Gaming Empire in Children’s British Board Games, 1836–1860 9780367209353, 9780429264238

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Gaming Empire in Children’s British Board Games, 1836–1860

Over a century before Monopoly invited child players to bankrupt one another with merry ruthlessness, a lively and profitable board game industry thrived in Britain from the 1750s onward, thanks to publishers like John Wallis, John Betts, and William Spooner. As part of the new wave of materials catering to the developing mass market of child consumers, the games steadily acquainted future upper- and middle-class empire builders (even the Royal Family themselves) with the strategies of imperial rule: cultivating, trading, engaging in conflict, displaying, and competing. In their parlors, these players learned the techniques of successful colonial management by playing games such as Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery or Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions. These games shaped ideologies about nation, race, and imperial duty, challenging the portrait of Britons as “absentminded imperialists.” Considered on a continuum with children’s geography primers and adventure tales, these games offer a new way to historicize the Victorians, Britain, and Empire itself. The archival research conducted here illustrates the changing disciplinary landscape of children’s literature/culture studies, as well as nineteenth-century imperial studies, by situating the games at the intersection of material and literary culture. SUNY Brockport Associate Professor Megan A. Norcia (PhD, University of Florida) focuses her research on empire and nineteenth-century children’s literary and material culture, including imperial geography, mapping London, and castaway tales. Her publications include Children’s Literature Association’s selected Honor Book, X Marks the Spot: Women Writers Map the Empire for British Children, 1790–1895 (Ohio UP, 2010), and articles appearing in Victorian Literature and Culture, Children’s Literature Annual, Victorian Review, Children’s Literature Quarterly, The Lion and the Unicorn, and elsewhere. She is happiest when up to her elbows in archives.

Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present

This series recognizes and supports innovative work on the child and on literature for children and adolescents that informs teaching and engages with current and emerging debates in the field. Proposals are welcome for interdisciplinary and comparative studies by humanities scholars working in a variety of fields, including literature; book history, periodicals history, and print culture and the sociology of texts; theater, film, musicology, and performance studies; history, including the history of education; gender studies; art history and visual culture; cultural studies; and religion. Recent titles in this series: Nordic Childhoods 1700–1960 From Folk Beliefs to Pippi Longstocking Edited by Reidar Aasgaard, Marcia Bunge, and Merethe Roos Nineteenth-Century Fictions of Childhood and the Politics of Play Michelle Beissel Heath Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry Katherine Wakely-Mulroney and Louise Joy Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood in Contemporary Britain Edited by Ralf Schneider and Sandra Dinter Children’s Play in Literature Investigating the Strengths and the Subversions of the Playing Child Edited by Joyce Kelley Gaming Empire in Children’s British Board Games, 1836–1860 Megan A. Norcia For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Studies-in-Childhood-1700-to-the-Present/book-series/ASHSER2084

Gaming Empire in Children’s British Board Games, 1836–1860

Megan A. Norcia

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Megan A. Norcia to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-20935-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-26423-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Nicole Larose and Brian Doan, who left the game too soon. They played all games, but especially the game of life, with distinction, heart, skill, humor, competitiveness, honor, passion, and fierce joy. On their grad school soccer team, our shirts proclaimed, “Winning is such a bourgeois paradigm!” For their subversion, their sarcastic wit, their unflagging generosity, supportiveness, and sweetness, Nicole and Brian are missed by their teammates and legions of fans. May they be chaired through the eternal town.

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments 1

2

3

Introduction: Playing Well with Others in the Great Imperial Game Holding the Line: The Shared Genealogy of Maps, Geographic Board Games, and the Middle Class 4 Critical Interdisciplinary Approaches to Games and Gaming 11 Setting Up the Board and Placing the Pieces: An Overview of Methodology and Chapters 17 Play Grounds: Situating Board Games Between the Literary Field and the Athletic Field 36 Navigating Trade Routes and Fostering Moral Commerce in William Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery (1836) and John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions [c. 1855] Take-or-Pay Economics and Unequal Barter in William Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery 52 The Transformative Power of Trade in John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions 70 Games in Glass Houses: Children’s Board Games Display and Critique Imperial Power through the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace Commanding Resources in Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game [c. 1855] 99 Prizing Technology in William Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851) 118

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Contents Gaming America: Slavery, Territorial Appropriation, and the Race for Moral Leadership in Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner [c. 1844] and E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West [1850–1860] Mapping Moral Leadership through Retrograde Motion 144 Territorial and Textual Appropriation in E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia, Land of the West [1850–1860] 162 Conclusion: The Afterlife of Imperial Gaming in the Postcolonial Era Finding the “Right” Side of History: The View from the Pinnacle in William Sallis’ Pyramid of History [post 1851] 195 From the Ranks to Commander in Chief: Turn-of-theCentury Roots of War-Based Games 203 Collaborative and Competitive: The New Life of Contemporary Games 208 Empire’s Afterlife: From Nation to Corporation 214 Board Games Cited Works Cited Appendix: Games with a Focus on Empire and Commerce Index

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226 228 240 255

Figures

1.1 (a) William Darton’s The Noble Game of the Elephant and Castle; or Travelling in Asia (1822); (b) John Marshall’s Chronological Star of the World (1818); (c) Edward Wallis’ Wanderers in the Wilderness (1844); and (d) E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s New Game of Wellington’s Victories 2.1 William Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery, wide shot 2.2 Spooner’s Voyage detail: burning huts 2.3 Spooner’s Voyage detail: bartering 2.4 Spooner’s Voyage detail: attacking the boats 2.5 John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions, wide shot 2.6 Betts’ A Tour detail: masthead 2.7 Betts’ A Tour detail: spaces with mapmaker, slaves, convicts 3.1 Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game, wide shot 3.2 Evans’ Crystal detail: space with enslavement 3.3 Evans’ Crystal detail: conflicts in South Pacific 3.4 Evans’ Crystal detail: Robinson Crusoe and Friday 3.5 William Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, wide shot 3.6 Spooner’s Comic detail: center space 3.7 Spooner’s Comic detail: right side of the game 3.8 Spooner’s Comic detail: top half of the game 4.1 Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, wide shot 4.2 Wallis’ Spangled detail: bottom half of the game 4.3 Wallis’ Spangled detail: game title 4.4 E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West, wide shot 4.5 Ogilvy’s Columbia box cover 4.6 Ogilvy’s Columbia detail: right side of the game 4.7 Ogilvy’s Columbia detail: left side of the game 5.1 William Sallis’ The New Game of Tee-to-Tum; or, Pyramid of History, wide shot 5.2 Sallis’ Pyramid detail: top half of the game 5.3 From the Ranks to Commander-in-Chief, wide shot

5 54 62 65 66 72 73 87 100 104 111 115 120 121 125 127 146 149 159 165 173 174 181 197 198 204

Acknowledgments

I am always conscious of what a privilege it is to pursue work that is both challenging and joyous. I am grateful that it has been supported by grants and fellowships, assisted by librarians, archivists, and museum curators, and enlivened by discussions with colleagues at nineteenth-century, Victorian, and children’s literature conferences over the years. Researching this book began when I was a grad student gleefully putting together dissected maps in the British Library, basking in their vibrant colors and fingerprinted edges. As I mention in my introduction, there are only a few places where these games survive, and I have been privileged to work at many of them, and to correspond with librarians, archivists, special collections staff, historians, and digital imaging professionals whose incredible dedication and expertise made this research possible. In that spirit, thank you to the archivists and staff at the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, Laura Callery and Maria Singer at Yale’s Center for British Art, Andrea Immel at Princeton’s Cotsen Collection, Toronto’s Osborne Collection, Nicholas Ricketts at the Strong Museum of Play (Rochester, NY), Hamilton College, UCLA, Indiana’s Lilly Library, Julie-Anne Lambert at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Diane Dillon at the Newberry Library, Maxence Boulenouar and the Ville de Rambouillet, Erica Boyne at the Western Australian Museum and the National Library of Australia, and Daniel Hinchen at the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as Jeffrey Auerbach for sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge about the Great Exhibition, and rare books dealer Heather O’Donnell at Honey & Wax Books. I would also like to thank the private collectors who so generously shared their time, expertise, and images with me, including Adrian Seville, Luigi Compi, John Spear, Richard Ballam, and the experts at the Games Board (GARD). They are the stewards of the remaining archive of surviving games, and their knowledge network is extensive, informative, and collegial. In the publication process, I would like to thank Claudia Nelson and Michelle Salyga, for supporting this book at an early stage, and Bryony Reece and Chris Mathews, for walking me patiently through the editing process. Claudia models the work that a Victorian children’s literature

Acknowledgments

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scholar at the top of her game might achieve; her work has inspired me, and her professionalism and insight have encouraged me. I thank as well my insightful readers, including Beverly Lyon Clark and Susan Honeyman, whose wise advice, suggestions for readings, and diplomatic suggestions helped me to shape the book at a critical stage. I appreciate the support of all my teachers and mentors, especially Pamela Gilbert and Kenneth Kidd, my guiding stars and, still and always, the scholars I want to be when I grow up! They saw this project in its earliest stage, and I am grateful for their wise counsel, good judgment, careful reading, and generous support; any mistakes here are my own, but it is a better book because I was lucky enough to learn from them and follow their advice to let it cook a little longer. I also thank the Children’s Literature Association for their Faculty Research Grant to conduct research and obtain digital copies of these games, SUNY Brockport’s UUP and CLAS for a Scholarly Incentive Grant to support travel to archives, and a sabbatical leave during which I began writing the book. At Brockport, I am grateful to my supportive chairs Janie Hinds, Roger Kurtz, Jennifer Haytock, Greg Garvey and administrative assistants Susan Vasquez and Cherise Oakley, as well as Grants Officer Jules Oyer, who encouraged me and helped with the necessary paperwork to obtain digital copies of the most essential games. Thank you to my supportive colleagues at Brockport: in the English department Alissa Karl, Kristen Proehl, and Althea Tait, and outside the department Kristin Heffernan, Jason Dauenhauer, Laurel McNall and Tim Muck, Amanda Lipko-Speed and Tony Speed, and Caitlin and Beau Abar. Thanks ever to my Celebrity Bowl peeps: Emily Garcia, Nishant Shahani, and Eric Tribunella— thanks, Em, for Sunday night Skyping and steady support from the west; Nishant, for Benjamin, reparativeness, and so many lovely, warm meals; and Eric, my ally in the field who inspires me with Mr. Toad and Harriet and so much other work. Gameplay is part of my earliest memories. As a child in footie pajamas, I joined siblings and cousins lurking around the kitchen table watching the grown-ups play ruthless “Spades”: at stake was a cross-country camping trip. The dads, who usually carried the day, faltered, the moms howled in triumph, and we kids had a happy year ahead to anticipate Yellowstone. Thank you, Morrell herd, for that big win! Thanks and love to my extended family as well, who have made the game of life fun at every stop—my Operation Fun allies JenTilley, Gary, and Jack Corbett, and the Norcias, Pellegrinos, Mooneys, Powers, and the St. Joe’s Village, including the Blaneys, Dudleys, Meyers, Mulvaneys, and Steigerwalds. Thanks also to my western New York family Marji Goff, Barb Speed, and especially Sue and Glenn Goodridge and Michele Jenco (Othello black belt) for childcare assistance, prayers, warm support, and cookie cake to go the last mile. I appreciate my family’s enthusiasm and noisy zest for games, especially my nephews and nieces, with whom I have spent

xii Acknowledgments many happy hours playing various loud card games: Zac, Ben, Lily, and Joseph; Jack, Maggie, Julia, and Harry; and Patrick, who mostly tries to eat the cards and choke on the small pieces. Thanks particularly to Jack for patiently introducing me to Fortnite and showing me that I must never ever attempt the dance moves depicted therein, especially the Hype. Thanks to Russ and Trin for playing endless games of hide-and-seek with my girls! Thank you to my sibs for teaching me so much through our games: my brother Ed’s Monopoly strategies shaped my whole financial outlook; Ali and Andy’s passion for Blokus is terrifying; Hill and Mary Colleen keep the puzzles warm and offer chances for late-night collaborations; Brian shows unwavering loyalty to the Notre Dame Irish; and Nick and Gaz have been worthy card game partners in Nickel Nickel and Persian Rummy. My parents, Rosemary and John Norcia, modeled risk and reward for us, reminding us always that compassion was as important as competition, and that the small joys of gaming fueled the great joys of togetherness. I love you so much, and I am so grateful for your strategies, support, love, and encouragement—you gave me all the pieces I need to cross the finish line. I am also thankful to my little carload in my own game of life—my incredible husband, Clay Goodridge, and my noisy, sweet, gloriously unruly daughters, Adelina and Rosie. I hope what has begun with Memory will continue on many future game nights. I love you so much—you make my cup runneth over with joy and gratitude. My little Bean and my Rosie-Bug, this book grew up with you, and I can mark your growth by its bulk. I remember squinting at a framed print of an Edward Wallis game balanced on the glider arm of my chair while I rocked my newborn to sleep, pen clenched in my teeth, notebook sliding around on my knees. Balance is always a struggle. Clay, my Quinner, my Northern Star, my feminist partner, thank you for making space and time for the writing of this book, taking kiddos to playgrounds and stores and libraries at key moments, keeping them at bay as the guardian of my pre–7:30 a.m. writing time. You have gifted me with unflagging generosity, patience, positivity, and quiet, steady support, not to mention many, many cups of hot tea. I am so grateful for all the times you insisted and promised, “You will finish this book.” I have finished this book! Thank you from my heart—you are on every page.

1

Introduction Playing Well with Others in the Great Imperial Game

I think I do not speak too strongly when I say that games, i.e., active games in the open air, are essential to a healthy existence, and that most of the qualities, if not all, that conduce to the supremacy of our country in so many quarters of the globe, are fostered, if not solely developed, by means of games. —Jane Frances Dove “Cultivation of the Body” (1898) 398

Over a century before Monopoly invited child players to bankrupt one another with merry ruthlessness, or Battleship placed hypothetical torpedoes in the hands of young people, a nineteenth-century board game industry thrived in Europe and America. Though even many scholars and historians are not aware of these games today, such playthings arose as part of the wave of literature and material culture produced to meet the demands of the newly recognized mass market of child consumers in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Historians and children’s literature scholars have noted that this emergence of a profitable juvenile market was “concurrent with the rise of a middle class sufficiently leisured to undertake the ‘instruction and amusement’ of its children’s minds, and sufficiently affluent to pay for the books that this required” (Carpenter 17). Publishers capitalized on the fact that a rising middle class was populated by parents whose “social ambition had been stirred by the growing opportunities of a new industrializing society—more and more clerical jobs were available, and more and more parents were willing to make sacrifices to secure them for their children” (Plumb 306). Indeed, this is the period during which J.H. Plumb has characterized children (and their parents) as a “sales target” (286) for books, clothing, and educational materials. As a result, Plumb even goes so far as to borrow the language of games and characterize children as “counters” in their parents’ social aspirations (300).1 Combined with the growth of the Empire and the fervor of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class created new opportunities both at home and abroad by mid-century, and the children who were best educated would be most fit to fill these positions.

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Though largely unremembered today, board games were an important part of this story and played a significant role in middle-class children’s educational preparation as well as their entertainment from the late eighteenth century onward. These games can be contextualized alongside other educational playthings, such as early card games, globes, and puzzles, that were in use in schools and private homes. As Michelle Beissel Heath indicates, “Late nineteenth and early twentieth century board and card games mark revealing intersections between games and play, empire and nation building, and perceptions of children, literature, and ‘good’ citizenship” (16). Publishers of board games, such as John Wallis and William Darton, were often already involved in selling collections of stories about dynastic and military history, travel, folk tales, natural history, and heroic feats for the juvenile market, so the foray into game production was a natural extension. In his bibliographic history of the Darton firm, Lawrence Darton acknowledges the importance assigned to visual materials such as puzzles and games in the family firm. Identifying William Darton as “primarily an engraver,” Lawrence Darton notes the “prominent place” he gave to engravings, “which could either be sold as prints or mounted on wood and dissected” (xvi). As the field and the demand for board games grew and diversified, the family firms of the Wallises and Dartons were joined in the marketplace by other early game publishers, such as John Marshall and William Spooner. At mid-century, the field had expanded to include E.J. Peacock and G.F. Cruchley, J. Passmore (who acquired the Wallis stock), E. & M.A. Ogilvy, John Betts, and William Sallis, who were succeeded at late century by publishers such as George Phillip & Son. The games produced by this range of publishers were varied in their topics, method, and scope. Seen in the glow of the Enlightenment as educational aids to help children advance, board games taught child players about subjects ranging from history to industrial progress to moral conduct. Game themes were as whimsical as J. Passmore’s The New and Favorite game of Mother Goose and the golden egg [c. 1840] and as troubling as John Wallis’ The new and fashionable game of the Jew (1807), which sought to teach children mathematics by reinforcing ethnic stereotypes. Many games focused on teaching history through the framework of dynastic lines of kings and queens of England.2 As such, they were part of the larger movement to mobilize children’s play into a useful avenue of instruction. As Andrew O’Malley stipulates, “Children’s games and toys reflecting the trend in instructional play proliferated in the marketplace of late eighteenthcentury England” (110). Through their games, British children could go anywhere—they were invited to explore the world by scaling mountains (A.N. Myers’ The new game of the ascent of Mont Blanc, c 1865), visiting Japan ([W.H. Bradley’s] Japanese Scenes, 1880), or simply traversing the manufacturing districts of England and Wales closer to home.3 In

Introduction

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addition to covering a range of territory, the games also responded to developments in the technology of travel, depicting different modes of transport as a way to navigate the surface of the map game board, from steamboat to railway to motorcar, as the century progressed and new innovations appeared.4 As well as royal and natural history and a celebration of industry, games also sought to tackle the trickier territory of moral conduct. These antecedents of Hasbro’s contemporary Game of Life (created by Milton Bradley in the 1860s and reimagined in the 1960s) include the original John Wallis and E. Newbery’s The [New] Game of Human Life (1790) in which players could travel the life of a man from Infancy through the Prime of Life and into Decrepitude and Dotage at age 84. The game invites parents to help their children contrast “the happiness of a virtuous and well spent life with the fatal consequences arising from vicious and immoral pursuits” (The [New] Game of Human Life). Moral games generally depicted the consequences of both virtuous and vicious choices.5 The overdetermined morality in the games was necessary to throw off the association with gambling games. Another way they distinguished themselves was through use of a teetotum spinner, rather than the traditional dice. This nominal change was not enough, however, to placate Maria Edgeworth and her father, Richard, whose Practical Education (1801) counseled against the evils of gaming in the nursery. They advised that “games of chance, we think should be avoided, as they tend to give a taste for gambling; a passion which has been the ruin of so many young men of promising talents, of so many once happy families” (Edgeworth 53–54). Other educational authorities, writers, and parents diverged from the Edgeworths in this regard, seeing the opportunity for moral and educational instruction in the games. In his study of nineteenth-century curricula, David Vincent offers the example of Jane Johnson’s homemade nursery library in support of the contention that “adults from a wide range of backgrounds had for centuries accepted a responsibility for instruction in basic literacy, and continued to play a role alongside the growth of state-funded and controlled education” (164). The nursery library includes what we would identify today as flash cards and games, learning aids that reinforce literacy and memorization of Bible verses through play.6 Moving into the nineteenth century, a more explicit endorsement of board games appears in Lydia Child’s The Little Girl’s Own Book [1832]. Recommending play with board or table games, Child cites John Wallis’ Mirror of Truth in particular and argues that “few presents for children are more attractive or useful” (78). Child’s characterization of games as both “attractive” and “useful” clarifies that games were serious business, designed to mobilize leisure time for rational purposes. In an undated game book from this period, the anonymous author of New and Original Book of Forfeits contends that “this little volume is intended not only to provide mirth for

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Youthful Parties, when assembled on a birthday or Holiday; but also to improve young Ladies and Gentlemen in Orthography, Grammar, History, Natural History, Geography, Elocution, Poetry, &c.” ([A Lady] 1). As this evidence suggests, writers and parents alike regarded games as another possible means, in addition to books of geography and tales of faraway places, to further children’s instruction in imperial culture. As visual texts, these games represent to players the “shape” of history, using that shape to contain and showcase a narrative of British imperial progress and greatness in much the same way the Crystal Palace did with real artifacts. [Figure 1.1 (a)–(d): four examples of games] The selection of a visual to contain the shape of history is significant, and game makers adopted a wide range of styles and setups. William Darton’s games took the form of an elephant, dolphin, and swan.7 Other games utilize a straightforward table approach, such as E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s The New Game of Wellington’s Victories, with his battles arranged in tidily sequenced boxes. William Sallis’ Amusement in English History (ca. 1840) also features an ordered table with 40 cells filled with portraits of British kings and queens; the organized tabulation conveys a tidy, infinite succession. Others were more idiosyncratic, like John Marshall’s Chronological Star of the World, which distributed historical events across the branches of a 16-pointed star and related emblems, placing Britannia in a place of honor at the center. Many games took a more straightforward, cartographic approach, as discussed in the next section, as did John Wallis in his games. His son Edward, who took over the family firm, adopted these cartographic outlines for his Wanderers in the Wilderness [c. 1844], filling them in with mountains, figures, and fierce animals to create a more three-dimensional space for colonization and adventure. Whatever shape it took, the imperial project could be promoted through various gamed structures.

