Reading The Discovery of India in the Library of an Australian Prime Minister

Nolan, Sybil

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51334-8_9

Sybil Nolan⁷

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

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Abstract

Robert Menzies, prime minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941, and from 1949 to 1966, was an interested actor in the British Empire’s transition during the mid-twentieth century. His library of almost 4,000 volumes contains many books with imperial themes. Nolan uses Franco Moretti’s ‘distant reading’ methods to map the imperial and postcolonial discourse formations in the library’s catalogue. She then focuses on Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India (1946), which the Indian prime minister presented to Menzies. Several early pages in Menzies’ copy are unopened, suggesting he left off reading. By comparing the library’s discourse formations, and reading The Discovery against other texts, Nolan evinces Menzies’ resistance to the British Empire’s devolution. She also demonstrates methods for researching book history under conditions of restricted access.

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Notes

1.
Caitlin Stone and Jim Berryman, ‘The Robert Menzies Collection at the University of Melbourne’, University of Melbourne Collections, XII (2013), p. 46. The author wishes to acknowledge Caitlin Stone and Jim Berryman’s generous sharing of their knowledge of the collection; also the assistance she received from staff of the University of Melbourne’s Special Collections, and particularly from Cultural Collections officer Chen Chen. This research project was facilitated by a University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts Research Grant.
2.
Elzbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, Much More than Metaphor: Master Tropes of Artistic Language and Imagination (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013), p. 137; Sybil Nolan, ‘Ten Books that Backed the Empire: The Project of Empire in Robert Menzies’ Personal Library’, at the Conference: ‘Writers and Readers: Books that Shaped and Subverted the British Empire Conference’, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, May 2015.
3.
Robert Darnton, ‘History of Reading’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 2nd edn., ed. Peter Burke (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), p. 162.
4.
Caitlin Stone and Jim Berryman, ‘Making Personal Libraries Accessible: The Example of the Robert Menzies Collection’, Australian Library Journal, 63:3 (2014), pp. 238–246.
5.
Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013), p. 179.
6.
Darnton, ‘History of Reading’, p. 175.
7.
Shashi Tharoor, Nehru: The Invention of India (New York: Arcade Publications, 2003), p. 122.
8.
Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr, ‘Introduction; The Spine of Empire? Books and the Making of an Imperial Commons’, in Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons, eds. Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 11.
9.
Elleke Boehmer, ‘The Hero’s Story: The Male Leader’s Autobiography and the Syntax of Postcolonial Nationalism’, in Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 68.
10.
Burton and Hofmeyr, Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire, p. 8.
11.
The uncut pages are 5–8, 9–12, 13–16 and 17–20.
12.
Patrick Buckridge, ‘Books as Gifts: The Meaning and Function of a Personal Library’, Australian Literary Studies, 27:3–4 (2012), p. 63.
13.
Meg Gurry, ‘Leadership and Bilateral Relations: Menzies and Nehru, Australia and India, 1949–1964’, Pacific Affairs, 65:4 (1993), pp. 512–513; Meg Gurry, Australia and India: Mapping the Journey 1944–2014 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2015), pp. 48–49; David Lowe, Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’: Australia’s Cold War, 1948–1954 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1999), p. 86.
14.
Robert Gordon Menzies, Afternoon Light : Some Memories of Men and Events (Melbourne: Cassells, 1967), p. 187.
15.
Many of the books in the library were presentation volumes or gifts. Stone and Berryman, ‘The Robert Menzies Collection’, p. 47.
16.
Judith Brett, Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, 2nd edn (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007), p. 114.
17.
Ibid., p. 128.
18.
Stone and Berryman, ‘The Robert Menzies Collection’, pp. 48–50.
19.
Moretti, Distant Reading, p. 180.
20.
Ibid., p. 182.
21.
Darnton, ‘History of Reading’, p. 162.
22.
Drawn from John Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion’, English Historical Review, 112: 447 (1997), pp. 614, 626–627; J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbet & Co, 1902), pp. 1–5; David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire, reprint (London: Penguin, 2002), pp. 121–122.
23.
Edward Jenks, The Government of the British Empire, (London: John Murray, 1918); W. K. Hancock, Argument of Empire (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1943); Nicholas Mansergh, The Commonwealth and the Nations: Studies in British Commonwealth Relations (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948); T. B. Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1877); Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vols 1 and 4 (London: Cassell and Co, 1956 and 1958); Richard Dimbleby, Elizabeth Our Queen, abr. (London: University of London Press Ltd, 1953).
24.
Burton and Hofmeyr, Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire, p. 11.
25.
Cannadine, Ornamentalism, p. 122. Also, P. D. Morgan, ‘Encounters between British and “Indigenous” Peoples’, c.1500–c.1800’, in Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850, eds. M. J. Daunton and R. Halpern (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 68, qted in Cannadine, Ornamentalism, p. vii.
26.
Catherine Hall, ‘Macaulay’s History of England: A Book that Shaped Nation and Empire’, in Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons, eds. Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. 81–86.
27.
Macaulay, The History of England, vol. 1, p. 1.
28.
Ibid., p. 2.
29.
Hall, ‘Macaulay’s History of England’, p. 80.
30.
Jenks, The Government of the British Empire, p. vii.
31.
Ibid., p. 81.
32.
