British Anxieties in Pre-World War I Invasion-Scare Literature

FAIN: FB-53943-08

A. Michael Matin
Warren Wilson College (Asheville, NC 28815-9000)

The project examines pre-1914 British invasion-scare literature, a genre that envisions England subjected to conditions of the sort it imposed throughout the British Empire. Drawing on recent work in the study of nationalism, imperialism, and globalization, this interdisciplinary book explores how these xenophobic narratives and tracts articulated British anxieties during an era in which technological and geopolitical developments threatened to diminish British power. I illustrate how a familiarity with these subcanonical counterfactual texts enables one to understand better the fluidity of history that the certitude of hindsight tends to obscure. The topicality of the genre for a post-9/11 readership is a major theme of the project.