Holding the Line: The Shared Genealogy of Maps, Geographic Board Games, and the Middle Class The utility of games as a means of instruction, especially about imperial matters, is fulfilled by one of the oldest and most popular genres: the geographic board game. Interest in geography was quite timely since Andrew O’Malley notes that geographic knowledge, “specifically of the raw materials, resources, and agricultural conditions of a given country, was of increasing importance at a time of colonial expansion and broadening international commerce” (108). Often produced from the same plates as maps for adults, these early cartographic texts appeared at first without embellishment. The oldest surviving English geography game, A journey through Europe, or the play of geography (1759), was designed by writing master and king’s geographer John Jefferys and published by Carrington Bowles. Geographic board games such as Jefferys’ were simply

b a

c

d

Figure 1.1 (a) William Darton’s The Noble Game of the Elephant and Castle; or Travelling in Asia (1822); (b) John Marshall’s Chronological Star of the World (1818); (c) Edward Wallis’ Wanderers in the Wilderness (1844); and (d) E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s New Game of Wellington’s Victories Credit line: (a) Hand-colored engraving, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. File Number: 183348–0001; (b) © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; (c) © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and (d) Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library

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maps with embedded tracks appearing on their surface directing the journeys of players.8 They were designed to facilitate visual learning experiences through play, thus following John Locke’s pedagogical imperative in his Some Thoughts Concerning the Education of Children (1693) that “learning might be made a play and recreation to children; and that they might be brought to desire to be taught, if it were proposed to them as a thing of honour, credit, delight, and recreation, or as a reward for doing something else” (109–110). Though adults had played board games like chess, checkers, and the Game of Goose for centuries, adapting these for children’s educational use came about with the eighteenth-century recognition of the needs of this new child market.9 Gillian Hill discusses how “[t]he move of the race-game from the inn to the family fireside was taking place in a context of changing attitudes to education. People were beginning to realize that although children had to be educated, there was no reason why learning should be tedious, and that children might even absorb information more readily if lessons were made enjoyable” (10). Families could enjoy these newly respectable gaming pastimes in humble parlors and even in grand palaces. In her journal, Queen Victoria described an evening spent assembling dissected pictures with Lord Melbourne and Lord Conyngham as “the pleasantest gayest evening I have passed for some time. I sat up until ½ past 11” (qtd in Hannas’ The Jigsaw Book 12). Victoria’s anecdote acknowledges that adults could have been an audience for games, especially satirical ones like Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, or at the very least, they could, and probably did, play them with their children.10 Publishers, it would seem, were taking up Locke’s call to games, and educators and parents were answering. The result was a wave of educational games. Historian R.C. Bell affirms that such “children must have learnt much without realizing it—countries, rivers, towns, industries and peoples were all absorbed painlessly by candlelight in the evening around the nursery fire” (18).11 Since board games were born in the same workshop as the maps produced by the king’s geographer, and indeed the early games were simply map texts, these cartographic resonances are significant. Postcolonial scholars and geographers have done important work in the latter half of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century in tracing the ways in which the map has played a significant role. The study of maps allows scholars to track the growth of imperialism and to promote sociocultural ideologies about what it means to rule and be ruled. Maps do more, in other words, than note the placement of mountains, the length of sea coasts, or the location of cities. Edward Said puts it most succinctly: “The great geographical synthesizers offered technical explanations for ready political actualities. Europe did command the world; the imperial map did license the cultural vision” (Culture and Imperialism 48). Maps promote forms of power and knowledge, and further

Introduction

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study of these texts has revealed that they transmit ideology, beliefs, and practices along with technical information. As such, “‘text’ is certainly a better metaphor for maps than the mirror of nature. Maps are a cultural text: not one code but a collection of codes” (Harley 238). The games promote, and invite children to rehearse, imperial ideology through recreative and recreational play on the surface of the map. By the early nineteenth century, these games had changed from simple maps to highly embellished artistic representations of countries, commodities, and animals, accompanied by detailed rule books containing directions, but also lengthy descriptions about the territory where the child’s marker landed. The game boards were hand-colored sheets “printed from a copperplate (later steel engraving or lithography)” (Shefrin 8). After printing, the sheets were then cut into squares and pasted onto linen cloth for easy folding and storage, often in an accompanying gold-lettered box approximately the size and width of a children’s book. The intricate detail and careful craftsmanship involved in manufacturing these games suggest that they, like the books they may have reposed next to on a bedroom shelf, were reference materials designed to illustrate important lessons.12 Yet the increasingly visual nature of the games, which moved from unembellished maps to representational maps whose outlines were filled in with shrubbery, animals, grappling human figures, or scenes of work and industry, suggests that they were growing away from strict, unembellished cartographic roots and becoming increasingly specialized. The production of board games for children continued to grow in popularity (and profit) during the long nineteenth century, a significant period of time also for the formation of British national identity. Linda Colley identifies the period from 1707–1837 as a particularly important watershed moment. Following the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, “the governing elite would also work to strengthen its position at home, reconstructing its authority, image and ideas, and [. . .] devoting far more attention than before to questions of Britishness” (Colley 145). Games produced in this period and through mid-century often mark important political and social events, including the American Revolution, Captain Cook’s voyages, the Battle of Waterloo, Victoria’s accession to the throne, the Morant Bay Rebellion, the Great Exhibition of 1851, and ongoing imperial activities, such as mining for gold and diamonds in Africa and Australia. Many of the games produced in the later Victorian period focused on imperial policy and ably facilitated imperial consciousness in the children who would grow to be stewards of the Empire, players of what Kipling would later dub the “Great Game.” Over the course of the long nineteenth century, the meaning of “empire” shifted as it related to merchants, missionaries, soldiers, sailors, schoolboys, sweethearts, and civil servants. It had a different resonance for an Irish woman whose family was suffering during An Gorta Mór (the

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Great Hunger), for a child laborer in a cotton mill in Manchester, for an Indian soldier training in Bombay, for a zealous missionary like Charlotte Bronte’s St. John Rivers, for an African man released from slavery and making a new life in the British colony in Sierra Leone, or for an MP evaluating the merits of a scheme such as the Suez Canal. During the Napoleonic Wars, the term could suggest the overweening territorial greed of a leader like Napoleon, cast as a tyrant; yet later in the century at the Great Exhibition, “empire” could be used to identify the collection of nations whose arts, manufacturing, and trade Britain sought benevolently to foster. At the end of the century, the term could be used to identify the disinterested “white man’s burden,” Rudyard Kipling’s designation for the self-identified duty to bring religion, culture, and laws to peoples around the world. As I am using the terms, “empire” and “imperialism” refer to the ideological or imaginative motivating force driving “colonialism,” which designates the systemic apparatus that functioned to carry out the daily administrative tasks of trade, law, governance, curriculum, worship, and cultural expressions. Imperialism refers to the imaginative thrust of envisioning faraway places where one could explore, earn personal and national glory, riches, converts, or adventures; colonialism, on the other hand, refers to the more mundane process of bureaucracy that followed laying claim to other places and then purporting to rule, harvest, tax, convert, educate, and reshape these places under the larger British imperium. They are mutually informing and deliberately constitutive. I prize apart Edward Said’s broader definition of imperialism: “Imperialism, as we shall see, lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic, and social practices” (Culture and Imperialism 9). As I am using it, imperialism is about culture and ideology, whereas colonialism is about practical skills and specific tasks. As the subsequent chapters will make clear, the games address both. Games presented future imperial actors with the chance to improve their knowledge of imperial geography as well as to hone the skills necessary for occupying positions of power within its administrative system. The economic status of these game players can be identified with a good degree of certainty given their cost. For working-class families, these games would have been out of their price range, particularly during the difficult economic periods in the first half of the century, during the Napoleonic Wars and through what Arthur Taylor calls “the great trough which touched its deepest point in 1841–2” (xlv). Though reconstructing a standard of living for working-class families during the Industrial Revolution has been a source of lively debate among economic historians, looking at wages and game prices allows us to draw some conclusions.13 E.J. Hobsbawm notes that in Liverpool in 1842, over a third of the families in the Vauxhall Ward “had an income of less than five shillings a week, indeed most of them had not visible income at all. In this ward,

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total earnings had halved since 1835” (71). A working-class family living and working in Manchester and Leeds in the 1830s and 1840s could anticipate spending 2–4s a week on housing, and the average agricultural wage in 1837 was 10s 4d, rising to 11s 7d by 1860 (Burnett 250, 278). This meant that a game selling for 7s, such as William Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery (1836) or E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West [c. 1850–1860], sold in different formats for 5–7s, would have been more than half of a family’s weekly budget and likely out of reach for the 80% of the population earning a working-class wage.14 Within this broad group, there is of course room for fluctuation and exceptions due to a number of variables. Over the period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the Great Exhibition in 1851, there was a variation in real wages, prices, taxes, and differences by region and urban or suburban environments. As well, industrialization meant that the handloom weavers who were making a princely income earlier in the century saw a dramatic change once power looms came into usage.15 In general, however, these numbers suggest the pattern that the games would have been beyond the economic range for a working-class family for whom food was “the major item of working-class expenditure,” comprising at least half of a working-class family’s household’s income (Taylor xxxiv). In a yearly budget of £250, for example, the cost of food works out to 8s 6d per person on a weekly basis (Burnett 237). As well, the children of working-class families would likely have been laboring in the fields beside their parents, helping with domestic labor, and in urban centers these children may have been working in factories, hawking goods, or sweeping chimneys.16 The first child labor legislation appeared in the 1840s, with more in the 1860s and 1870s, to correct the situation in the manufacturing districts, where Arthur L. Hayward observed that “little boys and girls of seven years worked from five in the morning to eight o’clock at night” (106). There were fewer games for these children than for their middle- and upper-class counterparts, with their well-stocked nurseries overseen by nurses and governesses.17 The rise of this small but powerful middle class is one of the clear outcomes economic historians identify following the Industrial Revolution. Though the debate over the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the working classes is both “most interesting and most inconclusive” (Hartwell 93),18 the effect on the middle classes seems to have been positive and rapid. By 1860, John Burnett estimates that the number of clerks had doubled and would double again in the following decade (193). The kinds of skills this rising class needed were cultivated when they were children in the first half of the century: literacy, arithmetic, and an acquaintance with geography and history as they related to a sense of national progress and prosperity. These could equip a young man for his future occupation. Burnett asserts that a new class of merchants, bankers, insurance agents, engineers, and industrialists had been “called to

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power—economic, political, and ultimately, social” (194). Within this group, middle-class children played an important role in developing consumer markets. Contending that young people “helped write the text of consumerism” (4), Dennis Denisoff situates nineteenth-century children in three ways: as existing within a consumer context, as participating in it by clamoring for toys and driving market production, and through their play embodying middle-class prosperity and “consumerism’s newborn blisses” (10). Teresa Michals concurs that “in treating their children as occasions for conspicuous consumption, parents also taught their children a new set of relations to consumer culture” (32). Children’s toys not only advertised the prosperity of the good middle-class home but also offered these children the opportunity to establish themselves as consumers. The placement of educational games on a nursery bookshelf fulfilled a similar function to John Berger’s reading of oil paintings in prior centuries as “a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have” (139). For middle-class children, they had the whole world, neatly folded on linen squares and tucked in between their volumes of adventure tales and imperial geographies on their bookshelves. Armed with their buying power and market reach, the middle class’s “standards and values became the accepted norms,” and their “opinions and action shaped public policy at home and in the Empire” (Burnett 194). They were a comparatively small group—only about 20% of the whole population—but their purchasing power and aspirations made them an ideal audience for the games. Burnett points out the conditions suitable for the marketing of “scores of indoor games” to a class with shorter working hours and gas-lit evenings (245). Add to that a feeling of prosperity and a sense of duty to educate their children for the new job opportunities on the horizon, and this created the target consumer market for game publishers. The successful marketing of these games led to sales estimates by publishers such as John Betts, who confidently stated that the “demand for these games (which has now reached the TWELFTH THOUSAND) may be regarded as some criterion of the estimation in which they are held” (instruction book for A Tour). Though his claim must be regarded with a careful eye to the kind of puffery expected from a commercial publisher, there is a sound basis for taking it seriously. For publishers to survive and flourish, producing dozens of games, that 20% of the population who could afford these items must have purchased eagerly and often. Within this opportune economic climate, middle-class children grew up to occupy important positions in the Empire as its clerks, military officers, missionaries, merchants, and administrators. As it grew during the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, the burgeoning British Empire required a steady supply of stewards who could ably manage its resources and subjects. Similar to the mechanisms

Introduction

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through which the distribution of power could be made visible to adult audiences (e.g., maps, menageries, traveling exhibitions, censuses, botanical gardens, museums), which Benedict Anderson has marked in his work, early board games presented to children a world ripe for imperial exploitation. In traversing game boards, players could enact heroic imperial masculinity by learning and practicing strategies designed to harvest resources, discipline colonial populations, and ultimately unite the child player’s desire to win the game with the larger interests of the Empire. Like literary works, these texts were no mere playthings, but sophisticated tools embedded with rich and complex narratives that offered child players models for action in the imperial sphere. These rich texts, only a handful of which have survived in archives scattered across the world, constitute a treasure trove of visual and textual resources for studying the way British children came to understand and participate in the work of empire.

Critical Interdisciplinary Approaches to Games and Gaming Beyond library or exhibit catalogs, there is virtually no critical scholarship on these games; only a small percentage of the games have actually survived, and that group has remained largely invisible to scholars and historians in hidden collections. In the 15 years I have been studying these games, the biggest sea change has been the increasing visibility of this archive of material culture, enabling more robust searches for them. Correspondence with curators at archives and museums around the globe, the establishment of collector-based sites such as The Games Research Database (GARD) and Giochi dell’Oca e di Percorso (Luigi Ciompi and Adrian Saville), digitally shared metadata on WorldCat, and highresolution scanning have afforded new access to a wide set of surviving games housed in special collections from North America, Britain, Europe, and Australia. As a result of this opening, though decentralized, archive, scholars can now study these material culture objects to gain important insights into daily domestic, social, political, national, and imperial life in the nineteenth century. Attention to this unique archive of material not only indicates the advances in information technology and the democratization of archival access through digitization but also reflects a significant disciplinary shift in children’s literature studies—part of the movement noted by Beverly Lyon Clark and Margaret Higonnet in Girls, Boys, Books, Toys (1999). Higonnet and Clark advocate for a scholarly analysis of children’s material culture objects to expose embedded narratives and imperatives about race and gender. “From the start,” they point out, “children’s literature was imbricated with material culture” (1). In their collection, Miriam Forman-Brunell’s work on dolls argues that nineteenth-century “values, attitudes, ideas, and perceptions can also be understood from a ‘reading’

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of the ideas embedded in the mundane material objects they invented and manufactured” (2). More broadly, in her considerations of the objects designed to contain, as well as amuse, child subjects, Karin Calvert posits that an analysis of “artifact constellations” marketed toward parents “can help uncover the nature of the everyday lives of children and the assumptions and concerns foremost in parents’ minds at any one point in history” (68–69). This underscores that objects arose, flourished, and survived because there was a market for the ideologies they promoted— dolls are necessary to promote nurturing and the pleasures of ownership; playpens are useful ways to keep children safe, bounded, and occupied while caregivers are busy; and chess teaches strategies helpful in the cultivation of critical thinking. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that children received toys and unthinkingly replicated identical modes of consistently structured play scenarios. Robin Bernstein’s analysis of dolls and race has extended the study of material culture objects to introduce the idea that not only the toy itself can be the object of study but also the cultural scripts it promotes to the child actor. She contends, “The term script denotes not a rigid dictation of performed action but rather a set of invitations that necessarily remain open to resistance, interpretation, and improvisation” (Bernstein 11–12). In this sense, despite the rules that govern movement across the boards, games invite child players to engage, but the narrative produced in an individual gaming session varies depending on the player’s experience, improvisation of rules, and the presence of other players. In this way, games are not so much played as coauthored by the child who engages with them. In each session of gameplay, the game and the player would experience a different story depending on a number of variables. Much like a live theatrical performance or the play of a child with a favorite doll, the meaning of the games can only be incompletely reconstructed. Though the games survive, the conversations swirling around the gameplay in the moments of engagement do not. Careful study of the games, however, reveals how players could have attempted to reconcile difference and otherness through the experience of play and performance. This kind of attention to material culture provides a broader perspective on the lives of nineteenth-century children and illustrates the changing landscape of the disciplines of children’s literature studies as well as nineteenth-century studies and its engagement with cultural, imperial, and aesthetic studies. As this characterization of games as part of children’s material culture indicates, the study of board games occupies an interdisciplinary crossroads. Though social scientists and historians have been studying games and recreation since the publication of Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture (1938), such work has traditionally focused on how games ranging from chess to mah-jongg were manufactured and by whom. Alternatively, these studies have attempted

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to place genres of board games within the broad spectrum of human recreational play across multiple cultures, examining the effect of gameplay on strategic thinking and social contact.19 While games such as chess certainly drilled players in the use of strategy, planning, sacrifice, and even sportsmanship—all qualities that could be harnessed in adult life and applied to particular situations—the games I analyze here are less abstract, instead representing particular areas of the world or specific historical events, with a clearly defined framework designed to promote nationalism, missionary activity, or commercial ventures. Other studies focused on board games published during the long nineteenth century have concentrated on the valuable task of cataloguing titles and classifying the games by type—instructional games, geographical games, historical games, games of moral improvement, and games of amusement—as seen in the work of F.R.B. Whitehouse, H.J.R. Murray, Roger Caillois, and others.20 The work of librarian and archivist Jill Shefrin in this regard has been invaluable; anyone attempting to write about board games stands on her shoulders and benefits from her careful work in tracking down titles, dates, and manufacturers at archives such as Princeton’s Cotsen Collection and Toronto’s Osborne Collection.21 It is because of her careful study that my own approach can be primarily analytical and interpretive, rather than enumerative. I will situate these games as cultural artifacts (produced by particular firms at particular times) that transmit imperial ideology to child subjects and invite them to rehearse narratives of colonization through practices of commerce and moral superiority. Though I will allude to several games in each chapter, my methodological approach will not be to review many games, but to do close readings of two related games in each chapter. These close readings will include careful examinations of the game boards, their illustrations, and accompanying supporting texts, such as instructional booklets. Through these readings, I will examine the emerging patterns in topics and methodologies from a postcolonial and cultural studies perspective and then analyze the way a game’s topic and method connect with historical trends and help the player cultivate a sense of self as a player in the “Great Game” of empire building. Another emerging context that influences my reading of these games, in addition to the social science, historical, and curatorial perspectives, is game theory, a branch of critical inquiry emerging from the computer and mathematical fields.22 Work in game theory has flourished since John von Neumann published his ideas in the 1940s; mathematician John Horton Conway famously applied von Neumann’s ideas in the computer game “The Game of Life” to study whether structures could replicate themselves indefinitely. The ensuing interest in game theory and gamification (recently embraced in pedagogical teaching-and-learning circles) suggests that gaming is not just about play, but about the strategies we use in our daily lives to manage risk, persuade others, and motivate

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ourselves. Morton Davis explains, “The theory of games is a theory of decision making [.  .  .] If you know the consequences of each of your options, the solution is easy. Decide where you want to be and choose the path that takes you there” (3). Compared to contemporary games, the ones in this study cultivate dutiful obedience rather than decisionmaking, which reveals much about the imperial pedagogy that structures them. Len Fisher, in his Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life (2008), observes that all five game theorists who have won Nobel Prizes in economics have been Pentagon advisors (2). Fisher’s observation underscores the point that gaming continues to be relevant to political, imperial, and postcolonial life in terms of nations, dominance, trade, and conflict, an argument I explore at greater length in the conclusion. A postcolonial perspective offers an important lens through which to consider the time period for the production of the materials chosen for this study. Though the high imperial period at the end of the nineteenth century has received much critical attention, comparatively little is known about the way metropolitan citizens interacted with the Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century. This was a time when these games were produced and played in staggering numbers, as John Betts’ circulation numbers suggest and as the appendix of games at the end of this study illustrates. However, Bernard Porter has characterized nineteenth-century Britons as “absent-minded imperialists” who were rarely confronted with the Empire in their daily lives, using J.R. Seeley’s famous remark in The Expansion of England (1883) that Britons have “conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind” (12). In making this claim, Porter opposes the current in nineteenth-century imperial and cultural studies, and critiques the work done by John MacKenzie’s “Studies in Imperialism” series at Manchester University Press, along with scholarship by Jeffrey Richards, Catherine Hall, and Antoinette Burton, whom Porter challenges with constructing imperialism as “a useful stick to beat Britain with” (7). Porter is also critical of the followers of the postcolonial cultural studies movement in the wake of Edward Said’s groundbreaking Culture and Imperialism. When Said famously traced imperialism through Austen’s Mansfield Park, he maintained that by the end of the nineteenth century “scarcely a corner of life was untouched by the facts of empire,” citing the growing European economies hungry for raw materials and cheap labor as well as bureaucratic agencies established to enforce foreign policies (Culture and Imperialism 8). Asserting that Western powers were actively and tirelessly engaged in “settling, surveying, studying, and of course ruling” (8) foreign territories, Said argued that imperialism was woven through daily life. He goes further in identifying that imperialism was not only present but also supported the lives of the ruling aristocracy in the great country houses of the period, such as Austen’s Bertrams, whose lifestyle at Mansfield Park was underwritten by their plantations in Antigua. Despite this

Introduction

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historical reality, Said points out that most historians of imperialism still look almost exclusively to the late nineteenth century and the scramble for Africa. Yet looking more closely “reveals a much earlier, more deeply and stubbornly held view about overseas European hegemony; we can locate a coherent, fully mobilized system of ideas near the end of the eighteenth century” (Culture and Imperialism 58). Said argues for close readings of this earlier cultural moment and attention to the unspoken discourses that haunt the imperial record. Said’s approach also acknowledges the importance of ideas in shaping and informing behavior. For the scramble for Africa to happen at the end of the century, strongly held ideologies had to be firmly in place among the imperial actors. Where did those ideologies come from? How did they persist, and through what avenues were they transmitted? Considering the importance of ideas as factors in human interactions is an important step to understand the work of Empire. As Clifford Geertz asserts, scholars are connected by the belief that ideation, subtle or otherwise, is a cultural artifact” whose specific expressions and “sustain[ing]” activities characterize its significance (“The Way” 152). The “sustaining activities” could have taken place through a variety of interfaces: reading texts like Mansfield Park, consuming sugar in one’s tea, visiting a museum, or even spending a quiet evening playing games. In shifting the horizon of critical study to these kinds of activities, Said’s work electrified imperial, nineteenth-century, and postcolonial studies, inspiring a welter of close readings of canonical texts. Yet in characterizing the mode of cultural critique that followed Said’s work as “fashionable,” Porter contends that adherents were looking too hard for traces of imperialism, and that it was “entirely outside [Britons’] experience and even knowledge” (37) prior to the end of the nineteenth century. Others, such as Patrick Brantlinger, have disagreed. Brantlinger says succinctly, “The empire’s business was everybody’s business, even if that business was taken for granted” (“Imperialism” 127). I have taken the time to gloss Said’s and Porter’s provocative arguments to emphasize the importance of the board games as a key missing piece in this and other ongoing critical conversations about imperialism’s presence in the lives of British citizens in the early and mid-nineteenth century. The reason for their absence from these conversations is partly to do with their target audience. Games belong, or are seen to belong, to children’s culture, a field that did not coalesce until the 1970s, when it achieved a critical mass of self-identified disciplinary specialists. As a result, many children’s texts and cultural studies objects that would be of interest to these scholars were not consistently collected or marked in catalogs as allied to this particular field of study. In addition to those that appear in library catalogs, many of the games appear in toy museums or are held in private collections, where they are invisible to scholars. They are sometimes seen as curiosities of long-ago days, rather than important

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cultural artifacts. Though in recent years much interesting work has been done in locating imperial ideology in canonical children’s texts from the nineteenth century, the presence of children’s literature and culture needs to be more assertively represented in imperial studies. Peter Hunt and Karen Sands stress the pervasiveness of imperialism in children’s texts, calling them the “witting or unwitting agents of the empire-builders” and emphasizing that this is the case beyond the obvious set of boys’ adventure stories, yet “the extent and nature value of that affect, however, has not been examined, precisely because it is so apparently obvious” (40). In some ways, children’s literature and culture remain invisible to nineteenth-century, imperial, and postcolonial scholars despite the interesting work being done in the field. Children’s literature scholar M. Daphne Kutzer’s work on canonical children’s novels has argued that traces of empire can even be recovered from seemingly innocent texts such as Winnie the Pooh. As she puts it simply, “Empire was woven into the fabric of British life” (Kutzer xiv). As well, Johanna M. Smith asserts that “children’s literature too is a zone of nation building” (134). My research on the board games follows Kutzer’s and Smith’s to challenge Porter’s portrait of imperialism by showing how children were being steadily acquainted with the strategies of imperial rule by practicing them through gameplay in informal settings in middleand upper-class parlors and nurseries in the first half of the nineteenth century. Though certainly unknown and unstudied, games consistently and thoroughly introduced children to imperial politics, hierarchies, and strategies of colonial management. This project will make an important intervention in restoring these culturally significant objects to the historical record to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the way imperialism was conceptualized, transmitted, and rehearsed by children, particularly during the long mid-century years from 1840–1860. The number and variety of these games persistently demonstrate that Britons were very aware of their Empire, particularly before mid-century and certainly well before the end of the century. Restoring the board games to these conversations also insists on the importance of children’s material culture objects in gaining a more nuanced portrait of the ways in which imperial politics inflected daily life, and it argues that the category of age should be included among the important markers of identity, alongside race, gender, class, religion, ethnicity, and orientation. Acknowledging the foregoing different interdisciplinary critical perspectives on games and gaming demonstrates the intersectional approach necessary to undertake a rigorous analysis of the meaning of nineteenthcentury board games. Borrowing insights and building on work from children’s literature, material culture studies, historical analyses, postcolonial studies, game theory, social science, and curatorial perspectives are important for achieving a more nuanced understanding of the games. Such an approach also models the way games function: they are

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designed to be a communal experience, sustained by players of different ages, abilities, and understandings. Approaching the games this way, positioned at the intersection of various scholarly, professional, and recreational interest groups, enriches our understanding of how they function as well as what they mean. To explore this meaning in the following chapters, I apply the tools of literary analysis, proceeding through close reading and context building and adopting a postcolonial lens to evaluate how child stewards came to understand their imperial duties. This approach ultimately aims to foster an awareness of gameplay as an important mode through which to understand and imagine the Empire and one’s role in it.

