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One British Thing: Jodhpurs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2019

Abstract

Jodhpurs, despite their Indian name and provenance, are a quintessentially “British thing” in that they exemplify the material and cultural exchanges between Britain and its Indian colony in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The trousers, originally associated with elite Indian sportsmen and royalty, have become an iconic staple of British equestrian culture, cavalry uniforms, and fashionable leisurewear. This particular example of sartorial borrowing illustrates the complicated cultural proximity of empire within metropolitan Britain.

Type
Original Manuscript
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2019 

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References

1 Dale, T. F., Polo Past and Present (London, 1905), 123Google Scholar; Mandell, Richard D., Sport: A Cultural History (New York, 1984), 92Google Scholar.

2 Holt, Richard, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford, 1989), 209–10Google Scholar.

3 Stoddart, Brian, “Sport, Cultural Imperialism, and Colonial Response in the British Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 4 (October 1988): 649–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 657.

4 See, for instance, the memoir by the marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, Blackwood, Harriot Georgina, Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My Journal, 1884–1888, 2 vols. (London, 1890), 1:17, 2223Google Scholar, 38, 115, 278.

5 As one such account of a young Indian noble denoted by the term “Black and Blue” has it: “In his snow-white muslin dress, his pink turban, and his red slippers covered with gold embroidery, Black and Blue had looked an aristocratic native … But in his black trousers, black waistcoat, black surtout coat, white neck cloth, black beaver hat, and Wellington boots, poor Black and Blue looked truly hideous.” Lang, John, Wanderings in India, and Other Sketches of Life in Hindostan (London, 1859), 82Google Scholar.

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