In the preface to this book, Cannadine makes clear his ambitions for this book.
Ornamentalism
is to break from what Cannadine sees as an unfortunate historicaldistinction between the British nation and the British Empire and present the two “as the‘entire interactive system’ they undoubtedly formed” (p. xvii). Cannadine’s argument isthat, contrary to the views of ‘Orientalist’ scholars, the British did not exclusively seek tocreate racial or cross-cultural distinctions between the British nation and the Empire, butsought to unite the Empire through finding commonalties and exploiting them (p. xix).Cannadine further argues that Britons’ overarching view of their own culture at the heightof the empire was far from “dynamic, individualistic, egalitarian, modernizing – and thussuperior” to backward societies on the imperial periphery, as ‘Orientalist’ scholars insist.He instead claims that Britons valued their unequal and hierarchical society and sought torecognize, preserve, and replicate it throughout the empire, particularly through anemphasis on ceremony (p. 4-10). The bulk of
Ornamentalism
reinforces this argumentwith observations and anecdotes illustrating the role of grandeur, honour, and aristocracyin the British Empire.The strength of
Orientalism
is that it does seek to completely overturn the currenttide of thought but to augment the knowledge of the British Empire. The point is to bringto the fore an aspect of British Imperialism that has, in Cannadine’s view, beenunderemphasized. Cannadine admits that in addition to class and rank, Imperial societywas in fact ordered on the basis of race and other factors (p. 5). Social rank was only one