Setting Up the Board and Placing the Pieces: An Overview of Methodology and Chapters In introducing these games to scholars as objects of critical, cultural, and literary study, I have acknowledged the origin and growth of the gaming industry in Britain from the eighteenth century onward through the long nineteenth century and the close of Queen Victoria’s reign as well as my intention to concentrate on a set of games published between 1818 and 1860. A number of different approaches to this subject are possible: publishing firm, strict chronology, geographic region, or gaming method (e.g., games of chase, round games, spiral games). The approach I have chosen collects selected games together according to the imperial strategies they promote for viewing the world. Each chapter focuses on two primary games, with additional supporting examples from the larger archive. The story I am telling about the games’ role in spreading imperial ideology can be tracked across the century from the contact zone to the Great Exhibition. The chapters begin with an analysis of the way trade relationships, often framed as the positive face of the imperial project, were founded in moments of violence in the contact zone, recuperated thereafter through the way games represented commerce as a force to transform wilderness spaces into orderly sites of production and urban centers. The products of those sites were exhibited in games modeled on the Great Exhibition of 1851, which used these displays to either promote emigration or question the politics of display and notions of progress. Those politics were important to game publishers, who sought to represent their Empire’s place in the historical record in a positive way through different gaming forms that placed Britain at the top or at the center of world history. To assure this prominent place, game publishers dismissed imperial rivals, particularly those trafficking in the enslavement of human beings. All of this points the way to thinking about the afterlife of these games in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When approaching these games and inventing a way to analyze them critically and thoughtfully with a postcolonial lens as objects of cultural

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study, my training in literary analysis has determined my method. In each game, I begin with an introduction to the game maker’s catalogue of work to the degree to which I have been able to reconstruct and recover it. From there, I move on to an analysis of the topic the publisher has selected for his game, situating it historically and culturally, and then consider the form choices each game maker adopts for his game. From there, I analyze the methodology of the game, studying its pace and the way movement is governed across the board as well as the forfeit system involved. Finally, I consider the meaning and significance of the game and the overall argument the maker seems to be promoting about the topic through the selected form, methodology, pacing, and accumulation of forfeits. I will explain each of these strands of inquiry in more detail below. The topics of the games range from a characterization of the contact zone as a grand tour of the colonies to celebrations and parodies of the Great Exhibition of 1851, models of history, and representations of the United States as an emerging imperial rival. Placing each topic within its temporal moment, I trace how these games respond to cultural events through images on the game boards and in the accompanying guidebooks that feature more detailed explanations of the events depicted on the boards. Not all of the games have surviving guidebooks, and in those cases, a close reading of images and text on the game boards in the context of the author’s other works offers guidance in processing and identifying the events and persons depicted. Critical work on reading images and understanding visual culture, undertaken and applied by critics such as John Berger, as well as Perry Nodelman, Walter Moebius, and Peter Hunt in their analysis of picture books, offers useful precedents for unpacking the meaning of images. As Berger asserts, “Although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing” (10). I have tried to be self-reflexive about my way of seeing these images through a postcolonial lens, and I look at size, placement, color, and sequencing to analyze the way these images matter on the game board. Considering that the juvenile players of these games had differing degrees of literary proficiency, the images used in the games are significant and even, in Donatino Domini’s phrase, “seductive” in their ability to transmit information as well as social and cultural values. Domini characterizes the image as “an effective pedagogical vehicle” (9). Couple that reading of board game iconography with what postcolonial scholar Inderpal Grewal says about colonization: it functions as a means “to render transparent that which is threatening” (50). Yet interest in the visual and aesthetic elements of imperial life has perhaps been overlooked, much the way the games themselves have in favor of written texts. Dana Arnold argues that “the visual rather than the verbal aesthetic have [sic] remained on the margins of the literature concerning the cultures of colonialism. But the idea that ‘nation’ can be ‘imagined’ or aestheticized

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opens up the possibilities for discourse around the different constructions of cultural identity” (3). Arnold’s contention about the aesthetics of imperialism is key when considering the evolution of board games from unembellished maps to carefully illustrated texts that include representations of human figures engaged in work, trade, combat, slavery, travel, and recreation. The British bodies, often marked out by their red coats and aligned with mythological figures such as Neptune or representative animals such as the lion, are distinguished from indigenous bodies within a visual framework imbued with imperial meaning.23 Moving from a game’s topic to its visual and structural methodology begins with a consideration of the form the game maker has adopted. What is the shape of the game? How and where is play distributed? Does it follow a track? Are there any options for players to make choices? We can also evaluate the game’s historical investment through an analysis of how space is allocated. How publishers apportion space is the where and the when of the board’s reading of history. Where does the game spend its time and space? What time periods or events take up the most space on the board? The answers to these questions reveal the spine of the game, the narrative that all the discrete elements link up to, ensuring that no matter where the player lands, some lessons and ideologies are consistently reinforced. Each game maker has chosen a form to contain and reflect the content, much like a poet carefully decides between a traditional sonnet, with all its history and canonical precedents, and a complex villanelle, with its carefully calibrated repetition, or free verse that seems to challenge formal structuring. The traditionalist game publishers in this study are Henry Smith Evans and Edward Wallis, who adopt more formal cartographic layouts in their games. Evans had a lifelong professional interest in emigration, and this seriousness of purpose takes form in the most traditional map, embellished and surrounded by representative inset scenes from around the Empire. Heir to his father’s prolific publishing firm, Edward Wallis follows cartographic tradition in form, but illustrates it in his own style. He uses a recognizable map outline of the eastern half of the United States in Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, filling in the outline with brushy wilderness punctuated by cities, ferocious animals, and depictions of labor. Departing from these traditional cartographic approaches, John Betts and E. and M.A. Ogilvy choose another formal structure in the round game format. Britain occupies pride of place at the round game’s center in Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions, where he places England in the center (specifically London), demonstrating its central place in the life of the colonies that emanate outward from it. E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s round game features colorless and nondescript spaces for the United States, bounded by two colorful and detailed rows of images from the colonial period, thus juxtaposing a time of British control with the contemporary moment of self-government; in their

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game, the center is unimpressive and undeveloped, a theme that runs through the game as well. A variation on the round game is the spiral, a form in which all the spaces are connected in a continuous band funneling toward the center. Whereas in the round games, the games have independent nested bands, the spiral presents the visual effect of an uninterrupted coil. In Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, Spooner chooses a dizzying spiral pattern adopted from the Game of the Goose, a game played in inns and taverns for hundreds of years. Instead of all the images facing one direction, part of the board will always be upside down when players sit down to this game, reflecting the upside-down, absurd parodies of exhibits that Spooner presents in the game. The tavern genealogy of the Goose form matches up well with the satirical content and delightfully grotesque caricatures attributed to George Cruikshank (Shefrin 14). Finally, Sallis and Spooner each adopt unexpected forms to contain their games. Sallis’ Pyramid of History uses a pyramid shape to contain lines of historical events in his game, juxtaposing East and West on either side of it and featuring the British Royal Family at the apex of historical progress. Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery traverses a bird’s-eye view of an island chain that players explore in one of five different ships, following embedded tracks and interacting with islanders and battling storms at designated points. After situating the game within the maker’s catalogue and considering his choice of topic and form, I continue to analyze the game’s methodology by reviewing its pace and the system of forfeits involved. The challenge game publishers faced was how to tell a consistent story through their games even though the playing experience would differ every time; indeed, that difference was essential to keep players returning to the game. To ensure it, game makers introduced variables, such as spaces that invited players to skip ahead or ones that enforced backward movement, spaces that offered rewards and others that required players to pay forfeits. I analyze how those game elements are assigned to particular historical moments in which players must go backward or pay forfeits according to the success or failure of the imperial enterprise in those moments. The pace of the game incorporated how players moved across the board and the significance of that movement. Were there checks to movement? Places where players were ejected or had to start over? Opportunities for shortcuts or accelerated movement? What happened when two players landed on the same space? What other rules directed the play? Often the content of the space governed a player’s movement across the board. In E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West, the conflicts between rival powers seeking to colonize America mean that the land reflects a confusing welter of influences, and this also manifests in the way the game is played—a disorderly wandering up, down, and over without a consistent geographic track through the space. Players advance when the Empire does, particularly on the issue of slavery, which

Introduction

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is a consistent topic in board games published in the first half of the century. In their tour of the United States in Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, players lose turns, enduring forced stasis to contemplate slave markets, slave labor, and even a lynching. Their progress in the game draws to a halt, effectively checking advancement because of this backward practice in the United States. Though the second half of the game bears the title “Emigration to the United States,” the game’s checks to progress effectively quash any plans a player may have to emigrate south of the St. Lawrence River. In a similar vein, Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions charges players to advance when they land on spaces where the Empire has promoted the advancement of humankind by abolishing slavery in Sierra Leone or offering a refuge for enslaved peoples in Canada. Moving across the game board is effectively a way of paging through the story the game maker tells about imperialism as a benevolent, humanitarian enterprise. Movement on the game board, especially if it is consigned to a regulated track, shows the limitations on players’ narrative agencies—these games do not offer tangents or subplots that players can choose to explore on their own, and that was typical of the period. Regarding one of the most popular board games, the Game of the Goose, games collector Adrian Seville notes how remarkable it is that “so few of them call for any involvement of thought or judgement” despite being “marketed successfully in thousands of versions and millions of copies over four centuries” (1012). Routes through these games present itineraries with a specifically regulated series of points at which players may call. The route promotes certain narratives, such as the opportunities to view gold mines or required stops to note the evils of the slave trade. Players cannot follow individual whims in their travels, nor can they choose when to linger in a particular village to experience cultural events like hunts, feasts, music festivals, or the religious rituals of indigenous peoples. In this way, the games follow the patterns of adventure narratives of the period, as Franco Moretti describes them: “In these stories—as in their archetypal image: the expedition that moves slowly, in single file, towards the horizon—there is only a linear movement: forward or backward. There are no deviations, no alternatives to the pre-scribed path, but only obstacles—and therefore, antagonists” (58). These obstacles to the imperial march take the form of “lions, heat, vegetation, elephants, flies, rain, illness—and natives. All mixed up, and at bottom all interchangeable in their function as obstacles: all equally unknowable and threatening” (Moretti 60). Moretti’s reading of adventure texts applies also to board games such as Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery. In this game, ship captains power across the board, moving resolutely through tempests, burning native villages, and figuring out how to extract the most profit from the islanders when they barter for gold. They have their adventure and then make their way to where they began. They cannot stop,

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negotiate, or exercise their own agency. Players roll the dice and are sent, detained, or hastened according to the dictates of the board, thus training them to sublimate their individual agency in deference to the Great Game’s itinerary. Since suspense in the game did not arise from individual choices, it was instead drawn from the system of checks and spurs to movement across the game board, as well as from a system of forfeits. Nineteenth-century games often came with a pile of “counters,” round discs that could be distributed equally to all players. They would then have to pay these out as directed by the spaces on which they landed or according to another design of the game. Spooner’s The Pirates and Traders of the West Indies, for example, allows the “pirate” player to plunder the counters of other players. Forfeits play a significant ludic role in the methodology of some of these games. Players of Spooner’s games in particular compete not only to finish the game but also to gather wealth as they proceed. That accumulation of capital, symbolized by forfeits, is keyed to the topical content of the spaces. For instance, in Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery, players “take” or “pay” according to their interactions with the indigenous peoples, how their ship handles storms, and the tradable goods they acquire. The decision not to include a system of forfeits or an acquisition of wealth may also be significant, in that it juxtaposes the idea of capital with a more noble end: gaining the top of the Pyramid of History in William Sallis’ game, for example. Since the games take the trouble to distinguish British imperialism from the greedy and immoral practices of rivals such as Spain, France, and the United States, they may eschew a system of forfeits to train players in this disinterested methodology. Fending off rivals to gain pride of place in Sallis’ Pyramid is a significant ludic mode that reappears throughout the century in the children’s game “King of the Castle”24 and in the opening scene of Kipling’s Kim. In this scene, Kim holds off rivals to maintain his position on top of the cannon. The children in this scene vie for supremacy, merrily scrambling and clawing and pushing one another in order to attain this place. This scramble reflects the Great Game their adult counterparts are playing as Britain and Russia struggle for pride of place as rulers of India. Later in the novel, when Kim throws the stolen secret maps and messages he has intercepted from the Russians off a cliff, it hearkens back to this opening scene in which rivals fling one another off privileged ground. The visual and rhetorical meaning of Sallis’ game draws on the same performed gaming tradition that Kipling does later in the century. The meaning of the game is the most difficult determination in some ways, and it draws together the evidence from the topic, method, pace, and forfeit systems. Understanding the meaning of the game involves figuring out what the game maker was trying to say about his topic—discovery, colonization, the Great Exhibition, or Britain’s place in history—and how he said it through the adoption of a particular methodology: the choice

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of form, the pacing, and the collection of forfeits. To some degree, the game itself dictates how to analyze it through what it does uniquely and well: movement in Wallis’ Star-Spangled, form in Marshall’s Chronological Star, images in Evans’ Crystal Palace, topical divisions in Betts’ A Tour, options for play and agency in the Ogilvy’s Columbia, and the economics of forfeits in Spooner’s Voyage. Each of these games has a point of view on its topic, sometimes scathing indictments of progress, consumerism, and grandstanding, as seen in Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, and sometimes looking for moral high ground on the issue of slavery, as Edward Wallis does in Game of the Star-Spangled Banner. Sometimes the topic provides an opportunity to market a related idea to young players. A tour of the colonies can devolve into a promotion of the transformative power of trade, a review of the Great Exhibition can foster a discussion about emigration, and a journey through the United States can cloak a rebuke of this rival for drawing its strength from the labor of enslaved peoples. For instance, though Evans’ Crystal Palace Game seems to be about the 1851 exhibition, itself a display of the Empire’s power and benevolence in developing arts and manufactures, the way Evans addresses this topic demonstrates that his game is really promoting British emigration and colonization by presenting opportunities to gain wealth in the colonies. Though the Ogilvy’s Columbia seems to offer an exploration of the United States, it presents a review of the colonization practices of imperial rivals in this area, contrasted with the disinterested and noble character of the British colonial project. The meaning of the game as an object or a personal possession matters as well, though is more difficult to reconstruct. Under what circumstances was the game purchased, given, and played? Did children play unsupervised, or was the game a more formal educational tool that parents could enjoy with their children or that governesses and nurses could pull out on a rainy afternoon? What about the circumstances of play? If unsupervised, children could have played the game according to the rules, or they could have ventured beyond the dictates of the game to improvise other possibilities. As Bernstein points out, “Children do not passively receive culture. Rather, children expertly field the co-scripts of narratives and material culture and then collectively forge a third prompt: play itself” (29). The survival of only a small fraction of the games suggests that they may have been played to pieces in succeeding generations of children,25 or that they were disposed of when the children grew because the game’s value as a collected artifact was not perceived, only its use as an educational device. The lure of the archive, then, is not only finding the artifact(s) but also trying to determine its meaning—to its own culture and to ours. Various anecdotal clues scattered through the fiction of the period or collected later in biographies of key historical figures offer clues to help us begin to piece together the story of the ideological role that games held for child players during the first half of the nineteenth

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century, a period when an expanding Empire, a rapidly industrializing economy, and an eager middle class offered a developing market to children’s publishers. Chapter 2 “Navigating Trade Routes and Fostering Moral Commerce in William Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery (1836) and John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions [c. 1855],” begins with this opportune early nineteenth-century moment. Following the trials and economic challenges of the Napoleonic Wars, the games discussed in this chapter lead up to the optimism of the Great Exhibition at mid-century. From the initial bartering for gold dust and supplies in the contact zone in Spooner’s Voyage to the importance of trade and the formal execution of harvesting, mining, packing, and shipping in Britain’s colonies in Betts’ A Tour, the games present a timeline of imperial commercial development, contrasting two different approaches to the economics of imperialism. For Spooner, it was “take-or-pay” in interactions with the indigenous peoples, whereas Betts framed trade relationships as the benevolent means to transform colonial peoples and territory. In both games, imperial power is distributed through military, cartographic, and rhetorical instruments. Relatively new to the gaming market, with only one other publishing success in the 1830s, William Spooner would go on to produce games that were straightforward as well as satirical parodies. In Voyage of Discovery, he focuses on an unnamed island chain, creating a “blank space” for child players to rehearse imperial interactions in a manufactured contact zone. Though the title touts it as a “Voyage of Discovery,” in Spooner’s game narrative, there is very little cultural exchange, mapping, or surveying. The “discovery” seems to be almost exclusively commercial. Child players are ships’ captains following tracks to points of contact throughout the islands. This contact is mediated by Spooner’s “take-or-pay” economic system, which dictates that child players who “take” the most from the islands and the islanders will proceed most quickly and gather the most wealth. For instance, when players “Find the Natives Collecting gold from a River” (Voyage Green [5]), the game charges them to “Take 2,” establishing an unequal economy of exchange in which islanders eventually pay with their lives when they do not follow the rules of the Great Game. When islanders resist unequal trade or show force in the game, Spooner directs players to fire on them or burn their villages. Though the islanders pay with their lives, players only lose a potential trading port. These critically imbalanced interactions establish a pattern of backing trade with military power, a theme that continues in Betts’ game, but also one that plays out across the long imperial era from Cook’s eighteenth-century travels in the Pacific to the British use of military force to support merchant trade in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. At the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, for example, British soldiers killed 11,000 Sudanese

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warriors in five hours. It was not their advanced weapons that enabled this slaughter, but a critically imbalanced imperial economy that valued the safeguarding of trade over the lives of those who opposed it. Young players rehearse this imbalanced economic model in Spooner’s game by moving their pieces dutifully along the track and collecting forfeits, profiting in the game world at the expense of the hypothetical islanders. In Spooner’s game, what began with the omission of names for the islands, cities, ports, and the peoples who inhabit them continues through the game with the unequal transactions and the matter-of-fact attitude about loss of indigenous property and life. Departing from Spooner’s focus on personal profit from the gamed interactions with islanders, John Betts presents a more peaceful, moral version of British commerce in his A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions. One of the major players in the children’s educational gaming market during his long career spanning the 1830s through the mid-1870s, John Betts published games, puzzles, cards, atlases, and a line of innovative collapsible globes. In A Tour, he outlines an economy of imperial trade in which commerce transforms unruly wildernesses into orderly plantations and urban centers. Betts’ round map, itself an alternative to the traditional cartographic form, also licenses an alternative vision of how the colonial world can be transformed, reordered, and animated through trade relationships. Unlike Spooner’s game, the profits are not represented solely in terms of raw lucre, exchanged in a rough take-or-pay brand of contact zone economics. Instead, Betts’ focus is on the “goods” that harvesting, mining, and gathering will produce for colonial civic life in terms of fine homes, museums, and government offices. In the spaces focusing on Australia, for example, Betts frames the discovery of gold not in terms of exchange value, but within a logic of attractive value. He points out how gold spurs immigration and inspires trade, leading to a boom in population, housing, and urban development and increasing the place’s value within the imperial network. In establishing a place’s value in the imperial network, Betts assigns the emigrants and miners an active role, sidelining the indigenous peoples. The only Aboriginal peoples represented are shown as passively viewing the busy gold fields or bending low before a mapmaker displaying his latest chart. The mapmaker and the cadre of soldiers behind him enforce rhetorical, narrative, and cartographic authority. Trade, radiating out from the center space featuring London, is an animating force transforming colonial spaces, particularly those taken from imperial rivals. Like the colonial citizens from Singapore to Aden, players must also accept that their own “significance” exists within the context of the imperial mission, and Betts cues this through checks to movement. In Betts’ journey of “imperial tourism,” players must miss two turns at Norfolk Island to view the convicts. Since the first group of convicts arrived there in 1788, the demands of cultivation have required

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“occasional shipments of convicts” (Betts A Tour 16). By contrast, a majority of advancement spaces are keyed to the abolition of slavery, meaning that players advance as British humanitarian initiatives, undertaken through the imperial project, do. Betts distinguishes British trade from the human trafficking of its colonial rivals, keying advancement in the game to the British decision to end slavery in its dominions. British intervention transforms people from property to human beings. While on board the slave ship, peoples are identified as “cargoes of captured slave-ships,” but once landed at Fourah Bay in Freetown, the designation changes to “kidnapped negroes from condemned ships being here set at liberty” (5). Thus, people are also transformed through contact with the imperial system. Though both games focus on the importance of commodities and trade, Betts presents a more civil face of the imperial project, not as red in tooth and claw as Spooner’s earlier work. Betts breaks from the takeor-pay economics of Spooner by eschewing a system of forfeits. For Betts, winning the game is not about acquiring wealth, but about fostering the right kind of commerce within a system ordered and governed with judicious care. Taken together, these games represent the development of the colonial relationship: from a project of discovery and conquest to one of careful administration and wise, moral governance. Following the process of discovery, exploration, and acquisition, imperial agents were tasked with organizing, classifying, and managing colonial territory. That is the subject of Chapter 3, “Games in Glass Houses: Children’s Board Games Display and Critique Imperial Power Through the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace.” The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a threshold event that not only inspired a welter of games but also presented a model for displaying imperial power and authority. This chapter examines how that power and authority were made visible in Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game: Voyage Round the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy [c. 1855] and in William Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851). Taken together, Spooner’s and Evans’ games commemorating the Crystal Palace reveal the ways that children’s play can be used as a means of dispensing the kind of cultural ideology promoted by the Exhibition in its setup, displays, and subsequent discourse. Yet they went about it in very different ways, with Evans shoring up that authority and directing it to specific channels, namely emigration, whereas Spooner critiqued and satirized the Exhibition, imperial posturing, and the nature of progress itself. Evans’ Crystal Palace Game seems to be straightforward, a game celebrating the nation’s greatest “glass house” and the displays within it. He casts child players as future imperial stewards whose success in the game is linked to Britain’s imperial prosperity. On his game board, commodities are scrawled across the face of colonial territory, teaching players

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to associate Africa or Australia or India with the goods that could be harvested, mined, or extracted from them. Over the map of Hindoostan, Evans identifies commodities such as cotton, silk, spice, indigo, tea, and sugar, all on display, ready for imperial harvest. This mimics the displays of the wealth of the colonies at the Great Exhibition itself in exhibits such as the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Yet such displays were not passive spectacles; they could also be lures, and this was the way Evans framed his topic. This was the underpinning narrative beneath the ostensible subject of the game. A Fellow of the Royal Geographic and Geologic Societies, Evans had a professional interest in emigration, which distinguished him from the other commercial publishers in this study. He founded a firm of colonial agents and accountants to facilitate emigration for Londoners looking to follow the advice in his numerous books and depart for the colonies. Nor was this unusual, if his work is considered in a cartographic context. Susan Schulten argues that for seventeenth-century explorers like Samuel de Champlain and John Smith, maps “were designed to both document and market the territory” (166). When viewed in this context, Crystal Palace operates as a vehicle for encouraging emigration and fulfilling imperial duty while chasing personal profit. Throughout the game, Evans advertises the noble benefits of colonization, setting up British citizens as agents of imperial power who will use their technology to keep people safe from ferocious animals, who will use their faith to plant Christian churches in the wilderness, and who will use their moral compass to save families from slavery. In recompense for this work, Evans outlines the remunerative benefits in a boxed chart at the bottom center of the game, where he enumerates import and export statistics and an accounting of territory. The “British Possessions” are represented in the chart, on the map, and in the framing visual images that appear around the map. Evans marks the precedents for players with labeled tracks of explorers’ journeys stitched across Australia and Canada, signifying that imperial territory is textured with English names and can reflect back personal glory. All of these elements on the game board work together to promote a worldview for the imperial child and the would-be emigrant family. Along with this preponderance of positive benefits in the imperial theater, Evans also acknowledges impediments: storms at sea, ferocious animals, and indigenous peoples resistant to rule. The game features two images in the South Pacific that depict the deaths of Englishmen: Captain Cook in Hawaii and Reverend John Williams on Erromango Island in the New Hebrides (present-day Vanuatu). The chapter traces how Evans appropriated visuals of these deaths from contemporary paintings, underscoring the ready visual library of representations of indigenous peoples, marking them “with the visible and transparent mark of power,” in Homi Bhabha’s phrase (111). The indigenous peoples are depicted as unruly mobs who overwhelm these isolated Englishmen, whose martyrdom wins

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them immortality in exchange for their lives. The islanders in the mob, nameless and faceless, operating as a single entity, are there to be disciplined in future interactions. The deaths are small images in a vast ocean, discrete moments on an otherwise positive map filled with commodities waiting to be harvested and territories blank and awaiting inscription. Evans’ map features England twice, both on the eastern and western horizons, creating a type of circularity in which the flow of goods and peoples is caught in an imperial current that draws it to itself. This force plays a very real though unacknowledged role in the game. This is indeed the way the game operates. Though it seems to be a typical game celebrating the Great Exhibition, it actually offers an incentive to would-be emigrants by mapping resources for harvest, mining, and trade. The game has subsequently been collected and preserved by museums and was reproduced in Australia as part of an exhibition on colonization, suggesting that in its afterlife, the gamed object still has significance in helping the descendants of emigrants and indigenous understand the shaping force of the past on their present. In contrast to Evans’ straightforward approach to celebrating British imperial power and authority, his rival William Spooner satirized the Exhibition, the nations displayed there, and the visual-spatial imperial politics. Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851), with illustrations attributed to George Cruikshank, offers funny and grotesque caricatures of displays, nations, and visitors set along a spiral game track. The track hearkens back to the gambling games played in inns and taverns since the sixteenth century, and it creates a dizzying spiral effect of spinning in a circle, in contrast to the orderly linear progress of other games. The layout of the game calls into question the very idea of progress and advancement that the Great Exhibition was erected to celebrate. By the time he published this game, Spooner was near the end of his career, and his cynicism about the benefits of technology is evident in his depiction of an exhibit of Australian emigrants stuffed into a traveling teakettle or a farmer lazing around while a locomotive plough works in his fields. Spooner’s darker humor is also on display in the exhibit of the “last Continental fashion in Iron work” (Comic Game 4). This exhibit features a merry, dancing iron creature with bayonets for arms, swords for legs, a cannon for the body, and a cannon ball for the head, topped perhaps by a globe. This “fashion” has a deadly purpose: to destroy humanity, rather than elevate its tastes or save labor. The context of the “Continental” not only mocks British consumption of fashion trends from the region but also acknowledges the “fashion” of revolutions occurring all over Europe a few years before, in 1848. This points to the less transparent purpose of the Exhibition—to promote nationalism in the face of Chartist rumblings and movements to unite workers, characterized by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Manifesto. In anthropomorphizing the dancing iron creature, Spooner also suggests the