Ibid., p. 40.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ruth Campbell, ‘Jenks, Edward (1861–1939)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jenks-edward-6837/text11837, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 18 January 2016.
35.
Bibliographical details from the online database, The Robert Menzies Collection: A Living Library, http://www.menziescollection.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/, accessed 29 January 2016.
36.
Curators Stone and Berryman, in discussion with the author, July 2014.
37.
17 June 1935, ‘Mr Menzies’ Overseas Diary’, Robert Menzies Papers, National Library of Australia (NLA) MS4936 (2000 addition), box 479, folder 8.
38.
6 July 1935, ‘Mr Menzies’ Overseas Diary’, NLA MS4936 (2000 addition), box 479, folder 8.
39.
Robert Menzies Papers, NLA MS 4936/1/7.
40.
Deborah Lavin, ‘Amery, Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett (1873–1955)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2015 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30401, accessed 5 January 2016].
41.
Leopold S. Amery, Speech to the House of Commons, 20 November 1940, 5. Robert Menzies Papers, National Library of Australia (NLA), MS 4936/1/7.
42.
Leopold S. Amery to R.G. Menzies, 20 December 1940, Robert Menzies Papers, NLA, MS 4936/1/7.
43.
Leopold S. Amery, India and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942). Leoplod S. Amery, The Framework of the Future (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 18.
44.
Judith M. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 150.
45.
Amery, India and Freedom, p. 5.
46.
Amery, The Framework of the Future, p. 7.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid., p. 8.
49.
Burton and Hofmeyr, Ten Books That Changed the British Empire, p. 11.
50.
Brown, Nehru, p. 49.
51.
Ibid., p. 70; Bal R. Nanda, Jawaharlal Nehru: Rebel and Statesman (New Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 266.
52.
Nanda, Jawaharlal Nehru, p. 266.
53.
Ibid., p. 268.
54.
Brown, Nehru, p. 152; Shashi Tharoor suggests he began writing it in gaol a few years earlier, around 1941, see Tharoor, Nehru, pp. 121–122.
55.
Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 3.
56.
Boehmer, ‘The Hero’s Story’, p. 76.
57.
Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 47.
58.
Ibid., p. 6.
59.
Ibid., p. 7.
60.
Ibid., p. 8.
61.
Ibid., p. 17.
62.
Ibid., p. 17.
63.
Ibid., p. 553.
64.
Allan W. Martin, ‘Menzies the Man’, in The Whig View of Australian History, eds. Allan W. Martin and John R. Nethercote (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2007), p. 126.
65.
Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 445.
66.
Ibid., p. 500.
67.
Ibid., p. 506.
68.
Ibid., p. 45.
69.
Boehmer, ‘The Hero’s Story’, p. 68.
70.
Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1957), x.
71.
Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography, quoted in Bal R. Nanda, Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976), p. 29.
72.
Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 505, qted in Nanda, Indian Foreign Policy, p. 29.
73.
Nanda, Indian Foreign Policy, p. 29.
74.
Ibid., p. 3.
75.
Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth Century France’, p. 70, qted in Buckridge, ‘Books as Gifts’, p. 67.
76.
Robert G. Menzies, ‘Prime Ministers Conference London’, in Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 212 (7–6 March 1951), p. 78.
77.
Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (London: Bodley Head, 1949); Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History (London: Lindsay Drummon Ltd, 1949); Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New York: John Day, 1946); Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi (Calcutta: Signet, 1949).
78.
Brown, Nehru, p. 104; Tharoor, Nehru, p. 96; Nanda, Jawaharlal Nehru, p. 270.
79.
Nkrumah, The Autobiography, p. ix.
80.
Tom Mboya, Independence and After (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1963).
81.
Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan: Heart of Asia (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1950).
82.
John Kotelawala, Between Two Worlds (Colombo: Government Press, Ceylon, 1954).
83.
Roy Welensky, 4000 Days: The Life and Death of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (London: Collins, 1964); A. J. A. Peck, Rhodesia Accuses (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Three Sisters Books, 1966); Robert Blake, A History of Rhodesia (London: Eyre Methuen, 1977); Deneys Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War (London: Faber & Faber, 1933); Laurens van der Post, The Dark Eye in Africa (London: Hogarth Press, 1956); Frank Gallagher, The Indivisible Island: The History of the Partition of Ireland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1957).
84.
Menzies, ‘Introductory’, in Afternoon Light, p. 4.
85.
See the table of contents in Menzies, Afternoon Light, xi.
86.
Ibid., p. 187.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 557.
89.
Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation 1945–1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind, digital edn (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2007), pp. 15–16.
90.
Amery, The Framework of the Future, pp. 39–41; Lowe, Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’, p. 26.
91.
Menzies, Afternoon Light, p. 188.
92.
Menzies, ‘Prime Ministers Conference London, 1951’, p. 73.
93.
Menzies, Afternoon Light, p. 188.
94.
Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation 1945–1963, pp. 273–274.
95.
Ibid., p. 274.
96.
Menzies, Afternoon Light, p. 228.
97.
Ibid.
98.
Ibid.
99.
Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians’, p. 631.
100.
Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation 1945–1963, pp. 1, 3.
101.
Ibid., p. 3.

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University of Melbourne, Australia
Sybil Nolan

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University of Oxford , Oxford, United Kingdom
Elleke Boehmer
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Rouven Kunstmann
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Asha Rogers

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Nolan, S. (2017). Reading The Discovery of India in the Library of an Australian Prime Minister. In: Boehmer, E., Kunstmann, R., Mukhopadhyay, P., Rogers, A. (eds) The Global Histories of Books. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51334-8_9

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