How do we understand the everyday encounters in colonies between the conquerors and their colonial subjects? Andrew (Andy) Rotter, Charles A. Dana Professor of History and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, answers this question in his new book Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial India and the Philippines, through his look at the British experience in India and the American experience in the Philippines. Combining two fields, the history of comparative empires and the history of senses, Professor Rotter tries to understand those everyday encounters in India and the Philippines and how they related to the five human senses.
According to Professor Rotter, the history of comparative empires and the history of senses have not yet been linked. A historian of U.S. Foreign Relations, Rotter first explained that many U.S. Foreign Relations historians have been reluctant to consider the United States as an empire, or, even if it is considered as such, argue that it is not comparable to other formal empires such as the British, French, Spanish, or Portuguese empires. However, more recently, historians have argued that comparing empires could help to gain better understanding in a variety of ways. Professor Rotter quotes scholar Julian Go’s view that comparatively, even though the U.S. and the British started empires at different times, there were similar strategies and structures in their organization. Finding Go’s argument convincing, Rotter thus shapes his research by comparing the British empire and the United State through their respective encounters with India and the Philippines.
Rotter mentioned that a lecture at Colgate in the early 2000s given by Mark Smith, a sensory historian from the University of South Carolina, sparked this interest in the senses. The Colgate History Department had invited Professor Smith to campus for a lecture on the construction of race across all five senses in the American South. Fascinated by Smith’s argument, Rotter included those insights in his book. Thus, the history of comparative empire and sensory history are related.
Professor Rotter hopes that his book will remind people that empires are all about bodies; in Imperial experiences, there are human beings involved, and human beings take all senses into account in their relations with each other. To quote Empires of the Senses, “Let us open our eyes, ears, noses, hands and mouths to a new apprehension of empire.”