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reverse: that the Industrial Revolution runs the risk of turning humans into machinery and offers efficient ways of destroying what makes us human. Spooner punctures the Exhibition by mocking its displays with these parodies and by questioning the meaning of exhibitions. In the center space, usually a place of honor where the Crystal Palace would appear, Spooner uses the Palace as a backdrop for the display of English and foreign bodies encountering and goggling at one another. Their idle and pointed leers hardly seem to be elevating the taste of any of them, and this is Spooner’s theme: that the Exhibition is simply a way to generate profit. He shows this most pointedly on a space featuring a hippo posing before an excited crowd. The label declares the hippo to be a “Zoological Magnet to attract shillings and sixpences” (Spooner Comic Game 29). Upon landing on this space, players must “Pay 3” like the depicted crowd who have paid for their viewing pleasure. Spooner glosses both the depicted crowd and the players who land on the space as participating in spectacles of empty hype that generate profit. In fact, 80% of the spaces on the board involve the exchange of forfeits in a two-to-one ratio of “paying” as opposed to profiting. The message is that as far as the Great Exhibition goes, players will always pay more than they gain. Amusing and indicting these viewers, Spooner allocates prizes liberally to every nation, thus showing that these honorifics actually have no real value, like the newfangled exhibits themselves. The “glass house” Spooner depicts is a ready target for a few stones to shatter its hypocrisy and self-importance. Spooner also mocks the Great Exhibition’s attempt to showcase and privilege British imperial power, even as he reinscribes it spatially in his game, by allocating seven spaces to England and squeezing the entire African continent onto one space. Yet on the England space, he introduces the country by casting John Bull alongside the Bull of Nineveh, in a nod to the Assyrian Empire. The pairing also has the troubling suggestion that the Empire will not last forever, and that the British Empire will fade away as the Assyrian one did. At best witty and playful, or at worst subversive and anti-imperialist, Spooner challenges players to think about notions of progress, technology, and imperial legacy. What was their nation advancing toward, or was it just spinning in circles like his own game? What role did technology, arts, and manufactures play in advancement or befuddlement? How are the colonies part of that progress? For both Spooner’s and Evans’ games, the nation’s most famous “glass house” offered a meaningful visual convergence for narratives of imperial power, national identity, and the notion of progress. Spooner showed the fragility of the imperial narrative, whereas Evans delighted in the transparent showcase of commodities ready for harvesting, mining, and trading. In interrogating whether technology really advances human life, in questioning the “prizing” of exhibits and setting up a system of outlandish forfeits, Spooner challenges the committee’s goal to promote international

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harmony through exhibitions of arts and manufactures. This differentiates his game from Evans, who, on the other hand, uses the framework of the Exhibition to make imperial power visible and attractive. Marshaling cartographic rhetoric in the form of the map, inset charts, and visuals, Evans displays the world through a lens of imperial authority. For the postcolonial viewer, what is most transparent is that visibility is a trick in both games. In Evans’ game, certain narratives are visible because others are occluded, seen especially in the deaths of Cook and Williams that borrow from an imperial library of indigenous mobs and English martyrdom without exploring the motivating factors for these events, such as why the indigenous peoples were resisting. In Spooner’s game, the very idea of visibility invites ogling without understanding. Looking too closely and critically would lead visitors to see its absurdity. The games discussed in Chapter 4 identify checks to human advancement. The chapter focuses on “Gaming America: Slavery, Territorial Appropriation, and the Race for Moral Leadership in Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner [c. 1844] and E. & M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West [1850–1860].” Edward Wallis and E. and M.A. Ogilvy cast a critical eye on other imperial rivals. These include the rising United States, a former colony framed as a dangerous wilderness, rife with wild animals, corrupted by the immoral system of slavery, and a poor contrast to British Canada. Wallis traces America’s problems to human trafficking, and the Ogilvys source it to the rivalries from the Old World, which have led to discordant practices like a system of slavery and inappropriate and varying propitiation of the Native American populations. In the process, they appropriate an American history textbook and edit it to present British colonization in a more favorable light. The son of a game-publishing dynasty from 1775–1847, Edward Wallis joined the family firm in 1813 and, following his father’s death five years later, ran the business for 30 years under his own name. Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, or Game of the Emigrants to the United States appeared when he was well established in his field. Though the subtitle of the game bills it as a “Game of Emigrants to the United States,” it is unlikely that anyone playing the game would still consider emigration afterwards. Unlike Henry Smith Evans’ Crystal Palace game with its bright appearance, lists of commodities ready for imperial harvest, and neat chart tabulating import and export values, Wallis’ game strikes a different tone. Characterized by a moody color palette, the game fills in the outline of the US map with dense forests punctuated only by images of isolated log cabins, wild animals, and scenes of mining. More sites are dedicated to animals (27%), most of them savage and ferocious, than cities (19%). New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, are the only chief cities, and Wallis dismisses DC as having been planned ambitiously but at present having only “a few inferior houses” (8). The American capital is contrasted with a series of Canadian cities. Though they are not even in

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the United States (ostensibly the focus of the game), these spaces constitute 28% of the spots devoted to cities in the whole game. These British urban civic centers offer a stark contrast to the grim portrait of frontier life that Wallis offers. On the fringes of immense wildernesses, a settler can expect to lead what he characterizes as a “dissolute and miserable life” (10). Part of that dissolution draws on the tainted moral atmosphere that Wallis maps in the game. Approximately 6% of the total number of sites in the game refer to slavery, and they are distributed across the game from spaces 29–90 so that players could not get through the game without learning about the moral problem of slavery that has dimmed the prospects of this young nation. Wallis also creates what I am calling “knowledge loops” in which players are sent back to key spots where slavery is discussed to reinforce and repeat the lessons he offers. For example, sites 37, 64, and 82 route players back to 29, a rice plantation, and sites 83 and 89 send players back to 64, and from there players are returned to 29. On space 29, players are required to stop for two turns “to enquire into their condition” (Star-Spangled 7). In a series of moves like this, where he requires players to remain still or even to go backward, Wallis teaches them that their individual progress is not separate from imperial progress. Where the moral code of the Empire advances, so do they; where it falters, they must stop, enquire, and get involved. By noting that they must “enquire,” Wallis makes a bid not for passive spectatorship, but for empathy and engagement. Nowhere is this more apparent than on space 90, where Wallis describes lynching as the “odious practice, too frequently indulged in, in the states which are at a great distance from the general government” (Star-Spangled Banner 11). Situating lynching in this way, Wallis lays the blame for it on a lack of strong, centralized authority to administer justice and squelch vigilantes. Wallis underscores the wild, ungoverned nature of the illustrated scene through the animal witnesses. A lynx and an alligator turn toward the scene from other panels; effectively, these predators become “pointers” to direct the gaze of the player to an indiscriminate destruction of human life akin to their own predation. After witnessing this lynching, players are forced to go backward in recognition of this backward practice. Wallis’ conflation of predatory animals and human violence in an isolated “backward” wilderness characterizes the United States as a dangerous wilderness with a distant, ineffective government. Like Wallis’ game, E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West (1850–1860) also acknowledges the role of slavery, but instead of framing it as a problem arising from a lack of strong central government, the Ogilvys trace it back to Europe. In their game, the Ogilvys establish a timeline in which rival, overlapping colonial powers attempt to carve up the United States, introducing their own systems. The French are represented through Jesuit priests leading the Native Americans in moonlight

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chants, and the Dutch are designated as the ones who introduced the system of slavery to the United States. England, by contrast, welcomes colonies into the fold through a baptism metaphor in which these territories are peacefully renamed and join the imperial family. This confused field of conflicting ideological systems by Old World rivals leads to a rupture. The United States is characterized as an unruly colonial territory revolting against the benevolent authority of its mother country. The disorderly nature of its colonization renders the United States a confused space lacking unified values, and the Ogilvys reflect that in the gameplay. In a nod to the democratic process, players are presented with a confusing range of choices: they can play a version of the game as a recall-and-recite of chief cities, they can play the game by touring a historical timeline, or, if they have purchased the deluxe version, they can play the game as a dissected map. Though players of the game, like citizens of the country, seem to have many choices, in the end it may end up being a bit confusing. In line with their appropriation of space, historical time, and gamed illustrations, the Ogilvys also appropriate sections from American historian George Bancroft’s ten-volume The History of the United States (1834–1874), using them without attribution in their guidebook descriptions. Though these passages often appear verbatim, the Ogilvys selectively edit Bancroft’s descriptions to exclude his views promoting colonial enfranchisement and rights, his often critical opinions about English monarchs, and his scorching characterization of British and European colonists as driven by a lust for gold. The irony of the Ogilvys’ textual appropriation should be appreciated in light of the topic: the appropriation of territory in America. Instead of acknowledging Bancroft, however, the Ogilvys characterize the United States’ national story as one written by a variety of competing Old World authors with different plots and purposes. They focus the game’s narrative on the colonial period as the time of greatest interest. Once the US is no longer part of the British Empire, the game is over. That focus is borne out in the distribution of the 36 spaces, the greatest number of which, 17, focus on the founding of colonies and cities, in contrast to only two spaces for the discovery of the continent and 13 for the Revolution. This spatial distribution also demonstrates that though it took 17 spaces to establish colonies (nine of which are attributed to Britain), in the course of 13 spaces, all of that work is undone, offering an appropriate caution to child players who may have grown up to participate in the work of their Empire. Like the Wallis firm, the Ogilvy publishing house was a productive family enterprise, producing board games along with card games and dissected maps or puzzles. In their games catalogue, they characterize Columbia as a “companion” to Tar of all Weathers: A Game of the British Colonies, showing perhaps what happens to a colony when it falls out of the fold. Indeed, Tar of all Weathers depicts the imperial umbrella in a bright, colorful way, from the jaunty Jack Tars waving their hats and

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flanking Queen Victoria’s gilded portrait in the masthead to the neatly delineated spaces depicting images from throughout the Empire, which frame a central map with a designated series of stops. As the companion to this ornately framed game, Columbia is characterized in the catalogue as “constructed on a plan showing the first discovery of America in 1492, and its gradual progress until the separation of the United States from England in 1782.” This sentence structure implies that the “gradual progress” halted with the rupture of the colonial relationship. Such a framing sets up the United States as a lost colony with arrested development, rather than as an emerging imperial rival. The development of this lost colony is measured by its cities, which are found wanting in contrast to the six British Canadian cities on the board. Though the focus is ostensibly on the United States, these Canadian cities comprise 16% of the board. The US cities, by contrast, do not measure up. In fact, the game disregards the states’ capitals and instead introduces its own system of “chief cities” that players must identify to succeed in one version of the game. For example, pride of place is awarded to New York City, rather than Washington, DC, at a national level. This substitution also occurs at the state level. Rather than identifying the capital of Maine as Augusta, players must recall that the Ogilvys have marked Portland as the chief city. By taking the trouble to introduce their own system of “chiefness” in distinction to the political designations the Americans have formally recognized, the Ogilvys exercise a separate classification system, suggesting that publishers a continent away have more discernment than Maine’s state citizens in determining the city that should be “chief.” The masthead image features a view into New York City’s harbor, rather than a perspective on Washington, DC. Though New York is privileged over DC in this regard, the harbor scene shows a cityscape that is crowded, lacking color, symmetry, or variety. The bland palette, characterized by black, white, and smudgy gray, is contrasted sharply with the colorful flags of the United States and Britain that flank this scene, as well as the outer bands of the board game depicting the historical events from the colonial period. This indicates that the Ogilvys, like Wallis with his moody color palette, are making deliberate choices to represent this urban space as one that lacks the elegance and refinement seen in the framing of Tar of all Weathers. New York’s focus on commerce and shipping is clear from the crowded harbor, but this has occurred without attention to nicely laid-out squares and orderly streets. As it is framed in the Ogilvys’ game through the presentation of its “chief” cities and within a historical framework that reads as a plot of Old World rivalries, the story of Columbia is one of a confused, willful colony, lacking in discernment. Losing this colony does not diminish British greatness, but it does result in the former colony’s uneven

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development, especially when measuring its cities and considering its continued embrace of legacy systems like slavery. Telling the story in this way, the Ogilvys’ game becomes part of what Linda Colley calls the “officially constructed patriotism” of the Empire (145). It offers a purposeful and productive use of leisure time that shapes the ideologies of its players through perceptions of place, setting up the US as a foil in this “companion” game to the celebration of imperial might in Tar of all Weathers. Outlining what Edward Said has called the “long shadow” of imperialism, the conclusion, Chapter 5, “The Afterlife of Imperial Gaming in the Postcolonial Era,” evaluates the legacy of imperial board games and practices of play in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The “afterlife” of imperial games identifies the persistence of the ideas and methodologies of nineteenth-century games, showing how they are still relevant to political problems on a global scale and how they continue to be deployed as teaching tools. Though I do explore the trend of imperial nostalgia and the way it crops up in gaming titles that either recuperate or reappropriate the term “empire,” a less visible effect of nineteenth-century gaming is the way games continue to be used to help players understand power and military authority. In exploring all of these afterlives of imperial games, I divide the chapter into four pieces, two focused on a close reading of archival games and two looking at trends in contemporary games. In the first section, “Finding the ‘Right’ Side of History: The View from the Pinnacle in William Sallis’ Pyramid of History [post 1851],” I analyze Sallis’ Pyramid to show how the British at this mid-century moment saw their own place in history. In the pyramid structure he has chosen for his game, all of world history is a long climb to the top of the pyramid, where he has positioned Queen Victoria and the Royal Family as the end of human progress. Other games explore the future in more detail than the past. The next section, “From the Ranks to Commander in Chief: Turnof-the-century roots of war-based games,” looks at a turn-of-the-century game, From the Ranks to Commander-in-Chief [c. 1901–1904], an early artifact that demonstrates the shift in games from a focus on historical battles to training for future ones and a career in military service. From the Ranks offers a step-by-step path for advancement to the highest rank in the British military, showing that strategies of risk and total commitment are necessary to win the game. The real-world stakes of this game can be dated to its historical moment; players who put their pieces on this board would grow up to play a very different game, following the lines of the trenches in World War I. The insights of game theory help to explore how these scenarios of risk and reward may influence players’ behavior beyond the board, showing the ideological implications of these play scenarios. As these examples suggest, games are still relevant to conversations about nation-building and social awareness of political problems, and they do continue to be used as teaching tools both in the home or classroom setting and as military training exercises, as seen when the CIA

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debuted some of its training games at the South by Southwest Festival in 2017. In this setting, the game prepares players for combat and war, operating as a recruitment tool for service in the armed forces. Though the CIA has adjusted the genre, mode, and scale of popular gaming as a training exercise and vehicle for its messages, the late Victorians were there first. Moving further into the afterlife of games in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the following section, “Collaborative and Competitive: the new life of contemporary games,” applies game theory insights to the two prominent modes of engagement in contemporary games: collaboration and competition. Collaboration is usually employed in educational games, particularly ones developed by the United Nations and international agencies looking to combat climate change. They emphasize the importance of working together and eschewing an individualistic model for a community-based perception. Collaboration on the game board is metonymic of the kinds of cooperation that will be necessary to solve global problems. The United Nations has used games to effect change in politically unstable areas of the world by introducing nonviolent means of conflict resolution. Collaborative gaming is also a means to resolve problems such as climate change, which affect everyone. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has developed a game to address this—Keep Cool—and California’s Marin County Community Development Agency recently developed their own Game of Floods. In this online game, players are invited to be city planners on an island that is threatened by rising sea levels and storms. This gameplay encourages players to consider the stakes of climate change and the merits of environmental activism from the perspective of indigenous peoples in vulnerable locations. This is an important shift from the way the nineteenth-century games mapped the world and positioned non-European peoples as those to be acted upon, rather than acting. As islanders, players have the opportunity to problem-solve and to experience the stakes of climate change. Competition is the strategy at work in militaristic games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite, and as the genealogy of these games indicates (traced back to the Japanese novel Battle Royale and the American novel Hunger Games), that competition requires total commitment and the elimination, rather than just the outwitting or outpacing, of all other players. Though militaristic games adopt the more brutal practices of the Empire, the term has been reappropriated, as traced in the final section, “Empire’s afterlife: from nation to corporation.” This section shows that at the moment when there continues to be an imperial nostalgia in some board games, others are reappropriating the term, uncoupling it from the domination of nations, and applying it to corporate capitalism. Games such as Game of Life Empire and Monopoly Empire Edition celebrate multinational corporations and their brands, encouraging players to build commercial empires. Power still flows in one direction, beginning with the

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pieces placed in the hands of middle-class children in the industrialized nations of the West. In their hands, consumerism and capitalism promise to become the new imperialism. The conclusion brings together the work of the previous chapters and investigates how games mobilize play as an ideological space through which players come to understand and exercise power and authority over others on the board. It investigates what happens to that mode of engagement in the postcolonial era with the promise of inclusion and a recognition of the enfranchisement and dignity of all peoples, particularly those who were made subject to the military, administrative, and cultural subjugation through imperialism in all its forms. That has been the lens through which I have analyzed these games, looking for moments where the agencies of colonial peoples can be glimpsed through eruptive moments of resistance in the “pirates” at Sarawak or the Erromangoans who opposed Captain Cook, and even in the fictive, mapped depictions of islanders in Spooner’s Voyage. Despite the gains of postcolonial studies, however, empire and forms of cultural domination and homogenization are still with us, albeit in a new form. The final chapter traces the way the nineteenth century itself continues to be represented, remembered, and rehearsed by child players of contemporary video and computer games that draw nostalgically on the imperial era or the practices of colonization. This demonstrates that the “afterlife” of imperial gaming brings with it a sobering recognition that games still engage in ideological work, explaining how the power and authority of complex systems manifest themselves across a global board.

Play Grounds: Situating Board Games Between the Literary Field and the Athletic Field The final section of this introduction explores the way these games fit into the history, culture, and literary context of nineteenth-century British life. One of the important arms of Porter’s argument about the awareness of imperialism among nineteenth-century Britons is that imperialist material “needs to be viewed in situ and against the background of other kinds of evidence if its real importance and meaning are to be adjudged” (13). He likens research in this period to an archeological model, emphasizing that scholars should not only gather “shards and fragments” from the past but should also attempt to look at them in the context of the surrounding terrain. Porter’s point is a good one, encouraging careful and responsible scholarship sensitive to the period. Those who wrote for and about children frequently invoked games and gaming in their work as a narrative device or as a metaphor for imperial practice. Gameplay and associated language about these texts were so well established early in the century that when Kipling adopted the “Great Game” metaphor at the end of the century, it had acquired a rich resonance. This resonance

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is often missed by contemporary scholars who are unaware of the actual games children had been playing for generations in nurseries and parlors, as well as on cricket pitches and rugby fields. The provenance of the term “Great Game” is the narrative of Arthur Connolly, a Bengal cavalry officer and chess player who published Narrative of an Overland Journey to the North of India (1838). With the phrase, Said has asserted that Connolly was “paying a compliment to the proficiency of the Russians at that game; for he applied it to diplomatic and other manoeuvres followed by India and Russia in their struggle for political ascendancy in western Asia in the first half of the nineteenth century” (Notes to Kim 353). In linking chess and international politics, Kipling’s invocation of the phrase “Great Game” acquires a genealogy that relates table games, imperialism, and literature. In likening political machinations to a “game,” Connolly and Kipling call attention to the deadly stakes often involved in diplomacy, espionage, conflict, and war, as Kim himself discovers over the course of the novel. In Kim (1901), the title character’s game begins while lurking in the darkness near the home of a spy. Mahbub Ali turns to his young protégé and instructs him to “‘Go up the hill and ask. Here begins the Great Game’” (195). With these cryptic directions, Kim is placed on the starting space of a game whose shadowy dimensions and murky rules he can barely comprehend, and he is sent forward and backward at the behest of the more powerful players around him. In the course of the novel, Kim shifts between operating as counter or pawn in the hands of these players and taking on an active role as a player or agent in his own right. Though Kim’s situation as a spy-in-training is highly particularized and fictional, it is emblematic of the great games that nineteenth-century children were beginning to play themselves. Supriya Goswami argues that “British and Anglo-Indian children’s literature is burdened with the important mission of preparing children to do their duty and become ideal imperial citizens who work tirelessly for the greater good of an Indian empire” (5). Like Kim, nineteenth-century middle-class children were introduced at a young age to a culture of imperialism; they, too, learned its rules, rewards, and parameters through game-like structures. In Kim’s case, Edward Said notes that “the scenes where Kim banters, bargains, repartees with his elders, friendly and hostile alike, are indications of Kipling’s seemingly inexhaustible fund of boyish enjoyment in the sheer momentary pleasure of playing a game, any sort of game” (Introduction 13). While using codes and dressing in disguise to deliver secret messages may begin as a lark for Kim, the game he engages in is anything but child’s play, yet it does follow traditional gaming methods. Kim’s activities encompass the range of game classifications that David Parlett identifies in The Oxford History of Board Games. Amending H.J.R. Murray’s game classification categories, Parlett includes race, space, chase, displace, and theme games. All of these designations were

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skills practiced by agents of Empire who had to race, chase, and displace others within the spaces it claimed. Descriptions of these gaming classifications from the field of psychology lay this bare. In their research, the “first systematic study of psychology and board games” (1), Fernand Gobet, Alex de Voogt, and Jean Retschitzki characterize the goal of “war games” like chess as “the destruction of the opponent” (3), and in race games, “the object of the game is not to destroy but to reach a target for which capturing pieces of the opponent is only one means to an end” (3), and alignment games such as tic tac toe “require players to reach a configuration” (3). In all of these examples, opponents are either “destr[oyed]” or “captur[ed]” or displaced by a configuration of strategic moves. This offers an interesting paradigm for considering how the British interacted with imperial rivals and colonized subjects in the Great Game. To a child like Kim, already inured to the stealthy life of the streets, participation in the Great Game is an extension of his childish enjoyment of rooftop intrigues: “Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the letter-carrying line.  .  . . But now he was playing for larger things—the sheer excitement and the sense of power” (Kim 95). As the latter half of the quote infers, the Great Game has higher stakes than Kim’s earlier comparatively innocent escapades. This game is a political power struggle played across the surface of India: “From the South—God knows how far—came up the Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I shall go far and far into the North playing the Great Game. Truly, it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind” (Kim 273). The invisible network of the Great Game has nodes all over India; agents only become visible to one another by the ritual incantation of certain passwords, thereby incorporating the game elements of a child’s play like secret passwords, disguise, and hide-and-seek into adult espionage. Kim’s proficiency in this world differs in degree, not in kind, from his counterparts in England. In fact, Kipling’s invocation of the game trope is not surprising if we consider that children’s games had been the means to drill children in imperial practices and to promote rich fantasies of power. In other words, the metaphor of the game grew out of the play of actual games earlier in the century, as I will show throughout the following chapters. Beyond the message-carrying espionage of Kim, late nineteenth-century children’s literature is riddled with references to other children’s games. Games serve expositional and narrative purposes, from the cricket pitches and rugby scrums of Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) to the hide-and-seek games of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island (1883),26 Sir Henry Newbolt’s “Vitai Lampada” (1898), and the antics of Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky and his schoolmates. In the twentieth century, this extends to the expeditions of Arthur Ransome’s Captain Nancy Blackett as well as A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh gang and James Norman Hall’s Great War poem “The Cricketers of Flanders,” and even onto the late twentieth-century quidditch grounds of Rowling’s

