1876: May 1, Victoria named Empress of India.
Compulsory school attendance in Great Britain.
1876, Feb 18, A direct telegraph link was established between Britain & New Zealand.
1877: Transvaal annexed.
1879, Mar 12: The British-Zulu War began.
Artifact• Artist: George Pipeshank (pseudonym of John Wallace)
• Originated from: London, England
• Created: December 1879
• Material and Technique: Color Lithography
• One of Five Published Posters
• Portrayal of Tobacco: habitual to English daily life, considered healthy, “Imperial Temple of Health”
• Each booth stands for a different type of tobacco
• Tobacco from every region of the world
• Tobacco company used to advertise
What was Cope’s Tobacco?• Founders: brothers Thomas and George Cope
• Year Founded: 1848
• Location: Liverpool, England
• Marketing Tactics: Posters, booklets, magazine-like gazettes, Cope’s Tobacco Plant
Tobacco in the 1870s• Founded in the Americas, 1500s
• Grown in the Far East, West Indies, and the Americas
• All classes
• Men, not women
• Smoked by pipe commonly, also cigars, and later cigarettes
• Rampant Anti-tobacconists, but Britain was mainly still a smoking nation
In Contrast to Opium• Portrayed as more exotic, demonized almost
• A medium of exhilaration and terrifying contact with the Orient
• Harmful to British bodies, a poison
• Secretive, sleazy
• Confessions of an English opium-eater (1821)
• Supports Orientalism--them as the other; a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of "Oriental" peoples and cultures as compared to that of the West. It often involves seeing their culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous.
Quoted Text from The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
"We threaded an extraordinary tangle of dark alleys where two men could just walk abreast, under the flickering lamps jutting from the ebon walls, to mark the corners. We were on our way to the dreadful paved court, flanked with tumble-down one storied houses, in which our old friend the Lascar opium smoker rolled upon his mattress, stirring his stifling narcotic over a lamp, and keeping his eyes — bright as burning coals — upon his latch. . .. As for our friend the Lascar, whose portrait we had taken on a previous visit — we shouldn't see him to-night: he was 'in quod for a month: begging.' So we went to a neighbour and rival of his, and were introduced to the room in which "Edwin Drood" opens. Upon the wreck of a four-post bedstead (the posts of which almost met overhead, and from which depended bundles of shapeless rags), upon a mattress heaped with indescribable clothes, lay, sprawling, a Lascar, dead-drunk with opium; and at the foot of the bed a woman, with a little brass lamp among the rags covering her, stirring the opium over the tiny flame. She only turned her head dreamily as we entered. She shivered under the gust of night air we had brought in, and went on warming the black mixture. It was difficult to see any humanity in that face, as the enormous grey dry lips lapped about the rough wood pipe and drew in the poison. The man looked dead. She said he had been out since four in the morning trying to get a job in the docks — and had failed."
Tobacco in the Moonstone and Jane Eyre• Betteredge’s pipe (Collins 61, 63, 89, 132, 196, 245, 478, 479)
• Franklin Blake’s cigars (Collins 112, 452, 466, 499 note)
• Mr. Rochester smokes (Bronte 214); Bertha's father--a planter in Spanish Town, Jamaica, potentially a tobacco planter
Discussion Questions1. What is so popular about tobacco? What makes opium taboo?
2. What happens when Franklin stops using tobacco?
3. How is Betteredge’s (and Franklin’s) use of tobacco seen vs the use of opium?
4. Do you think there is significance to this contrast? What do you think the meaning could be?
5. What implications do the portrayals of tobacco and opium have on empire?
6. Is the use of opium more aligned with the views of polygenism or monogenism? How so?
Work Cited"Addiction and Empire." Victorian Web. Google.com, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. <http://www.victorianweb.org/science/addiction/empire.htm>.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard Nemesvari. Ontario: Broadview, 2004.
Chapter 6. Promoters, Publishers, and Professional Performers." Victorian Web. Google.com, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. <http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/dbscott/6.html>.
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Ed. Steve Farmer. Ontario: Broadview, 1999. Print.
"Opium Smoking by Gustave Doré." Victorian Web. Google.com, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. <http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/dore/23.html>.
"Poster | Pipeshank, George | V&A Search the Collections." Poster | Pipeshank, George | V&A Search the Collections. Albert and Vicoria Museum, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O729955/poster-pipeshank-george/>.