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Harry Potter and friends. Lord Baden-Powell’s fascination with Kipling’s fictional boys fed “directly into a grand scheme of imperial authority culminating in the great Boy Scout structure” (Introduction Kim 13). As a paramilitary organization galvanized by the outcry over the malnutrition and physical weakness of troops recruited for the Boer Wars, the Boy Scouts prepared “cadets” for a soldier’s life by emphasizing the outdoors, patches, badges, and the chain of command. It was an authorized way for boys to play at being soldiers. William Golding’s dark The Lord of the Flies (1954) argues that the legacy of nineteenth-century texts of imperial adventure, like R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1858) or Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons (1930), shows the danger of playing out a role in these adventurous scripts. The model of role-playing exercise, endorsed by particular scripts, flourishes in parlor games and athletic games of the period as well. In addition to appearing in the pages of favorite literary works, games were very eagerly played by children in gardens and courtyards at parties or social events and on athletic fields and village greens. Parlor games, puzzles, cards, and athletics were part of the story of the relationship between imperialism and children’s games, but each genre is so diverse and complex that they are beyond the bounds of this study, and they offer tantalizing areas for future research, following up on the work J.A. Mangan and others have undertaken regarding athletics and propaganda. The public school particularly provided a framework for the play of these games and the dire stakes associated both with winning and with playing honorably. The role of athletic games at these schools in promoting nationalism, preparing young men for war, and fostering teamwork, perseverance, and willpower has been well documented. Mangan calls these games the “pre-eminent instrument for the training of a boy’s character” (Games Ethic 18), going so far as to claim that “the nature of the Empire would scarcely have been the same without the public school games ethic” (19). His remarks are echoed by Jane Frances Dove, a headmistress of girls’ schools St. Leonard’s and Wycombe Abbey School, in the epigraph when she lobbies for the importance of athletic games in cultivating the kind of character that will be useful to Britain in imperial outposts. Mangan outlines connections between the spread of Empire and the proliferation of games like cricket, football, and rugby. By yoking an understanding of the “nature of Empire” to an awareness of the role that games played in training players to be good imperial citizens, soldiers, self-sacrificing missionaries, and civil servants, Mangan offers a precedent for considering how games matter at one end of the spectrum. These “play grounds” offered bounded spaces for recreational play according to sets of established rules. At the other end of a spectrum of gaming, board games also operated in a similarly bounded two feet of tabletop space, and like athletic games, this play offered ways to access a broader global world.27

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While gender as well as social class may have determined participation in athletics, access to board gameplay was perhaps more democratized.28 It is rare to find a game that has separate rules for players according to gender or games that target girls or boys exclusively. Adrian Seville has identified one exception, a French game, Crepy’s Les Etrennes de la Jeunessse (1713), that had separate tracks for male and female players (1008). “[R]are” distinctions like these nonetheless help in “confirming that the games concerned were intended to be played in mixed company” (Seville 1009). Both boys and girls could actively participate in the play of board and table games in the nineteenth-century home, whereas mixedgender participation in a rugby scrum may not have met with the same sanction. Therefore, the significance of these games has cross-gender implications, in that they invited child players to rehearse imperial roles and inhabit the subject positions of soldiers, merchants, explorers, hunters, exhibitors, curators, and historians, regardless of whether or not these fields would be open to them as adults. The games provided a safe, though bounded, “play ground” in which possibilities of identity could be rehearsed, performed, explored, and improvised.29 Though boy players could later recuperate their youthful play into administrative, commercial, or military service to the Empire, girls may have struggled to find ways to perform the roles they had rehearsed as children and to participate in the work of empire. This fits the portrayal Claudia Nelson and Lynne Vallone have sketched of the nineteenthcentury girl as a “liminal” figure “[p]oised not only between childhood and adulthood but also between purity and desire, home and market, tradition and change” (8). As such, these girls “symbolized, experienced, and in some degree forwarded the cultural crisis into which they were born” (Nelson and Vallone 8–9). Yet they, too, were able to find means to forward the work that board games invited them to rehearse. As the market for professional women writers opened up in the early nineteenth century with the modest triumphs of Sarah Trimmer, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau, and others, women such as Priscilla Wakefield, Barbara Hofland, and Favell Lee Mortimer found a measure of socially sanctioned success in publishing geography primers, travel tales, and game anthologies for children. These anthologies detailed parlor games for play at parties or on rainy afternoons.30 In a family setting as well, girls and boys are depicted playing out the experience of colonization. Texts like Sarah Lee [Bowdich]’s Playing at Settlers [1854) detail how three siblings create a settlers’ outpost on the margins of their parents’ country estate, suggesting a model of interactivity for readers in which they, too, could extend the work and play of empire and colonial administration to their own homes. Most famous, of course, is the Brontë children’s production of the extensive Angria and Glass Town chronicles (1829–1839), which attests that the culture of Empire permeated even remote areas like Haworth

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Parsonage and provided rich material for children’s gaming. In her early juvenilia “The Young Men’s Play,” “A History of a Year,” and “Islander’s Play,” Charlotte details how she and her siblings played with Branwell’s toy soldiers and neatly divided up the globe into territories for the soldiers to rule. For instance, Emily gains Ireland and the East Indies, whereas Charlotte takes charge of Upper Canada and the West Indies. Calling Charlotte’s chronicle of these events “a declaration of her identity as a writer” (31), Susan Meyer asserts that this game fostered “an imperialism of the imagination” that “preceded and enabled the children’s fiction writing” (32). With an output of nearly 1200 pages of juvenilia about these imaginary colonial settlements, the Brontë children demonstrated a unique commitment to their imperial games, which would later inflect their fiction. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (1847) in particular is a novel haunted by the failures of Empire in the character of Bertha Mason and in the harem women against whom Jane defines herself. While much has been written about the imperial undertones in this novel, its genealogy is rooted in the siblings’ juvenilia, which itself grew out of an engagement with material culture; their toy soldiers are artifacts that are part of the apparatus of empire and which suggest a particular script for play. The majority of children who played with toy soldiers, who romped in parlor games, who vied for footballs, who placed pieces on board games, or who were inspired by their reading did not go on to produce such lasting literary works as the Brontës. Furthermore, these playful acts disappeared for the most part as soon as they were concluded. Karin Calvert notes that “children described the substance of their lives even less frequently” (68), and that is why we need a study of the “link between artifacts and cultural constructs” as “an important method for gaining access to cultural beliefs and assumptions so basic that they are rarely verbalized and to social fears too emotionally laden for direct discussion” (68). As Calvert suggests, while the scope and extent of the influence of this child’s play may never be fully known, a study of the proliferation of material culture objects demonstrates the likely effects in shaping players’ ideologies in particular ways that had concrete effects in the world. Gameplay may have influenced their later decisions to swell the ranks of soldiers, missionaries, clerks, and merchants in the colonies, or in the metropole their eagerness to purchase goods such as ivories and Indian shawls or foodstuffs such as tea and spices from the colonies.31 In the pages of fiction, gameplay also serves an expositional role, demonstrating to us characters’ true qualities. Games have an expositional function in the novels of Jane Austen when characters sit down for loo or vingt-un instead of walking out or reading. Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice is an enthusiastic card player, suggesting perhaps a thirst for triumphing over others. At the other end of the century and a world away from the ostentation of Rosings Park, games can also reveal a character’s cultural identity. Kipling’s short story “Lispeth” traces the tale of a

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young Indian woman raised by missionaries, christened “Elizabeth” but called “Lispeth” in the Hill or Pahari pronunciation. She falls in love with a white English traveler whom she helps nurse back to health. After he leaves her, Lispeth is thrown into confusion and anxiety waiting for his return. At this moment of crisis, she turns to a childhood game: “There was an old puzzle-map of the World in the house. Lispeth had played with it when she was a child. She unearthed it again, and put it together of evenings, and cried to herself, and tried to imagine where her Englishman was” (226). Kipling depicts her putting together a dissected map, a ready visual and tactile metaphor for the ways in which she attempts to reconcile the fragmented parts of her identity. In her love affair with the white man, however, she cannot find a way to puzzle out the elements of her identity to create a recognizable whole in the same way—she remains fragmented, culturally English and racially Indian, and when she finds out that he is never going to return, she falls to pieces. She leaves the mission, her faith community, her home with the chaplain’s family, and her borrowed English traditions; Kipling represents this event as the spur that leads to her loss of beauty, her marriage to a man who beats her, and subsequent drunken nights when she can be coaxed into telling the story of her love affair. Like Lispeth, her counterparts in England also “develop a sense of self not in a vacuum but in reaction to the directives of the society they inhabit and the texts they read” (Gubar 7). Just as she turns to a childhood plaything in her moment of crisis, so, too, must other children have relied on their ideological training. As Marah Gubar contends, “The reason Golden Age authors chose to link literacy and acculturation was that they recognized that their own genre had historically functioned as a tool for socialization and even indoctrination” (29). Though continuous with the way gaming is represented in the literary tradition and on the athletic fields of the period, these board games are unique. They were played by children within the context of their everyday lives—in the same parlors and playgrounds where they were drilled on social behavior and decorum as well as the nurseries where they learned reading, arithmetic, and geography. These games were not sponsored or invoked by institutions such as the public school or the church. Instead, their production and sales were driven by market forces, suggesting again the importance of acquiring imperial knowledge for financial, as well as patriotic, reasons. The games are in line with Jack Zipes’ bold assertion that “there is no such thing as a children’s culture or children’s realm,” contending that these arenas are in fact “marked by divisive political and social struggles and the impositions of their parents” (34). These games prepared players for the administrative, as well as martial, work of Empire, and that makes them unique as an archive, differentiating them from playthings such as toy pistols and swords, which were purely military in nature.

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As the examples of the Brontës and Austen’s Lady Catherine indicate, games were played in social settings. They were designed for group play, in keeping with the trend that J.H. Plumb identifies in children’s education after 1700: “Socialization rather than salvation became the new aim” (286). As Donatino Domini’s research on European board games stipulates, they take place “within the signifying web of sociality” (8). Building empire was a social experience, learned in community. One cannot play alone, but must make progress by playing alongside, with, or even against other players in an analogue for the way the European rivals sought to play out their Great Games with one another in the spheres of Africa, the Americas, and Asia. To conclude and mark the way forward then, as the discussion of these early games shows, these were rich texts that employed both written and visual stimuli for child players. Though absent from studies of imperial culture as well as analyses of nineteenth-century childhood, board games operated as imperial heuristics that extended through play the ideological and imperial lessons learned in schoolroom texts on geography and history. The games were presented as educational aids for ambitious middle-class parents, offering a rational and responsible mode of leisure as well as a way to cultivate the child into a model informed citizen. As Humphrey Carpenter characterizes it, “To the typical writer of the Enlightenment, a child was simply a miniature adult, a chrysalis from which a fully rational and moral being would duly emerge, providing parents and educators did their job properly” (7). Karen Calvert puts it most succinctly: “Parents do not merely raise their children; they define them” (76). As Bernstein’s research has shown and Henry Jenkins’ conclusions support, “Children, no less than adults, are active participants in that process of defining their identities though they join those interactions from positions of unequal power” (Jenkins 4). In these positions, child players certainly absorbed much of imperial ideology, coded by F.R.B. Whitehouse as “the thrills” of imperial travel and imagination, and they negotiated their identities by playing or improvising the scripts offered by their readings and their playthings (4).32 As children’s literature scholars have worked to show, one of the modes of encouraging rational and moral beings to emerge was through written texts, especially stories. Andrew O’Malley argues, “Children’s literature became one of the crucial mechanisms for disseminating and consolidating middle-class ideology” (11). What has been overlooked in this conversation is the extent to which games were part of this conversation as well because they, too, offered persuasive narratives of power. They fostered children’s awareness of colonial policy while fueling ideological desires to be part of the progress and rewards of the larger imperial project. The ideology promoted by the games shaped their worldview and conditioned their responses. In addition, this genre taught children how to administer their Empire by regulating, placing, and classifying colonized

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territories. Board games offered a panoptic vision of Empire for children to contemplate while envisioning their own moves; consequently, board games consistently reinforced the connection between the child’s wins or losses in the game and the larger successes or failures of Empire. The small space of the game board is significant to the larger global space that is its reference point. As Henri Lefebvre’s work on space has shown, “Space is at once result and cause, product and producer; it is also a stake, the locus of projects and actions deployed as part of specific strategies, and hence also the object of wagers on the future—wagers which are articulated, if never completely” (142–143). The produced, gamed spaces reveal the stakes that middle-class Victorians had in their children’s future and the consequences of these wagers for peoples across the globe. As a result, in reconstructing this imperial story, the arguments this project makes are not one, but many related ones, the first being, why recover this set of texts? They are as divergent in many ways as any other set of generic texts in “women’s nineteenth-century novels” or “mid-century devotional hymns.” So in answering why they should be recovered, I examine each one and determine what its contribution is to the larger national and imperial narrative and what the effects of this ideological work are as they echo down the centuries to our own time. The arguments are many, and they are driven by what the texts themselves are saying. To ferret that out, I have created ways to think and talk critically about these objects as texts, to let them tell their own stories, and to read against the grain to identify the stories and the voices that are not told and to imagine how different the game would be if it included the voices of those it maps.

Notes 1. Karin Calvert self-reflexively explores such objectification of the child: “In both a material and a grammatical sense, children have usually been regarded as objects. Traditionally, they were the possessions of their parents, to be dealt with as parents thought best. . . . Adults designed, produced, and purchased the material goods used by children, structured their time and their environment, and defined the recognized stages of development and the appropriate image and behavior for each stage” (76). 2. Games that taught history through the framework of royal succession include the following titles: The Royal genealogical pastime of the sovereigns of England, from the dissolution of the Saxon heptarchy to the reign of his present majesty George the Third (E. Newbery and John Wallis, 1791); The Royal Game of British Sovereigns: exhibiting the most remarkable events in each reign, from Egbert to George III (J & E Wallis, [1817]); John Harris’ The Jubilee (1810) and The Sun of Brunswick (1820); Peter Parley’s Victoria Game of British Sovereigns (Darton and Clark [c. 1840]); Amusement in English History (William Sallis, c. 1840); British Sovereigns (Edward Wallis and John Passmore [1840–1847]); and David Ogilvy’s British Sovereigns: or the circle of British history (1845–1850) and Crowned heads or contemporary sovereigns; an instructive game [1845–1847]. These dynastic games often

Introduction

3.

4.

5.

6.

45

featured portraits of sovereigns with an accompanying book listing important events in their reigns. They helped familiarize child players both with the sovereigns and with important battles, treaties, and the passage of laws. Exploration of England and Wales was a popular subject for board games as well as dissected maps, as the following titles indicate: Robert Sayer’s A new royal geographical pastime for England and Wales, 1787; J. Passmore’s reissue of Wallis’s Picturesque Round Game of the produce and manufactures of the counties of England and Wales [1795]; W & T Darton’s Walker’s Tour through England and Wales, a New Pastime, 1809; and William Spooner’s Spooner’s pictorial map of England and Wales, 1844. Games offered modes of transport ranging from an elephant-back ride through Asia (William Darton’s The noble game of Elephant and Castle; or Travelling in Asia, 1822) to a journey by steamboat (William Spooner’s An Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire, 1843), riding the great Victorian innovation, the railway (Edward Wallis’ Wallis’s New Railway Game, or Tour through England and Wales [1830]), and later even by bicycle ([n.p.] A Cycle Game. England, c. 1900), motorcar ([Chad Valley’s] The new game of motor tour, 1912; The New Map Game: Motor-chase across London, c. 1925), or airplane (Melbourne’s National Game Co.’s Around the Commonwealth by aeroplane, c. 1910; H.P. Gibson & Son’s Aviation, the Aerial Tactics Game of Attack and Defense, 1920; and Chad Valley’s Atlantic flight: the new game of Atlantic flight, c. 1920–1930). In offering different modes of transport, the games not only authorized travel to foreign locales but also predicated the speed and success of these journeys on the progress of British innovation. The march of progress to advance and ameliorate modern life was suggested by games that celebrated science and progress, from the architectural wonders of the ancient world (William Spooner’s The Wonders of the World chiefly in reference to the architectural works of the ancients; an entirely new game for the amusement and education of youth, c. 1837–1846) to inventions such as the hot air balloon and diving bell (John Wallis’ The Hill of Science, an allegory, 1807; William Sallis’ Why, what and because, The Road to the Temple of Knowledge, 1855). The Wallis firm went on to produce games designed to help players make moral choices based on their social class positions (Edward Wallis’ Village portraits: a new game, c. 1818 and 1847, and his Every man to his station: a new game, 1825). John Wallis and John Harris marketed George Fox’s A new, moral, and entertaining game of the reward of merit, 1801), and W. and T. Darton published The new game of virtue rewarded and vice punished for the amusement of the youth of both sexes (1810). This game featured stops for vices such as Envy and Malice as players progressed onto spaces named for virtues such as Faith and Charity. One late-century game even offered suggestions for a felicitous Path to Matrimony (1893). Success in life was sometimes depicted as a journey to a particular place, such as a stylized “Mansion of Happiness” (R.H. Laurie’s Laurie and Whittle’s New Moral and Entertaining Game of the Mansion of Happiness, 1800), a “Mount of Knowledge” (John Wallis, John Harris, and W. Richardson’s The mount of knowledge, c. 1800–1810), a “Temple of Happiness” (this is the destination reached by players of John Wallis’ The Mirror of Truth: exhibiting a variety of biographical anecdotes and moral essays: calculated to inspire a love of virtue and abhorrence of vice, 1811; John Harris’ version was The Road to the Temple of Honour and Fame, c. 1831), or an English cottage (William Spooner’s The Cottage of Content, or Right Roads and Wrong Ways, a Game, 1848). Jane Johnson (1708–1759) created manuscripts, alphabet cards, lesson cards, and sight word cards for her son George William Johnson, who would

46

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

Chapter 1 go on to become the High Sheriff of Lincolnshire. The Lilly Library at Indiana University houses 438 pieces, arranged in 23 subgroups. These self-made educational aids offer a perspective on parental pedagogy (Johnson). Darton’s games were nested inside the body of creatures in the following games: The Noble Game of the Swan (1821), The Noble Game of the Elephant and Castle (1822), The majestic game of the Asiatic ostrich [c. 1820]. Thomas Jefferys’ (no relation to John) The Royal Geographical Pastime: Exhibiting a Complete tour round the world in which are delineated the North East and North West Passages into the South Sea, and other modern Discoveries (1770) started the tradition of a descriptive list or guidebook with numbers keyed to a series of points of interest not on a prescribed track, but coordinated on the map (Hill 10). The Game of the Goose was played by an audience as varied as the Dauphin of France and gamblers in English taverns (Seville 1001). In these early puzzle versions of board games, child players pieced together the world or parts of it, thereby learning geography. Some board games, such as the ones the Ogilvy firm produced, were also sold as dissections. For more on early puzzles and dissected maps, see Linda Hannas’ work in Two hundred years of jigsaw puzzles (1968), The English Jigsaw Puzzle 1760–1890 (1972), and The Jigsaw Book: celebrating two centuries of jigsaw-puzzling round the world (1981). Locke himself was aware of the learning process through which children could absorb geography. In fact, he recommended starting a child’s education with geography, stipulating that it is “an exercise of the eyes and memory” through which a child with pleasure will learn and retain” the situation of countries, coastlines, and cities (142–143). As an example of these principles, Locke cites Francis Cudworth Masham, the child of Sir Francis Masham, with whom Locke made his home from 1691 until his death. He states that the child “whom his mother has so well instructed this way in geography, that he knew the limits of the four parts of the world, could readily point, being asked, to any country upon the globe, or any county in the map of England; knew all the great rivers, promontories, straits and bays in the world, and could find the longitude and latitude of any place, before he was six years old” (142–143). Locke concedes that these points “are not all, I confess, that he is to learn upon the globes. But yet it is a good step and preparation to it, and will make the remainder much easier, when his judgment is grown ripe enough for it: [. . .] and by the pleasure of knowing things, leads him on insensibly to the gaining of languages” (142–143). Geography and the acquisition of geographic knowledge offer a springboard to higher forms of knowledge. Later in the century, game makers would turn to cheaper cardboard material, especially in America, and games would be stored in larger boxes, probably apart from the bookshelf. This physical distance correlates to the distance in subject matter and their use as educational tools. Economic historians have tried to reconstruct and scale the standard of living in the wake of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, but calculating that has proven very tricky since a variety of competing factors, such as wages, real wages, price indexes, taxes, urban versus suburban, and geography, all come into play. In the 1960s, E.J. Hobsbawm and his adherents declared that standard of living did not rise after the Industrial Revolution for working-class families, whereas R.M. Hartwell and his followers asserted that it did. A rise in living standards can be indicated by tracking consumption of tea, sugar, and bread, especially following the deprivations of the Napoleonic Wars, after which food prices declined and wages rose (Hartwell 107).

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14. Since even less economically advantaged children would have their roles to play in the work of Empire, there are exceptions, particularly when it came to books featuring collections of parlor games. The author of Pleasant Evenings (1847) asserts that her book of games has been “adapted by its size for general circulation; and is published in the hope that it may not only please those already provided with varied sources of amusement, but find its way into some less favored homes from which similar, but more costly, publications are excluded” (E.R. iv). 15. Handloom weavers at the start of the century were the “aristocrats of labour with wages of 30s–35s a week,” but by the 1830s, “as mechanical weaving took over, they had been reduced to a starvation wage of 1d an hour or 6s for a week of 72 hours’ labour” (Burnett 249). This was almost 500,000 workers, though few persisted through the transition. 16. At mid-century, while a Lancashire cotton spinner earning 25s a week could put 6s and 11d aside for clothing, schooling, and sickness, an agricultural laborer in Suffolk earning 13s a week would have been more pressed, and it is likely that his children would have been working with him. For a semiskilled urban worker earning 15s to £1 a week, food would have cost about 72% of his income for him, his wife, and their three children; a little dame school would have run 4d a week, probably all that they could afford (Burnett 261–263). 17. In 1857, the state assumed the right to require school for any non-criminals between ages 7 and 14 who were vagrants; they had to attend industrial schools “for vocational and moral direction” (Denisoff 9). Yet given the focus of these settings, it is unlikely they would have offered games to these children to play with in the classroom or, even less likely, as prizes for attendance or good behavior given the prohibitive expense of the games relative to wages in this period. 18. John Burnett characterizes the debate about living standards for the working classes as considering whether, following Marx’s line of thought, the Industrial Revolution was a “calamity to the working classes” or “the savior of the working classes” (189). The reason the working classes have tended to dominate the conversation is because there were considerably more of them. At mid-century, working classes comprised close to 80% of the population, a number that would shrink by the end of the century, but in 1867, Dudley Baxter estimated that this worked out to 7.8 million people out of a population of 10 million (Burnett 247). Revelations of their desperate poverty in the novels of Charles Dickens, beginning with Oliver Twist (1839), and in the proto-sociological reports of Henry Mayhew at mid-century and Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree in the 1880s offered periodic shocks to the reading public. 19. See the work of Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, 1938 [in German]), H.J.R. Murray (A History of Board Games other than Chess, 1952), Roger Caillois (Man, Play, and Games, 1961), R.C. Bell (Discovering Old Board Games, 1973), and David Parlett (The Oxford History of Board Games, 1999). 20. I am referring here to works by games historians such as F.R.B. Whitehouse, whose Table Games of Georgian and Victorian Days (1951) begins, “The origins of indoor games is lost in the mists of time” (1), tracing the rise of chess in India. Proceeding by category, Whitehouse lists each game by title, with a brief description of each. H.J.R. Murray’s foundational A History of Board Games Other than Chess classifies game playing into discrete categories. He maintains that board games are a “single family” with many members, and he highlights the differences and similarities between games

48

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

Chapter 1 played by “civilized” and “barbarous” peoples, linking the play of games to climate and leisure. Johan Huizinga’s work in Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture focuses on the definition of “play” and its geneology in modern institutions of philosophy, poetry, war, and the law. He argues, “We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played” (Huizinga 198). Roger Caillois distinguishes between players and workers, delineating the labor of “professional” play by boxers and cricketers (Caillois 6). Shefrin’s work is beautifully illustrated, with lots of photographic detail. See Such Constant Affectionate Care: Lady Charlotte Finch, Royal Governess to the Children of George III, and “Neatly Dissected, for the Instruction of Young Ladies & Gentlemen in the Knowledge of Geography”: John Spilsbury & Early Dissected Puzzles. These books are valuable resources offering a visual spectrum of the production of these games. For more on gaming and computers, see Morton D. Davis’ Game Theory: A nontechnical introduction (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1983) or Len Fisher’s Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life (NY: Perseus Book Group, 2008). The board games in this case provide a type of theatrical representation of the work of empire and colonialism akin to Said’s assertion that the Orient has been mapped as a type of theater by historians and scholars (and I would add game makers): “The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined” (Orientalism 63). In “Old Man in His Castle,” one player stands alone on one side of a line while all the others stand on the other side. Each one ventures forward and poses a request, such as, “‘May I have some of your apples, old man?’ The moment the line is crossed, she darts forward, exclaiming, ‘Go off my grounds!’ If she can catch the culprit on her own grounds, she is obliged to take her place; but she has no right to go over the line in the pursuit. Sometimes three or four intruders will be in at once. Children vary the questions as they please; sometimes they ask for cherries, or birds, or hay, or blackberries” (Child 40–41). Catching and disciplining “intruders” is certainly in line with foresters guarding against poachers of the king’s deer or groundskeepers warding off interloping schoolboys like Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown and his friends or Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky and his confederates. Beyond the issue of policing class boundaries and protecting private property, it can also be contextualized alongside games by Spooner and Betts as an attempt to put down other European rivals in the Great Game. M.O. Grenby offers a supporting example from the children’s book market: “There was a substantial degree of continuity in the market for early children’s books, with numerous eighteenth-century titles being read and recommended for decades after they had first appeared” (191). The rhetoric of “gaming” is also employed by Robert Louis Stevenson in Treasure Island (1883) to describe a deadly game of tag that young Jim engages in with pirate Israel Hands aboard the deserted vessel Hispaniola. Jim reflects, “It was such a game as I had often played at home about the rocks of Black Hill Cove; but never before, you may be sure, with such a wildly beating heart as now. Still, as I say, it was a boy’s game, and I thought I could hold my own at it, against an elderly seaman with a wounded thigh” (Stevenson 113). Researchers on play emphasize how it is subject to both spatial and temporal limits. Spatially, play is conducted in specific “play grounds”: stadiums, rings, or on stage; temporally, play is regulated by quarters, counters, buzzers, or acts. For children, play functions as “an intermezzo, an interlude in our daily

Introduction

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lives” (Huizinga 27). The liminal space of the game links it to what Foucault calls “heterochronies,” the moments of revelry and festival that are lived outside of, though within, ordinary time. The bounds of play are fixed according to Caillois: “In every case, the game’s domain is therefore restricted, closed, protected universe: a pure space” (7). Perhaps this applies to some forms of play; yet it is my contention that the play practiced by Victorian and preVictorian children had a stimulating effect on their imagination and ultimate participation in the project of Empire. The domain of this play, therefore, extended in their imagination and through their adult actions into the world. 28. Commensurate with their brothers’ commitment to sport, teamwork, and the glory of the school, as Sally Mitchell’s study The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880–1915 (1995) has shown, “For middle-class girls the most visible brothers’ privileges were education and sports; no wonder fiction’s sporty boarding schools rose so prominently in desire” (105). The appeal came in part because “masculinity provided physical and geographical freedom: nonobstructive clothing, an athletic body, safe passage through public spaces that men made dangerous for those who wore skirts” (Mitchell 105). Yet these activities set off a flurry of controversy from the pens of essayists such as Eliza Lynn Linton about whether engaging in athletics would unsex them. 29. I am thinking here specifically of Kipling’s schoolboys in Stalky & Co. (1899), whose youthful adventures prepare them for military service in India. The most inventive player of games, Stalky, becomes a gifted military strategist and a redoubtable fighter, thus linking childhood escapades in school to adult occupations in Empire. 30. As Hannah Neale notes in the title page rhyme to Amusement Hall; or, An Easy Introduction to the Attainment of Useful Knowledge (1794), In Works of Learned Labour, let the Men, With their superior Pow’rs, employ the Pen, And hidden Truths explore;—‘tis our Design Instruction with Amusement to combine, Pleasure with useful Knowledge to unite, And yield at once Improvement and Delight. (n.p.) From the late eighteenth century, when Neale was writing, continuing through the Victorian period, games fulfilled the function of “Instruction with Amusement to combine” and established the domestic as a training ground for imperial activity. 31. I am thinking here of the famous scene in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855) in which characters model Indian shawls, setting these objects up as items of social value. 32. The full quote reads, “A geography game of 1816 allots large capital letters to BOTANY BAY, small ones to SIDNEY, and in Africa wide spaces are marked ‘unexplored.’ Imagine the thrills our ancestors of six generations ago must have experienced in visiting such lands [. . .]” (Whitehouse 4).

2

Navigating Trade Routes and Fostering Moral Commerce in William Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery (1836) and John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions [c. 1855] Indolent persons are fond of games of chance, because they feel themselves roused agreeably from their habitual state of apathy, or because they perceive, that at these contests, without any mental exertion, they are equal, perhaps superior, to their competitors. —Maria and Richard Edgeworth Practical Education (1798) 54

Across the nineteenth century, child readers could escape from damp, drizzly London with ease by turning the pages of sensational adventure tales. They might follow a track off to adventures on sandy, sun-scorched Coral Islands with Jack and Peterkin, or they could vie with Long John Silver to find caches of gold doubloons or dash through shadowy alleys in spice-scented souks with Kim or quietly pad with Mowgli or Allen Quartermain along jungle corridors, where creatures lurked behind quivering leaves. The role of adventure fiction in promoting these kinds of escapist fantasies and the imperial underpinnings of these adventures have been well established by Martin Green, Jeffrey Richards, M. Daphne Kutzer, J.S. Bratton, and others. What remains to be told is how board games were part of this story and how they, too, created evocative narratives of imperial tourism, yet nonetheless also promised more practical vocational models than the flashy heroes who appear throughout the century on the beaches of R.M. Ballantyne and in the stockades of Robert Louis Stevenson. Though the protagonists of adventure tales frequently end up as castaways, treasure seekers, or lion hunters, their readers often faced less colorful, more prosaic options, like a future in trade, and the games they played could have prepared them for these vocations, sweetening the promised future with a dash of adventure. Developing colonial markets offered a way to take part in the imperial project, as Timothy Parsons notes: “Britain’s security and economic prosperity depended on its ability to balance foreign sales of its manufactured goods with its purchases of food and raw materials” (11). Games by William Spooner, John Betts,

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and others suggest a future that is both profitable and exciting, thanks to an expanding imperial horizon. With Napoleon defeated and Victoria newly established on the throne in 1837, the nation of shopkeepers could expand to a more international mart for their wares, and children’s games presented them with the chance to wed adventure to commerce through play. Excitement about far-flung places was fueled and focused by the founding of institutions such as the Royal Geographic Society in 1830; it would grow to be the largest scientific society in London by 1870. Felix Driver identifies its “patently hybrid character” as “part social club, part learned society, part imperial information exchange and part platform for the promotion of sensational feats of exploration” (25). Neither was the RGS the only engine firing excitement about exploration, and nor were adults the only audience for such tales. Johanna M. Smith’s research has shown that “although geographies designed for children have received very little critical attention, they too can profitably be examined for the cultural work they do . . . [Geography] lends itself to ideological uses” (134). A flourishing class of professional women writers, including Barbara Hofland, Priscilla Wakefield, Favell Lee Mortimer, and many others, penned geography primers to acquaint schoolchildren with their imperial duties. These works were sold and marketed by agencies such as the Religious Tract Society and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Along with the religious publishers, commercial publishing firms sought to profit from marketing tales and games to child audiences. William Spooner’s game A Voyage of Discovery: Or, The Five Navigators (1836) invites child players to experience the risks and rewards of trade and commerce. A Voyage of Discovery traverses an unnamed network of islands rich with gold and the potential for a lucrative trade relationship; winning the game involves not only reaching a goal at the end but also negotiating a complicated series of forfeits and mastering “takeor-pay” colonial economics. Players win the game by learning how to extract the most from the indigenous islanders while paying the least in money or sweat equity. By the 1850s, on the other hand, Britons had survived Reform Bills and the Hungry Forties; their sovereign was well established, with a string of heirs and a consort who helped celebrate the arts, crafts, and manufactures of the nation and its colonies in the Great Exhibition. Over the imperial century, Catherine Hall estimates that “perhaps a third of the world was dominated by the British, both economically and culturally” (9). At this optimistic cultural moment, John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions [c. 1855] introduced child players to the raw materials, natural resources, and commodities that were circulating throughout the Empire thanks to its successful moral stewardship of its colonies and its thorough sense of orderliness. The underlying message here is still the ultimate supremacy of the British Empire over its imperial rivals, but this is displayed through

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judicious colonial governance, rather than overt war or military campaigns characterized by waving flags or flashing sabers. The use of force is there in the background, but in the foreground, the focus is on harvesting, mining, and shipping. These activities transform colonial spaces into production centers within a larger imperial network. This chapter will show how games help players conceptualize colonial spaces through particular methodologies. Spooner’s game offers a glimpse of how takeor-pay economics could be established in the contact zone to create profitable trade relationships (for the imperialist), and Betts’ game represents a later vision in which trade led to the transformation of colonial spaces from unruly wildernesses and jungles into neat gardens and well-ordered urban spaces. Taken together, these games represent the development of the colonial relationship, from a project of discovery and conquest to one of careful administration and wise, moral governance. Trade, in short, was the business and the engine of the Empire, packaged in the play of these games.1

Take-or-Pay Economics and Unequal Barter in William Spooner’s A Voyage of Discovery An active game manufacturer from the 1830s through the early 1850s, William Spooner’s works take different forms suited to the topic at hand. He adopts the form of spiral track (Comic Game) or a pictographic image (like the Funnyshire Fox Chase, Fortunio and his Seven Gifted Servants, and Cottage of Content) or cartographic game. In his cartographic games, there are fewer laughs and a more traditional, restrained, illustrative style. The cartographic games tend to feature a traditional map embellished with illustrations. His early game The Travellers of Europe (1832) is a good example of his work in this genre, though curator Gillian Hill has called it an “early example of the gaudier games” (14) that incorporated inset scenes and images onto traditional maps. Gaudy or not, Travellers was probably the most popular of Spooner’s productions, going through four editions and a reissue with additions and improvements by 1852 (Children’s Books 45). His 1840s games focus on travel in Europe (Spooner’s pictorial map of England and Wales, 1844, also known as Spooner’s Tour of England and Wales), China (An Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire, 1843), and the West Indies (The Pirate and traders of the West Indies, 1847). During this period, he also published historical games such as The Wonders of the World chiefly in reference to the architectural works of the ancients [c. 1837–1846] and Spooner’s Game of English History (1847). One of his final games returns to geography, merging it with zoology: Geographical and Zoological Game of the World [c. 1852] (mentioned in Children’s Books 45). Spooner also produced games that often adopted a humorous or satirical take. In his Funnyshire Fox Chase (1842), the gentry chase their prey

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up and down the board, losing mounts, leaping fences, and contending with landscape challenges like ditches and cliffs. Spooner’s funny fairytale style games include Fortunio and his seven gifted servants (1846) and The Cottage of Content, or Right Roads and Wrong Roads (1848). The Cottage features a series of overlapping and twisted paths like “Laughing Stock Lane,” where a bather’s clothes are stolen, or “Ruination Row,” with an upset donkey cart and goods strewn in the road; the illustrations, comical situations, and language create a lively, amusing game. Spooner also satirizes the displays at the Great Exhibition in his Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, 1851 (1851), discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Published near the start of this career, and following up on the success of Travellers of Europe, Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery (1836) was a handcolored game mounted on linen for easy folding and storage (Figure 2.1). It was also technically innovative. Games historian F.R.B. Whitehouse credits Spooner with using lithographs to replace copper-engraved games around 1835, the time when this game appeared (3).2 The game sold for 7s 6d, a bit pricey for the time considering that 30 years later, in the mid-1860s, the Ogilvy firm would charge the same price for the deluxe version of their games (a board game sold with a set of puzzle pieces as an add-on to offer an additional way to play). The social class demographic for Spooner’s game is suggested by its favorable reviews in The Gentleman’s Magazine and The Court Journal in December of 1835. The Court Journal hails it as “A New Christmas game,” citing the “elegant manner in which it is got up, the ingenuity of the design, and its extreme cheapness, [which] will no doubt procure for it an extensive circulation” (Review 780). An advertisement appeared in The Athenaeum for Christmas 1835, billing it as “A New Game for Christmas . . . [b]y the inventor of the popular Game of ‘Cross Roads to Conqueror’s Castle’” (822). Spooner was still promoting the game the following Christmas with an advertisement in The Literary Gazette under the heading “New Games and Presents for Christmas” (814). Spooner’s Voyage appeared just prior to Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 but 60 years after Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific introduced Australia and New Zealand to the British reading public, making islands a standard part of the imperial imaginary. Cited in children’s history and geography texts as acts of heroic imperial discovery, Cook’s travels (in 1768–1771, 1772–1775, and 1776–1779) advanced science while simultaneously identifying a broad territory for potential commercial advancement. In the tradition of Cook’s travels, Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery invites players to engage in the enterprise of exploration and grants them the authoritative roles of ship captains, much like Cook or Nelson, whom Spooner would later feature as the subject of one of his games.3 The game’s rules emphasize the gravity of the role players accept in captaining their ships: “On this Vessel he [the player] is the Captain and he must navigate it a certain number of angles or bends”

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Figure 2.1 William Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery, wide shot Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

(Voyage Rules). Players select from five color-coded ships, and each ship follows its own zigzag track from its starting place at the bottom, up through the islands, and then back down to the finishing spots at the bottom of the game.

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All of the ships embark from the whimsically named “Mermaid Rock,” a designation in keeping with older cartographic traditions that deployed female figures on their maps to represent the threshold of the unknown, soon to be penetrated and dominated. Anne McClintock contends that “in myriad ways, women served as mediating and threshold figures by means of which men oriented themselves in space, as agents of power and agents of knowledge” (24). Mermaid Rock marks the threshold of the known world that players cross to plunge into the unknown and cross again when they return at the end of their journey. The game’s trajectory follows the traditional linear narrative of adventure fiction, Joseph Campbell’s quest narrative. For Franco Moretti, the “‘shape’ of the journey is the same: the single, one-dimensional line [.  .  .] in map after map” (58). It invites its own kind of narrative: “Penetrate; seize; leave (and if needed, destroy). It’s the spatial logic of colonialism; duplicated, and ‘naturalized,’ by the spatial logic of the one-dimensional plot” (Moretti 62). Characters in adventure narratives follow this line, leaving the metropole for the colonies or unknown lands to make discoveries, have encounters, gain wealth, and then return home to the metropole to share the boons, riches, and knowledge they acquired. As James Akerman posits, maps are practical tools to achieve an end: trace a narrative arc in space, and to provide a template for gaming. Yet these maps also “reveal the habits of thought of the people and the cultures that created and used them” (Akerman 61). As anthropologist Clifford Geertz has noted, “Seeing society as a collection of games means seeing it as a grand plurality of accepted conventions and appropriate procedures—tight, airless worlds of move and countermove” (“Blurred Genres” 25–26). Geertz’s vision supposes that games are coauthored with fellow players within a scripted world. In Spooner’s game, players traverse this textured space in the ship of their choice. The ships in the game are of three classes: the Red Rover ship of the line, the three frigates Prince of Orange, Green Emerald, and True Blue, and the Royal Purple sloop. The names suggest that all are English ships. This means that though personal profit may vary according to how many counters are collected or lost, in the end, whichever ship wins, the Empire itself always does since all players are its agents. Spooner could have chosen to distinguish ships by assigning them to rival imperial powers: the English, the French, the Dutch, and so on (as E. and M.A. Ogilvy do in their card game Outward Bound),4 but instead, he differentiates them by color and type of ship, all underneath the same flag. Even though they do not select their nation, players are afforded an unusual degree of agency in selecting their ship and their track. Typically, games in this period feature a single track, either a spiral or a map, and players would race one another along it by spinning a teetotum. Spooner himself would follow this plan in most of his other games, excepting

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The Travellers of Europe (1832). Voyage is a bit more idiosyncratic than the broader body of Spooner’s games because each player has his or her own narrative track, unique from fellow players, though there is some topical overlap. Movement in this game is keyed to players spinning a “Navigating Compass” to proceed along their own ship track. Like the captains they imitate, players have authority over their ships, but just as ships of the line were sent across the map at the dictates of the Royal Navy, so, too, child captains must go. The pace of movement depends on lucky or unlucky spins, much like real captains facing weather and other variables. As a result, players would have had to learn compliant obedience and cheerful adaptation to circumstances as they navigated their course along zigzag tracks for ten spots. The goal of the game is to race other players’ ships to the end while acquiring or losing counters along the way. Unlike other games, every single space enjoins players to either “take” or “pay”—there are no neutral spaces. Though the title identifies the voyage as one of “discovery,” there is little focus on the mapping, surveying, harvesting, or ethnography; indeed, there is no attempt to become acquainted with islanders or to discover anything about them beyond establishing a commercial relationship. Thus, the nature of “discovery” is commercial, rather than cultural, agricultural, cartographic, or even salvational. Player-captains’ duties are split between navigation and barter. Players adjust their economic situation in the game according to the content of the space. By landing on spaces where they acquire resources, such as gold or sugar, players gain counters, or they lose them due to illness, “boisterous weather,” such as water spouts, tempests, and whirlpools, or an accident with the ship. Due to “Adverse Gales,” a player might “Pay 1” (Voyage, Royal [1]). Each track features one black-outlined catastrophic event that requires them to “Pay 3” as they are ejected from the game. The winner will be the player who endures setbacks patiently, efficiently sailing ahead and taking advantage of opportunities to barter with friendly indigenous peoples, coping with losing profits when subduing indigenous opposition. To beat rivals, players had to extract the most resources and hurry home: in essence, Spooner presents the imperial project in miniature. To analyze the game, I will consider the topics, the pace and method of play, and the meaning of play. This game’s topics include exploration of island chains, trade, encounters with indigenous peoples, illness and disease, game hunting, sailing through storms, and fighting imperial rivals and pirates. The pace and method of play refer to how quickly players proceed along the board and what control they have over their experience in moving forward, being forced backward, being made to miss turns, being forced to start over, or being summarily dismissed from the game. Finally, the meaning of play in this game is less straightforward but is the most important element, in that it requires examination of

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the different kinds of narratives produced by the game and the likelihood of players encountering particular narratives in each iteration of play. This entails consideration of the kinds of attitudes or perceptions the gameplay offered and then reinforced across the board, played out along different tracks. In other words, was a player likely to interact with indigenous peoples along his/her particular track? If not, what is the likelihood that other players would have similar encounters in their parallel play? Players’ narratives can be mutually reinforcing and simultaneously constitutive. Finally, this element also involves analyzing how risks and rewards play out across the board and how those profits or losses connect the individual player to the larger Great Game of Empire. In this geographic race game, the topic is rooted in the setting. It traverses an unnamed chain of islands instead of tacking through any number of real locations where the Empire had imperial interests, from the West Indies to the East Indies, from Jamaica and Gibraltar to Madagascar, from Bermuda to the Galapagos to Sarawak. The unidentified island chain recalls the literary landscape of the adventure tale,5 as F.R.B. Whitehouse’s description indicates; players travel through an “imaginary archipelago, where are shown ships, some sailing, some wrecked; islands drawn in perspective show pictures of whirlpools, fights with natives and other adventures for the players” (64). Whitehouse’s characterization of “fights with natives” alongside “other adventures” suggests that natives are stock characters, rather than agents. Since the islands are unnamed, so are the natives, and this renders them disposable in Spooner’s game. The lack of identification of these islands is striking when considered in this context. Perhaps the islands are not explicitly named because their particularity is immaterial. The territory was important in terms of the goods and raw materials that could be extracted from its interior, rather than for its unique history or cultural practices. These islands represent exchange sites that allow players to win the game. As well, by refusing to name the islands, the territory in Spooner’s game becomes metonymic of all islands in the colonized and colonizable world, and the lessons can be widely applied. Spooner’s unidentified islands have been produced effectively as “blank spaces” awaiting imperial inscription. Yet in some sense, this is only an extension of the kind of imperial vision that saw all unclaimed territory as blank. Mary Martha Sherwood notes in her primer that Captain Cook inscribed names on the map that reflected his own experiences: “One bay he called ‘Poverty Bay,’ because the natives there gave him nothing he wanted. Another bay he called the ‘Bay of Plenty,’ because there the natives gave him all he wanted. The Maoris did not like these names, and no wonder. Poverty Bay is more fruitful than the Bay of Plenty” (123). Sherwood points out the disparity between the kind of “poverty” Cook sees when the Maoris refuse to trade on his terms, versus the fruitfulness of the bay itself, and the Maoris’ dislike for these imposed names, demonstrating that mapping is a subjective process. Maps also

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reflect the subjectivity of their explorers by bearing their names: a midcentury geography primer, when discussing the search for the Northwest Passage, suggests how adventure can lead to inscription: “They found out a great many straits and bays. And they named them after themselves. There is ‘Baffin’s Bay,’ and ‘Hudson’s Bay,’ and ‘Davis’ Straits’” (Kirby 37). Whatever identity these places had prior to Baffin, Hudson, or Davis, they become visible when inscribed on the map with the name of the explorer. As geographer J.B. Harley asserts, “Maps are authoritarian images [. . .] The map is never neutral” (247). Even though Spooner’s natives are unnamed, the map is still not neutral regarding the voyagers coming into this territory or the islanders who await them. Spooner’s decision not to name the islands and instead to present them as territory ripe for a “voyage of discovery” offers players the experience of Captain Cook in traversing unknown shores and encountering foreign peoples. Across the islands, the islanders seem interchangeable, without remarkable names or distinguishing features to differentiate them. The islanders are sometimes referred to as “Indians,” elsewhere as “natives,” and sometimes even as “savages.” On one occasion, an islander of distinction is depicted with a large hat and servants, watching the approach of one of the oncoming ships from a high bluff fringed with palms. Their clothing, weaponry, and deportment are contrasted with the uniformed, armed British bodies formed up in orderly ranks, executing their duties and following the commands of their superiors. The juxtaposition of “British” and unidentified Other means that in this game, national identity only goes one way, and the national story that is being told is not to do with the territory being explored, but the agents doing the exploring, mapping, and prospecting. The contact experience is negotiated through the pace and method of play. The pace and method of play established in the game are based on the organizing premise of the five different ships with their separate tracks, along which players move according to spins on the compass. The accompanying “Explanation of the Game” booklet notes that along each track, there are “dangers and adventures incidental to sailors” (Voyage “Explanation”). These include dangerous weather, animal hunting, encounters with indigenous peoples, navigational difficulties, and surviving illness and encounters with imperial rivals. The game begins with each player putting three counters into the pool, turning the compass, and moving forward along each angle, stopping at circular spots to “read what is there written, and comply with its command” (Voyage Rules 2). The language “comply with its command” sternly reinforces the premise of the game that places players within a hierarchical command structure, necessary for order and authority on a ship at sea. The order and authority even extend into the thoughts of the players. The game directs, “No Rings are to be read, or noticed, during a Game, but those at which a Player may have to stop” (Rules 3). This is a striking injunction, and whether

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or not children did comply with it is open for speculation. By design, however, this serves the mechanical purpose of preserving anticipation for future play, and it also instills obedience as a learned virtue through gameplay. It models that even what child players “notic[e]” is subject to the rules of the authority that governs their voyage. Each ship track faces one catastrophic event outlined in black, such as facing a whirlpool (True Blue), a storm (Royal Purple, Prince of Orange), a ship on fire (Green Emerald), or even the loss of a ship (Red Rover). These catastrophic events all relate to weather and sailing and are the only reasons formidable enough to oust someone from the game; even if players suffer illness, encounter dangerous animals, or engage in hostile exchanges with the indigenous, none of these end the game for them. But if players cannot control their ships in the face of dangerous weather or other challenges dictated by these spaces, they lose their ship and are “thrown out of the Game” (Voyage Rules 4). If players avoid ejection, they can win simply by being the last ship, or if more than one remains, whoever arrives at the endpoints marked “OUT” wins the game and “takes the contents of the Pool” (Rules). Winning involves luck, speed, accuracy (landing exactly on the spot), leading to glory and the personal profit represented by the pool. From the topic and the pace of play, let us turn to the meaning of play in the game. This involves considering the lessons players could learn from the gameplay and how the risks and rewards united the child’s success with the Empire’s. The five tracks on the game board share common features but also differ slightly based on the kind of ship. The choices vary among one ship of the line (a warship), three frigates, and one sloop. The choices suggest the kind of narrative the player could anticipate, much the way a sailor enlisting on a Royal Navy warship would have different expectations than one serving on a merchant ship. Since players would not have landed on every space in their particular narrative, the shape of their stories would be different every time. They might encounter indigenous peoples one time, though there are three opportunities on their particular track over the course of the game. However, fellow players would simultaneously be landing on spaces, and so the mini-narratives across all the ships’ stories, which include indigenous encounters, show the overarching master narratives that give meaning to the game. To analyze this meaning, I will present an overview of the master narratives that cut across all the ships and then group ships by class and break down each one’s capsule narrative. An overview shows the following master narratives across all five ships:6 • •

15 spots related to weather and sailing (including all of the ejection sites) 14 encounters with natives

60 • • • • •

Chapter 2 6 animal encounters 6 episodes of illness 4 encounters with rival ships (2 of them pirates) 3 spots for discovery and exploration 1 spot for finding treasure

This overview of the game’s narratives demonstrates that finding treasure is unlikely, but players will be preoccupied with the rudiments of sailing and weather, probably a very reasonable and practical prediction for sailors. Along with weather, native encounters have the most spots (15 and 14), the only two categories to cut across all five ship narratives more than once. While attention to navigation is unsurprising, encounters with natives receive more than three times as much attention as exploration and discovery or dealing with rivals, and more than twice the attention paid to animals or illness. Discovery and exploration have only three spots, surprising considering that these are unknown islands and that mapping and surveying were a big part of the imperial project.7 Outside the 1830s schoolrooms and nurseries, the Empire acquired the Falkland Islands and planted new colonies in New Zealand, and by the end of the century, they would occupy most South Pacific islands. The game’s title promises a “voyage of discovery,” yet shows little interest in mapping, charting, engaging with indigenous peoples, or studying flora and fauna. Spooner defines “discovery” instead in terms of conquest or commercial contact. Taking the ships one by one produces an outline of the micro-narratives offered according to the class of the ship. The most distinguished selection players could make would be Red Rover, identified in the game as “a ship of the line,” a sailing warship used during the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. It derives its name from naval battles in which ships faced off in two lines and fired at one another. These massive warships could accommodate hundreds of sailors and significant arms; one flagship of the line, Nelson’s HMS Victory, carried 110 guns into the Battle of Trafalgar. In this game, the narrative track for the warship Red Rover features three encounters with natives (30% of its story) and three engagements with rivals (two pirates and one unknown rival power) (again, 30%). The number of spaces allocated to combat with rivals and encounters with natives suggests the importance of these mini-narratives. While players might not always get the chance to land on the one space dedicated to shooting buffalo (Voyage Red [4]), for instance, it is likely that they would have encountered indigenous peoples at least once over the ten spaces, as well as battled pirates or an imperial rival. Perhaps because of the ship’s stature, its officers are “invited on Shore, by a Native Prince” (Voyage Red [1]), but on the following space, players are “Treacherously attacked by the Indians” ([2]). In characterizing the attack and attackers as “treacherous,” Spooner casts the Indians as

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untrustworthy and duplicitous, thereby excusing the way captains interact with them across the game narratives. “Treacherou[s]” suggests that the islanders have broken faith and failed to comply with the voyagers’ expectations or to play the roles the voyagers assign them. Since games promote fair play, this imputed treachery would be roundly condemned since it threatened the social contract of the game world. Postcolonial audiences, however, may reflect on whose game it is and who made the rules. Considered from this perspective, the islanders’ attack may be a form of self-defense. Players have to “Pay 2,” yet the indigenous pay as well since players subsequently steal their canoes to travel downriver. Whatever the class of the ship, whenever players interact with the islanders, it is an unequal contest. Players wanting a different set of adventures may have chosen one of the three frigates offered in the game. These small, fast warships with three masts were in use at the same period and commonly carried fewer guns than a ship of the line (about 30–40). While a frigate could not stand against a larger and more powerful ship of the line, its size and maneuverability meant that it could manage quick escapes, so they were useful scouts or escorts to merchant convoys worried about pirates. Those narratives emerge for frigates in the game: The Prince of Orange, The True Blue, and The Green Emerald. The fact that there are three frigates to choose from, whereas there is only one ship of the line and one sloop, suggests that these are perhaps more common ships for players to aspire to, or that Spooner recommends them. In keeping with its size and role, the Prince of Orange frigate faces more sailing-based challenges than the larger Red Rover. It encounters dangerous weather twice and navigates carefully to avoid sand banks and rocks (Voyage Orange [1, 8–10]). Since this is roughly 40% of the ship’s narrative, Prince players would have spent time experiencing the trials of navigation in this narrative.8 The other half of the narrative includes five possible native encounters (three friendly and two hostile). The friendly encounters involve moments of cultural exchange: the Prince sailors are invited to see an Indian war dance ([2]), and they subsequently “Astonish the Natives by Shooting an Elephant” ([4]). These shock-and-awe tactics portray the British imperialist as someone whose authority and dominion over wild animals befit him as a protector of the indigenous peoples. After leaving the “friendly Indians,” Prince players encounter openly hostile peoples who kill one of the sailors. In retaliation, “the Sailors burn their Huts” ([6]) (Figure 2.2). Following this, “Indians from a City” attempt to seize their ship ([7]) (Figure 2.3). Players get no further background about this chain of events, but the precedent, of course, is Captain Cook’s death.9 After his expedition’s cutter was stolen in Erromango, Cook planned to take the chief hostage; in the ensuing scuffle, he shot an islander, and the rest reacted with swift violence. While it might not be entirely fair to demand such a detailed

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Figure 2.2 Spooner’s Voyage detail: burning huts Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

explanation or acknowledgment of this precedent, it is important to note Spooner’s assumption that players will accept his narrative sequence without question. Is the attempt to seize the ship part of a native uprising? An act of reprisal for other ships’ depredations? By leaving out the islanders’ side of the affair, Spooner suggests that they might not have one, or if they do, that it is expedient to overlook it. Like the islands themselves, these islanders are rendered blank and inscrutable. The Indians’ attempt to seize the ship is simply presented as an act of theft, and in a game requiring fair play, this act characterizes the islanders as not following the rules of the Great Game. In the absence of more information about why the sailors burn the huts, players may turn to the image. As Peter Hunt says, “Obviously there is no way in which pictures can ‘simply’ illustrate what the words say; they must interpret them” (177). An interpretation of this image reveals the distress

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of miniscule black figures who throw up their hands in the face of flaming huts while the player’s ship floats calmly and safely off shore. As Hunt’s analysis of children’s picture books has shown, “Sometimes an absence of words would have provided a ‘gap’ which takes intelligence and imagination to fill” (185). Here, that gap is understanding how the ship’s calm in the face of the villagers’ distress makes the act seem routine, but the nature of the ship’s calm seems cold by contrast. How did the officers who authorized it explain such destruction? The matter-of-fact depiction of it here is echoed in a mid-century geography primer for a child audience: Once there were only black people in Australia, and no white; now there are many white and few black, and it is probable that soon there will be NO black people, but only white. Ever since the white people began to settle there, the black people have been dying away very fast: for the white people have taken away the lands where the blacks used to hunt, and have filled them with their sheep and cattle. (Mortimer 41) Here, the indigenous Australians “d[ie] away very fast” before the march of imperial progress. The text does not mourn their loss, but instead uses italicized adverbs “soon” and “now” to fuel rhetorical urgency for a state in which there are “NO black people.” These temporal markers also reflect the methodology of the gameplay, proceeding space by space. The disappearance of “black people” in the primer evacuates space so that it can be “filled” with the colonists’ sheep and cattle, rendering it legible and meaningful within an imperial network. Likewise, the destruction of the village in Voyage makes the territory blank, ready for imperial inscription. In both instances of violent contact in the game, players must “Pay” for these encounters since this violence presumably will not create good trading partners, or in recognition of the moral problem the violence represents. In the first instance, “A Man Killed by the Savages, the Sailors burn their Huts” (Voyage Orange [6]), the man’s death and the subsequent destruction mean that players “Pay 2,” whereas when “Indians from a City attempt to Seize the Ship,” players only “Pay 1” ([7]). This payment acknowledges both the ruined trade relationship and any resources expended to stop the Indians from seizing the ship. It also indicates the unequal value assigned to indigenous lives and property. The destruction of a village suggested by “burn their Huts” means that players “Pay 2,” which is equivalent to elsewhere in the game when a “Captain dies and is buried on a small island” (Voyage Red [6]). In this payment equation, one man’s life is equivalent to the loss of a village and potentially several human lives. The game does not explore the narrative sequence for the villagers followed by this violent destruction. What will they do now with their stores of food, clothing, and tools destroyed? Did they lose fishing equipment, and will they be able to fish, hunt, or even defend themselves from wild beasts? Will their elderly

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and infant members suffer from exposure to rain, wind, and storms until new housing is built? The game does not acknowledge or follow this narrative track, and this gap underscores that the contact zone narrative is about the imperialists, not those in their path. Though players probably would not have participated in all the events in the chain of violence, 20% of the spots in this narrative involve hostile contact, balanced by 20% involving positive contact. The split indicates that encounters with indigenous peoples had an even chance of being violent and hostile, or friendly and profitable, much like the split in the Rover narrative. The stakes of this imperial mindset are important and far-reaching. The generation who played Spooner’s game and absorbed these attitudes toward indigenous peoples would rule during the high imperial period. A six-year-old who played Spooner’s game, for example, would be in his or her 60s by the end of the century and at the highest position of influence in any number of roles: an elder statesman crafting legislation, a prosperous merchant looking for developing markets, a clerk in a colonial office, a respected teacher sharing lessons or writing primers, a soldier in a colonial regiment, a grandparent offering vocational advice to a public school boy, a missionary instructing colonial children and showing them their place on a globe. This is key because by the end of the century, the invention of the “repeating rifle, the rapid-fire maxim gun, and the explosive field artillery shell all made it relatively inexpensive for a handful of British soldiers to defeat a non-European enemy that greatly outnumbered them” (Parsons 26). In 1893, 50 British South African police armed with six maxim guns killed 3000 Ndebele warriors armed only with shields and spears in an hour and a half (Parsons 72). As well, at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, the British killed 11,000 Sudanese warriors in five hours, losing only 20 British and Egyptian soldiers. Weapons technology did not make this possible; the perception of the indigenous did. Technology facilitated it, but the attitude permitting it was already crafted a generation earlier in games like Spooner’s. In A Voyage, encounters with natives are just one more obstacle to overcome to win the game. Like the Prince, the Green Emerald frigate also grapples with dangerous weather (Voyage Green [1–2]) and has two encounters with natives (both involve bartering for gold) ([4–5]). Emerald players also face the crew’s illness (two spots) ([6–7]) and sailing concerns, such as a fire on board and the need to caulk the ship ([3, 8]). They also reserve a spot to explore the island, perhaps with an eye toward uncovering future resources given the focus on bartering for gold along this track. This also fits the use of a frigate as a scout, perhaps as part of a larger convoy. As a result, the possible narratives for this Green Emerald player are the most diverse overall, though the contact with the indigenous peoples is the least so. On the Emerald’s track, encounters with indigenous peoples are only concerned with bartering for gold. This differs from the Orange track, where players encountered two sets of peoples who were alternately friendly and hostile, or the Rover scenario in which islanders

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became “treacherous.” On the Emerald’s track, the mini-narrative of bartering with the indigenous is 20% of the track. It is possible that players could both “Land & Barter for gold dust” ([4]) and then go on to “Find the Natives Collecting gold from a River” ([5]) (Figure 2.3). Players “take” in all of these instances. Spooner casts interactions with indigenous peoples solely in terms of profit and trade. This profitable, though unequal, bartering generates narrative excitement over personal profit.10 Spooner does not invent this representation of barter, but reflects common practices of the East India Company, which had been in business since breaking the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade in 1600. By the start of the nineteenth century, trade had become part of the essential machinery of the Empire, and its agents were elevated to heroic status in works such as Priscilla Wakefield’s Sketches of Human Manners [1807]. A Quaker philanthropist and author of children’s geography and travel books targeting the same demographic as Spooner’s game, Wakefield characterized commerce as a divinely ordained means of “bringing all [nations] to one standard of truth and purity. [. . .] It has already tended to civilize the ferocious natives, to enlighten the ignorant, and to improve the condition of all” (189). Applying Wakefield’s economy to Spooner’s game means that the “ferocious” islanders exchange their goods and labor for enlightenment and civilization. The game bears out that these benefits had to be forcefully represented. To justify these methods, the national character of the merchant and trader is important. Mary F.E. Boscawen juxtaposes the character of imperial rival France and “the bloody conquests of her Emperor Napoleon” with Britain’s “more peaceful and praiseworthy glories of trade, manufacture and discovery” (479). As represented to child readers, the “peaceful and praiseworthy glories of trade” present a commercial model circulating moral as well as material benefits.11 The British child gains tea, muslin, sugar, coffee, cotton, rice, and gold, and the West Indians, Indians, South Americans, or Africans “receive benefits from

Figure 2.3 Spooner’s Voyage detail: bartering Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

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us: a mutual dependence, that binds all mankind in the link of brotherhood” (Wakefield Sketches 190). Both these primers equate British culture with the tangible goods traders extract, giving it real value. The value of these exchanges made the risks worth it. Players who chose the final frigate, the True Blue, experience those risks in three spots featuring sailing difficulties: being becalmed, stuck in a fog, or the more exciting “danger from a Whirlpool” (Voyage True [6, 9, 10]), much like the Orange and the Emerald. True players also confronted the possibility of two native encounters. Like the Emerald, these involve an opportunity for barter ([1]), and similar to the Red Rover and the Prince of Orange, they also include an attack ([2]). This means that players could have seen the indigenous in both a transactional and hostile context, or that they may, based on sheer luck, have met them in only one context. The random nature of this contact, however, is contrasted with the sequencing setting up the attack. True players begin their game “Bartering with Natives” ([1]), for which they “Take 2,” indicating that they are profiting, perhaps unduly, from this scene of exchange. This is immediately followed by “The Natives attack the boats” ([2]), a scenario reminiscent of Cook’s difficulties in the final battle that ended his life (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4 Spooner’s Voyage detail: attacking the boats Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

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The sequence suggests that the islanders may not be satisfied with the terms of the transaction, regardless of the intangible benefits that accompany it, and they fight back against the unequal barter. Players must “Pay 1” in response to the attack, acknowledging that resources are being spent and that an opportunity for a favorable trade relationship, such as the one established on the Green Emerald track, is being lost. In terms of profit and loss, native resistance to this unequal trade relationship is successful since the players must “Pay 1.” Yet the illustration for the attack features dire consequences: the ship fires a barrage at the shore over the heads of soldiers in a longboat who are also firing at islanders armed only with spears and bows and arrows. This is an important image that establishes a fixed binary for contact zone engagements. Perry Nodelman declares, “As with most of the other information pictures communicate, they imply attitudes only through systems of signification that work to create specific expectations in viewers” (42). Though the islanders pay with their lives, players lose only a potential trading port. The scale is critically imbalanced. This sequence of unequal barter, indigenous resistance, and then imperial reprisal is prescient of events that would happen when the young game players might be old enough to serve as young soldiers or sailors or merchants. Timothy Parsons discusses how “outraged African traders” attacked British steamers in the Niger Delta in the 1850s, and “[u]nwilling to tolerate such a flagrant violation of the principles of free trade,” British palm oil traders requested military support from the British government (65). In the ensuing conflict, a “Royal Navy gunboat destroyed the offending villages and by the 1870s armed steamers patrolled the river to discourage African attempts to reassert their commercial monopoly” (Parsons 65). Parsons’ narration of these events follows Spooner’s game track with prescient accuracy, reinforcing the importance of protecting “free” trade and enforcing commercial relationships, no matter how unequal they were for indigenous peoples and no matter what resistance they expressed. Spooner’s game thus captures how trade existed in a symbiotic relationship with military might and metropolitan authority. Linda Colley explains, “Trade was not only an indispensable part of the British economy, but also vital for the state’s revenue and naval power. In return, traders depended on the state for the maintenance of civil order, for sympathetic legislation, for protection in peace and war, and for access to captive markets overseas” (71). Child players would have been flush with profit from these exchanges, benefitting personally in the board game just like their merchant and captain analogues. The method of “take” reinforced by military power is significant because it establishes a model of interaction, which could be applied to any number of situations when the players came of age, including when gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, followed by diamonds in Africa in 1867. The formative effect of early gameplay cannot be underestimated; while only some of the players would go on to work in colonial areas, all

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would be affected by their Empire, and all would be presented with commercial opportunities in their local markets. These markets were contact zones where consumers’ capital supported imperial activity. As Wakefield explained, the child consumer depended on “his fellow-creatures who inhabit countries beyond the ocean” (Wakefield Sketches 190). This was especially true after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, when Britain depended on “buy[ing] her food from the vast wheatlands and pastures of America and Australia” (Burnett 192). Spooner’s narrative of “discovery” maps the origins of those profitable commercial exchanges, offering a space to rehearse these practices.12 The final ship selection, the Royal Purple sloop, was a class below the frigate, a single-masted vessel that could mount 20 guns, also known as a “sloop of war,” a “corvette,” and, in contemporary usage, a “cutter.” These ships served as dispatchers among battle fleets and as armed escorts for merchant ships. In the War of 1812, they were used “with great distinction against superior British foes in the Atlantic Ocean and on the Great Lakes” (“Corvette”). In this game, the Royal Purple sloop has the most balanced narrative: two spots for storms ([1, 3]), two encounters with islanders ([5–6]), two spots for sickness among the crew ([7–8]), and one spot each for the discovery of treasure ([9]) and an encounter with a rival vessel ([10]). In both the encounters with natives and the crew’s sickness, mini-narratives link the spaces. Because of “Great Sickness among the Crew,” players must “Pay 2,” proceeding to the following space, “Crew on Shore to recover their health” and “Pay 1” (Voyage Royal [7–8]). Though players may not have hit both spots, the sequence reinforces that sickness is costly. Following the trend of the other ship narratives, Royal adopts the “take-or-pay” imperial economic model in native encounters. When the ship “Break[s] through a bridge of ropes, & get[s] into the open Sea” (Voyage Royal 5), players “Take 2” for discovering a new route, disregarding the depicted distress of the indigenous peoples who crafted and constructed this bridge between islands for their own purposes. Spooner depicts the islanders fleeing in distress as the ship breaks through their bridge, throwing their arms in the air. Their utility and the importance of their bridge are subordinate to the ship’s goal to access the open sea swiftly. In Spooner’s island economy, “the unrestricted flow of commerce” upon which the British Empire depended (Parsons 23) trumps indigenous culture. For the islanders, the bridge connected them to one another and was part of the structure of their community, but for the Royal crew, the bridge impedes efficient trade. By “Tak[ing] 2” for the destruction of the bridge, the crew privileges their interests over the islanders’, and so do the players who move their pieces and rehearse this choice. This is what J.S. Bratton means when discussing how Victorian and Edwardian adventure tales fostered a “profoundly personal and conscious commitment to the ideology” (74). Games encourage players to make a “conscious

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commitment” by following the rules without regard for islanders’ resistance or distress within the gamed world.13 By prioritizing players’ goal as time-through-space, hastening along the track, rather than time-in-space, investing in problem-solving or building relationships with the indigenous, the game reveals its agenda: winning the game by advancing quickly through encounters in which natives must “pay.” The game follows the paradigm for unequal barter and trade established in the pages of fiction, especially those in island settings. Prospero wrests control of the island from Caliban and his mother Sycorax, Crusoe commands Friday as easily as he does the flora and fauna of the island, and the Swiss family actively take ownership of their island and its resources, as do characters in later Robinsonades, such as Marryat’s Masterman Ready or Ballantyne’s eager trio of Coral Island lads. The bartering staged on the board represents pure profit from the unequal brokering with the islanders. In these interactions, players do not “Pay 1” and “Take 2,” absorbing a more modest gain and ensuring that the islanders are recompensed; instead, they simply “Take,” backed by considerable imperial power and authority.14 This clearly elucidates that trade is designed to benefit the child player as a representative of the interests of the Empire. Though the game does not characterize these imbalanced transactions as swindles, the benefits seem to be all on the imperialists’ side of the table “because of the disparities in their bargaining positions” (Porter Lion’s Share 9). In the game, however, there is no time for a moral pause to consider whether it is honorable to gouge these island laborers and no means for players to choose how much to take or how much to profit. They must simply follow the rules and race on. Spooner’s game categorizes the contact zone as a series of commercial exchanges in which moral questions were secondary to commercial goals, suggesting that the islanders are obstacles, rather than equal players. The responses the game directs players to make to indigenous resistance show that the players themselves pay only nominally, and that the islanders are the ones who actually pay a costly price for resistance by losing control over their natural resources, seeing their villages destroyed, or even experiencing large-scale loss of life. The moral right of the players to take from the islanders is underscored when the islanders fail to play by the rules of the Great Game by resisting unequal trade. This formulation illustrates Said’s contention that “neither imperialism nor colonialism is a simple act of accumulation and acquisition. Both are supported and perhaps even impelled by impressive ideological formations that include notions that certain territories and people require and beseech domination” (Culture and Imperialism 9). In Spooner’s game, the imperial narrative that began with the omission of island names continues with unequal transactions and a matter-of-fact attitude about loss of indigenous property and life. As a cartographic product, Spooner’s game shares a genealogy with maps. That family resemblance includes methodologies that turn cartographic

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productions into instruments of power, as spatial theorist J.B.  Harley argues: “To those who have strength in the world shall be added strength in the map. Using all the tricks of the cartographic trade—size of symbol, thickness of line, height of lettering, hatching and shading, the addition of color—we can trace this reinforcing tendency in innumerable European maps” (237–38). Maps express power over territories and the people within them in the ways that Harley outlines above and as Said and McClintock detail in their work. This also occurs in the representational practices of mapping: “blank” spaces as well as the use of red in outlining British territories on maps of the world. This enables “stretching the short, tight, skin of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire” (86), which Benedict Anderson describes so well. Though the power of maps to contain, control, and marginalize indigenous peoples has been an important focus in postcolonial theory and geography, what has been overlooked is map-based games and their shaping of young players’ consciousness. Spooner’s game fosters an imperialist mindset regarding the contact zone and the territories and peoples who can be made to pay for the pleasure of the English child’s play.

The Transformative Power of Trade in John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions John Betts was one of the major players in the children’s educational gaming market during his long career spanning the 1830s, when he published Betts’ Geographical Pastime: Europe Delineated [c. 1830] (Children’s Books 43), through the mid-1870s, when his work was taken over by George Philip & Son (Dekker 276–278).15 Ranging from board games and puzzles to cards and atlases, his products had a practical, educational emphasis, instructing children in astronomy, grammar, music, the Bible, art history, and literature. Betts’ games also tackled topics like tiger hunts, London vehicles, the Royal Zoological Gardens, British sovereigns, and trades. He himself calls the games “invaluable” for “private education; and as a relaxation, in scholastic establishments. They are already in extensive use, amongst the upper classes, both in this country, and in the colonies” (instruction book for A Tour). He concludes confidently, stating, “The demand for these games (which has now reached the TWELFTH THOUSAND) may be regarded as some criterion of the estimation in which they are held.” The diversity of his catalogue and the educational emphasis he notes in the instruction book above demonstrate that Betts knew his audience. Andrew O’Malley observes that for middle-class parents of the period, “Knowledge of geography, and specifically of the raw materials, resources, and agricultural conditions of a given country, was of increasing importance at a time of colonial expansion and broadening international commerce” (108). Betts’ products were pitched to the middle-class audience interested in advancement through education and to an upper

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class already confident of its position. At the higher end, Betts’ Family Atlas, engraved on steel with 64 maps and an index of 55,000 names, sold for £3, 3s. At the lower end, card games taught spelling, reading, multiplication, and French. Betts is best known now for his production of globes, especially a line of collapsible, portable ones sold with slim cases for easy transport. As Gillian Hill explains, “A common feature of the nineteenth-century schoolroom was the globe. A good one could be extremely expensive, and various attempts were made to produce acceptable cheap alternatives” (19). John Betts’ Portable Globe (1852) could be collapsed or expanded “in a similar manner to an umbrella” using drawstrings (Catalogue 179). Learners could command the world for 12s, 6d (on washable patent leather cloth for 15s).16 The reach of Betts’ products can be measured in both space and time in the global market. Collected at the Victorian and Albert Museum, the Library of Congress, and other institutions, in his own time, Betts’ works circled the globe he constructed. In 1874, his Portable Globe, advertised at four feet in circumference, was marketed as “well adapted for educational purposes” and “may be sent to the most distant parts without risk, and at trifling cost” ([Betts advertisement] Bookseller 130). That appears to have been the case for Mary Richard, wife of a missionary in China, who entered a home in the 1870s “with a Betts portable globe to demonstrate Earth’s sphericity to women and girl children” (Seton 130). In another instance, in 1882, a missionary assigned to northern India purchased a Betts’ globe in Bombay and used it, as Sumathi Ramaswami puts it, “to put natives in their place—as subjects of a vast British Empire that was also the Empire of Christ” (354).17 The missionary reported, “The globe and what it tells excited breathless interest.  .  . . The globe speaks for itself as to the power of England and Christian Nations in general” (qtd in Ramaswamy 354). These valuable anecdotal accounts of how Betts’ cartographic products were used show how his cartography became an instrument of power to forcefully map colonized subjects and render them “breathless” in contemplation of that power. Acknowledging A Tour’s place within Betts’ broad educational catalogue, carefully marketed to schools and parents at various price points, offers a starting place for analysis since it suggests both intent and usage. Betts’ 13-page catalogue at the end of the instruction booklet for A Tour lists at least three different maps of England and Wales (standard, geological, and “railway and commercial”), one of Scotland, one of Ireland, maps of India and Palestine, and a London atlas. Betts also sold a “Large Educational Map of Europe” (with roller for 10 s, 6d) as a must-have “for every village school,” as well as four-penny world maps and emigration maps (for the United States, South Wales, New Zealand, Western Australia, and Southeastern Australia). In marketing to schoolrooms, Betts was in the vanguard of publishing. Robert McDonald notes that “from as early as 1878 the Education Department had asked school inspectors to encourage interest in British colonies and foreign possessions; by

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1890 the Elementary School Code specifically recommended study of the Empire” (63). Betts’ body of work reveals that he was already actively doing this work at mid-century. Published roughly 20 years after Spooner’s island game, John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions [c. 1855]18 focuses not on hypothetical islands, but on Britain’s actual colonies and “possessions (Figure 2.5).”

Figure 2.5 John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions, wide shot Credit line: Published with permission of Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library

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Patrick Brantlinger calls it “one of numerous popular entertainments that brought the empire into middle-class parlors” (“Imperialism” 128). Betts adopts the design of a round game with a central medallion showcasing London surrounded by circular bands featuring scenes from the colonies. Previously, Betts had adopted a similar, though less detailed, format for his Crystal Palace game The Royal Game of the Gathering of Nations [1851], a round game celebrating the displays from locomotives to urns to architecture. As his career went on, Betts adopted more traditional cartographic forms; he used a simple map for his Voyage Round the World [1874]. Its lack of illustration and embellishment makes it resemble the earliest eighteenth-century map board games. Though a round game, A Tour uses a masthead, footer, and corner scenes to square off the edges and present a solid rectangular appearance. Calling such formal, rigid framing “strictly defined boundaries,” Perry Nodelman observes that looking through these frames “implies detachment and objectivity, for the world we see through a frame is separate from our own world, marked off for us to look at” (50). The masthead and footer frame the game, promoting what Chu-chueh Cheng calls an “ocular rhetoric”19 about the British Empire as a powerful maritime force (Figure 2.6). Flanked by ships, a tableau of central figures appears—Jack Tar grasping the Union Jack, reclining Neptune with his trident, and Britannia securing the flag, lion at her side. Neptune’s presence endorses Britain as heir of the Greek and Roman Empires; as indicated by his posture of repose, his own power is in decline or has been ceded to the standing icons Britannia and Jack Tar, who display alertness and authority. Backed by the stern of a ship, ornamented with a gold cross and flying British colors, the figures are guarded by two cannons, subtly emphasizing that ruling the seas requires the use, or at least the show, of force. With her gleaming golden breastplate, Britannia and the robust Jack Tar map a new kind of mythology about British power and authority. Betts notably chooses a woman and a common man, instead of the alternatives of a queen, an admiral, or a line of officers. The woman represents

Figure 2.6 Betts’ A Tour detail: masthead Credit line: Published with permission of Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library

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the mythologized body of Britain, and along with Neptune, this is a nod to the earlier cartographic tradition in which maps through the seventeenth century featured fantastical creatures, such as unicorns, monsters, and headless people, in their margins (Hill 37). As the only potentially real person pictured, Jack Tar is a more interesting choice, a commoner serving and protecting Britannia, his home and nation. In contrast to what a line of officers would signify, his presence suggests that naval might is not exclusively military, acknowledging merchant sailors. By grouping these iconic figures with their defensive cannons and their ships, Betts grounds the Empire’s might in its naval power, sanctioned by a Christian cross. Since Betts frames his “Tour” with these vigilant, mythic icons, their gravity and careful guardianship signal players that this gamed journey is no pleasure trip for dilettantes. Jane Doonan’s visual research urges viewers to take a “crucial step” beyond images’ representational qualities to “how pictures are able to express and metaphorically display what cannot be pictured directly—ideas, moods, abstract notions and qualities” (8). Betts’ “metaphori[c] display” or “ocular rhetoric” of mythic icons in the masthead promotes abstractions about British greatness. Mirroring the masthead, the footer stretches the length of the game, divided into five representative imperial tableaux: England, India, Canada, Africa, and Australia. The first scene features England, significant given that Western readers begin on the left side. Thus, England is the start of the world, granted pride of place, and set up in opposition to its antipodes on the game and on the map, with Australia at the far end. In between, India, Canada, and Africa appear with representative animals and peoples. In contrast to England, the colonial scenes take place outside, and animals are defining identifiers. England, on the other hand, is identified by products: statuary, ship masts, smokestack, globe, and stacks of books. These symbols of arts, manufactures, industry, scholarship, and militarism show the broad reach and power of England and underscore its fitness as a ruling power. The use of careful framing and bordering in these images supports Nodelman’s claim that “books which take an objective, unemotional view of the events they describe often have frames around all their pictures” (51). This objective, almost scientific perspective seems to be Betts’ aim, as he presents a very subjective argument. Along with the masthead, the footer produces the ocular rhetoric that Britain is the heir to classical empires, with the knowledge and naval might to command and rule its “Colonies and Foreign Possessions.” As the title suggests, the game is interested in a route through the world that touches on British colonies; the significance of this carefully parsed topic is that it does not attempt to represent the world as a whole, a project Betts had accomplished in his other maps as well as in his innovative globes. Instead, this game appropriates only red-inked parts of the world and places them within the frame of the game, setting up a type of alternative geographic “worlding” privileging those areas within

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the imperial network. Focusing only on British colonies showed players what belonged to them, but also what they could glean from these areas in terms of commodities and trade. In mapping an exclusive imperial network, Betts highlights territory acquired from imperial rivals in South Africa, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, the West Indies, and Canada. He also acknowledges areas discovered by other nations, such as Australia and Bermuda, later successfully colonized by the British. No matter how small they are, these territories acquire significance within the imperial network, as evidenced by the first stop at Heligoland. Noting that it formerly belonged to the Danes, Betts qualifies the need to stop since some of the young travelers “might not have known that Great Britain can boast these possessions” (A Tour 3). The division of the world by rival imperial powers became a reality at the end of the century, when the scramble for Africa began and European nations vied for control of the continent at the Berlin partition in 1884, but this game presents a prescient look at how the scramble was already at work. South America “is divided amongst several of the European nations, viz., England, France, Holland, and Portugal” (18). These divisions show that territory can be sliced, parsed, and placed in display boxes, a move reflected in the organization of the game board. The game has 37 spaces distributed around three circular bands surrounding a central medallion featuring London. Play begins at the outer band, portioned into England (1–2), Gibraltar (3), Africa (4–6), and India (7–12).20 Moving to the middle band, the player visits Australia (16–22), the Falklands, South America, the islands of the West Indies, and Bermuda (23–29). Finally, the inner band features stops in Canada (30–36) before the player moves to London, the winning central space (37). On this trajectory, the world begins and ends with England, following the adventure narrative model in which heroes depart from the mother country seeking adventure, riches, and fame and then return home to share the resources, raw materials, and experiences with the metropole. Betts’ choice of a mother and son in the central medallion reflects the audience for his wares and offers a model for parental introduction to the commercial and imperial world. An analysis of the stops on the game board indicates that imperial interest is evenly divided among Canada and India, with six stops each, and Australia, with seven. Africa garners three stops, perhaps because British claims there were not as extensive at this point or because the territory’s resources were not regarded as significant compared to other colonies. Unlike India, the British were not willing to control the entire continent, and this is why they agreed to divide it with European rivals at the Berlin conference (Parsons 71). Yet the three stops in Africa are equivalent to the three stops in England, rendering this island kingdom roughly equivalent to an entire continent and thereby elevating its importance. England’s importance is further underscored by its position at the

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beginning and the end of the track and by its central placement in the medallion. These choices promote an ocular rhetoric supporting imperial power. As the game begins, players choose “travellers” or markers, spin the teetotum, advance to a numbered space, hear the description keyed to that space, follow the associated directions, and continue until “one of them arrives at No. 37 (the British Metropolis), and thus wins the game” (A Tour 24). At a glance, the topical divisions of the board (and the Empire) privilege the activities of trade in this “tour” of British colonies: • • • •

12 spaces for trading 9 spaces for ships at sea 4 spaces for hunting 4 spaces for battle scenes

Included within the 12 spaces devoted to trade are three spaces, each devoted to raising livestock, harvesting crops, panning for gold, and then loading all of these harvested resources and trade goods onto ships. These spaces constitute roughly 32%, a third of the total spaces on the imperial tour, showing that it is less about the sites in those spaces than it is about what can be extracted from them. Trade plays a central role in the narrative Betts tells about the British Empire. Beyond those 12 spaces explicitly focused on harvest and trade, other spaces on the board support trade as well. The four spaces focusing on hunting are germane to trade since this pursuit of animals also results in tradable goods, satisfying a fancy for feathers to trim bonnets, furs to warm elegant shoulders, trophies to adorn lodge walls, and ivories to garnish accessories. Some of the scenes of battle, combat, and those featuring wounded soldiers underscore the military’s role in protecting trade, similar to Spooner’s game. Timothy Parsons notes that by the end of the century, “the ‘new’ imperialism in Africa can be interpreted as a speculative effort by Britain and the other imperial powers to restructure African societies to make them more receptive to European trade and investment” (70). In homage to Britain’s naval might, as established in the masthead, nine spaces (roughly 24%) focus on images of ships at sea; they can be spotted beside lighthouses or anchored beside forts or sailing into fine harbors. In Betts’ game, some or all of these ship spaces could certainly be considered part of that earlier 32% total for spaces related to trade. This would result in a considerably higher number (over 50%) of the spaces on the board representing or supporting trade and related activities. I have not included them in the trade count, but shipping goods throughout the colonies and defending the shipping lanes were an important part of the commercial story. Profits from trade kept taxes down, and “mercantile marine sailors were a ready supply for the British Royal Navy which by mid-eighteenth century had expanded to need a

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shipboard population of more than 40,000 men in wartime” (Colley 65). They were the force behind the benevolent face of Empire. For Betts, this trade is a means of transformation. His round map, itself an alternative to a traditional cartographic form, also licenses an alternative vision of how the colonial world can be defined and transformed through trade relationships. Though the reality framing Betts’ game is imperial profit from trade, he departs from Spooner’s brutish take-orpay brand of contact zone economics. Instead, Betts’ focus is on what harvesting, mining, and gathering will produce for colonial civic life. In A Tour, Betts avoids discussions of profit, instead focusing on the benefits a colony like India enjoys from a commercial relationship, how its cities have flourished and institutions for science, education, and benevolence have developed there as a result.21 Though Betts does not mention how colonization of the subcontinent has benefited the Empire, Timothy Parsons estimates that “roughly 85 percent of India’s imports in the 1880s and 1890s came from Britain, which amounted to almost 20 percent of all British foreign exports during the period. [. . .] Britain’s spinning and weaving industries, which had great difficulty keeping up with their more modern European competitors, were particularly dependent on Indian markets” (50). This market was in the developmental stages in the 1850s, but Betts focuses on the way trade benefits the colony instead of the metropole, creating a benevolent public face for the imperial project. That public face was important not only to market the Empire and its expansion to the citizens of the metropole but also to differentiate English colonialism from its European and American rivals. The first portion of this analysis of Betts’ game traces how he represents trade and the role it plays in galvanizing colonial transformation from raw wilderness with threatening animals into orderly, well-planned cities and fruitful plantations. Disruptions to this process of transformation come not from natural disasters or civil unrest but in the form of pirates and imperial rivals. Pirates threaten orderly trade by engaging in unfair play, an especially important concept in the context of the game. Imperial rivals also represent a threat because they are often identified as trading in improper and immoral commerce with slaves. The analysis concludes, as does the game, with the center space featuring London as the source and the end of trade. By placing the metropole in the center, Betts figures it as the animating heart, or engine, necessary for promoting this transformation. Transformed new urban centers in the colonies feature British cultural institutions protected by stalwart fortifications. These are consistently marked from the start of the game at Gibraltar, “considered the most impregnable in the world,” to the forts in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, and Quebec. Calcutta, for example, “is defended by Fort William, a fortress of great strength, and said to be capable of containing a garrison of nearly 20,000 men” (A Tour 11). The next sentence characterizes the city as

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“a place of great trade, and many of the merchants, both European and native, are wealthy; and the mansions of these, and of individuals high in rank, are very splendid” (11). The sentence order suggests that the fortifications protect and foster the city’s trade, then shelter the display of its subsequent wealth in splendid homes. Wealth earned through production and trade pours back into the colony. This is the mythic narrative of the transformative nature of imperial power that Betts builds in the game. The description continues with the “magnificent building” of the Government House, the Town Hall, Supreme Court, and government offices, rendering a “very imposing” scene (11). Finally, Betts adds that “Calcutta can also boast of numerous scientific, educational, benevolent, and other institutions” (11). In Betts’ narrative, the benefits that flow from protected trade are not limited to personal, private wealth, but extend to civil institutions and governance (another way to protect trade along with the military presence in the harbor) as well. Furthermore, the profits enrich the cities morally and culturally by encouraging the flourishing of science, education, and benevolent institutions. This mapping of Calcutta as a rich center for trade, guarded by a fortress and enlightened by British cultural institutions, reflects the masthead’s ocular rhetoric in which Jack Tar and the cannons guard Britannia, monitoring peace and ensuring prosperity. Betts introduces players to their “colonies and foreign possessions” through a catalogue of trade goods, from livestock to gold. A thorough review of the trade goods from the colonies is provided at each stop— from the wild cattle of the Falklands and the cod of Newfoundland to Jamaica’s sugar, cotton, indigo, ginger, and coffee; Quebec’s grain, flour, and timber; South Africa’s wine, grain, cattle, and sheep; and Southern Australia’s sheep and copper. After pointing out that Malta was taken from Napoleon by the British, Betts pronounces: “The Maltese are an industrious, frugal, and moral class of people; and a considerable quantity of cotton, besides corn, oranges, figs, &c., is here annually produced” (A Tour 5). The syntax suggests that the goods are a product of moral character, and in noting that the British took over Malta, Betts frames the flowering fertility and industrious harvest as a credit to British imperial husbandry. As do his fellow game makers, Betts also marks the discovery of gold in Australia in 1851.22 The publication of their games demonstrates that mining and circulation of gold had global benefits, even to publishers in the metropole, who could use the discovery to market their games. Betts, however, notes that in New South Wales, the discovery of gold has not only “added to the wealth of the place” but has also “given a great stimulus to trade; besides attracting numerous emigrants” (A Tour 15–16). Gold is not cited solely for its exchange value here, but for its attractive value in luring “numerous emigrants” and acting as a “great stimulus to trade.” Likewise, the discovery of gold in Melbourne’s Port Phillip led to

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an “almost unparalleled” increase (15). While gold itself is exciting, Betts shifts the focus subtly to the regional effects of mining and extraction. Gold mining leads to a population, housing, and development boom, increasing Britain’s footprint in the area. To underscore this attraction, Betts directs players who land on one of the gold fields: “The traveller will hardly think of quitting the locality without visiting the scene of such universal attraction, he will stop one turn” (15). The sketch in space 18 depicts this “universal attraction” as a busy scene featuring miners with shovels, pickaxes, and sieves. Players must cede their personal interest in advancing along the board by stopping a turn at this space to acknowledge the importance of gold in the larger imperial game that their nation is playing.23 John Burnett notes, “In 1819 Britain had returned to the gold standard, and henceforward for the rest of the century the pricelevee was largely determined by the volume of gold in circulation and the total quantity of things—goods and services—to be bought” (202). Betts’ message is clear: the player must pause here because imperial interests take precedence over personal stakes in winning the game. Betts uses illustrated scenes of gold mining to first catch players’ attention and then draw it to his argument about trade benefits. He displays a savvy market awareness in doing so. As Gosden and Knowles assert, “Colonial relations always involved material culture. The main motive for Europeans going to New Guinea was material: to extract copper, rubber, gold or oil, hunt whales or human labour, and make a profit in so doing” (6). Betts knows his audience and deploys his illustrations carefully. Though only half a sentence of the five describing Adelaide, South Australia, is devoted to copper mines, the accompanying illustration depicts the mines instead of the orderly streets with their squares and beautiful views, which are discussed at greater length. The guide details Adelaide’s elevated site and river view, the “considerable taste” with which its right-angled streets have been laid out, the three “neat and substantial bridges,” and how the land has been “well adapted for agriculture, and sheep farms” (A Tour 14). This description focuses on how Britain has transformed what was a beautiful spot into a beautiful community characterized by order, taste, and usefulness. At the end, in half a sentence, Betts concludes with the observation that it also “possesses some remarkably rich copper mines” (14). Learning that copper awaited them may have excited players’ interest, but to get to that, they had to read the entire description of Adelaide’s city planning before getting a description of the copper mines. Betts offers players a model in which copper is important not to enrich individuals, but to underwrite the founding of communities, establish order, and spread British civic virtues on a global scale. This differentiates his trade perspective from Spooner’s game in which the goal was to extract profit in a take-or-pay brand of economics, sometimes brutishly interacting with indigenous peoples in the process.

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In contrast to Spooner, Betts’ game is largely silent about the presence of Aboriginal peoples. The figures depicted in the margins of the gold fields on space 18 may be indigenous. Shrouded in blankets and characterized by remarkable stillness in contrast to the buzzing activity of the mining camp, one of these figures points toward the camp. This pointing figure calls attention to the activity and industry, directing the player’s gaze as well. The stillness of the pointing figure contrasts with the object he calls attention to—the active transformation of the landscape for mining. That transformation is symbolic since it not only changes that single space but also elevates the place’s importance and visibility on the imperial map. The transformation of the field into a site for mining will subsequently fuel trade and encourage the construction of harbors, shipping routes, and production sites to process these raw materials. The miners, not the indigenous peoples, transform the space and define its meaning within this imperial network. This also occurs in the only space in the region that directly represents Aboriginal peoples. On space 22, Betts credits the mapmaker and the missionary for the “systematic course of colonization” in New Zealand (A Tour 17) (Figure 2.7). The illustration depicts the palm tree–studded valley framing a meeting between indigenous peoples and a mapmaker and British officers. As with the cannons in the masthead, the mapmaker, perhaps creating his own mythography of the British imperial story, does not meet the indigenous alone. The scene of map creation is flanked by military officers, who have the physical power to enforce the mapmaker’s rhetorical, narrative, and cartographic authority. All of the native figures are half turned, and the British party appears directly in the center, holding a map that the chief Aboriginal man bows forward to study. The attitude and arrangement of figures offer the impression that this indigenous man is in the act of genuflecting before the European cartography that has conscribed him within its framework. As in Spooner’s game, the indigenous peoples are not identified by tribes, cultural traditions, or leaders. The accompanying description instead mentions Tasman, whom the islands “were first seen by” in 1642 when he was “attacked by the natives” (17). By introducing territory onto the map as being “unseen” before Europeans visited, Betts sets up a cartographic domination, constituting the European agent as the one doing the seeing and the native as the one being seen. The only proper names used here refer to Tasman, and then in the next sentence, the description mentions Captain Cook, who “gave his name to the strait separating the two larger islands” (17). Such a line suggests that Cook bestowed a great favor on the territory by offering his name to an area that, according to the game, is as unnamed as the islanders themselves. The description goes on to mention that “a considerable quantity of land has been from time to time purchased or procured from the native chiefs, by the various adventurers who have found the beautiful bays and inlets common to these islands, adapted to their pursuits”

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(17). The description neatly emphasizes “purchased or procured,” thus eliding any violent conquest that may have taken place in the claiming of the land; that is the territory of Spooner’s game, and Betts has moved on. Instead, Betts folds conquest into the work of salvation with the point that “since the year 1814 several missionary stations have been established” and tracts of land have been purchased under the auspices of the New Zealand Company and the Canterbury Settlement (A Tour 17). The portrayal of colonization as a “systematic course” growing from missionary activity achieves two purposes. First, by yoking the establishment of missionary stations to the purchase of land by the New Zealand Company and Canterbury Settlement, it suggests that colonization is rooted in Christian principles. This casts an impression of divine sanction over a colonial project that was only in part interested in salvation work. Second, the notion of colonial expansion as “a systematic course” portrays it as orderly and inevitable. The end of the description concludes that the islands “now acknowledge the sovereignty of Queen Victoria” (17). The word choice “acknowledge” leads the reader to conclude that colonial rule was not in question; only the colony’s recognition of it was. The formal “acknowledg[ment]” also occludes any messiness of indigenous resistance to this rule of order, suggesting it was accepted deliberately. The stakes, of course, were quite high for the indigenous inhabitants wherever Britain had colonial interests. Just as the gold and copper mining industries involved locating natural resources, mining, and polishing them, so, too, did Betts’ game present territories such as Australia as rough diamonds that would be shaped and polished to shine alongside other jewels in the imperial crown. In doing so, Betts’ game was consistent with his contemporaries’ geography and adventure tales. Mary Martha Sherwood describes the islands of Australasia as “singularly beautiful,” though she points out that they are “inhabited by human beings little better than brute beasts” (83). In Cosmorama (1826), Jehoshaphat Aspin concurs: “The aborigines of this country, who dwell in the vicinity of the European settlements, are still in a state of nature; and although nearly fifty years have elapsed since their first intercourse with the British colonists, they are so far from having benefited by the acquaintance, that men and women are to be seen every day in the streets of the colonial towns, in a complete state of nudity” (144). Aspin’s use of adverbs such as “nearly” and “still” indicates that Australians have fallen short of the expectation to transform themselves from a “state of nature.” Aspin juxtaposes the state of nature with urbanity as one of the clear “benefits” of British colonization. Finally, in her discussion of Australia, Betts’ contemporary, primer writer Favell Lee Mortimer, adopts a similar approach in marking Australia as a transformed space: Each of the five colonies has its own laws, its own Parliament, and its own Governor, who is chosen by Queen Victoria. A hundred years

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Emphasizing Australia’s transformation from a “desert or forest” wilderness into colonies benefiting from British law and government, Mortimer dismisses the original inhabitants as “a few half-naked savages” in the same way Aspin does. Before colonization, Australia had “not a single town,” but now Mortimer notes how there are a “great many” towns, thus demonstrating how British colonization has made it more valuable through the founding of orderly towns and commercial ports. Value is not associated with the rich cultural traditions of the Aboriginal peoples, forced to give way like the unnamed islanders in Spooner’s game who experience the violence of transformation as they watch their village burn. While Betts’ game was certainly less nuanced than longer primers by Sherwood, Aspin, Mortimer, and others in the run-up to mid-century, it nonetheless provides insight into the ways that the colonial experience was visually and topically marketed to children in England and how they invited child players to experience a tour through foreign territory. Rather than cite profit as the reason for the rapid interest and development in this territory, the primers emphasize the circulation of other goods—namely, British rule of law, government, and civic life—that have contributed to the improvement of Australia. Though the message is remarkably consistent from geography primers to board games, work like Betts’ afforded players an experience that was highly visual and interactive and one that was distinguished from the dubious and disruptive practices of imperial rivals and pirates. Betts situates the Empire with its benevolent founding of commercial centers and its grooming of agricultural sites as the counterpoint to those motivated by colonial greed. This includes even those emigrants from Britain’s own shores, as was the case with Sir James Brooke, the white rajah of Sarawak, who operated outside the structure of the Empire, though often in coordination with its agents. Located in northern Borneo, Sarawak was acquired by Brooke in a compact with the Sultan of Brunei in 1842. Brooke then assumed the title of rajah for himself and his heirs. Though Henriette McDougall, a missionary’s wife in Sarawak, praised him as “a favourite hero” and a figure of romance embarked upon the “really great work of civilizing and humanizing a nation” (Preface v), John Betts is less fulsome in A Tour. Betts notes that Brooke “has since obtained an unenviable notoriety by the massacre, on one occasion only, of from 1,000 to 1,500 of the natives,—condemning them, but without any sufficient proof, as pirates” (A Tour 13). Piracy was a serious charge, as it represented a disruption to trade and commerce and a threat to imperial power. In children’s fiction across the century, from Ballantyne’s

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Coral Island to Stevenson’s Treasure Island, pirates were depicted as amoral, greedy, and grasping.24 Games such as Spooner’s The Pirate and Traders of the West Indies (1847) show the grave dangers pirates posed to orderly commerce, glossing them as thieves whose crimes disrupted the shipping of goods harvested, mined, and packed with great difficulty.25 The charge of piracy carried a heavy punishment since it directly threatened orderly commerce and imperial authority. In his accusation of piracy, Brooke strategically mobilized this powerful discourse to cast the islanders as threats to peace and prosperity. Though stating that Brooke did not have “sufficient proof” (A Tour 13) for his accusation, Betts shows the results of this rhetorical move: A powerful war steamer, two or three other vessels of war, besides numerous gun-boats, &c., were employed in this wholesale slaughter of half-naked blacks, in the open prahus; and the resistance made by these so-called pirates, may be judged of by the fact, that only two, out of Sir James Brooke’s force amounting to several thousands, were killed, whilst six were wounded. The sum of TWENTY THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS has been demanded of, and paid by, the British Government, by in the shape of blood, or head-money, by which to reward the heroes of this extraordinary achievement. (A Tour 13) In the description of the later-known massacre at Beting Marau, Betts offers two different tropes about indigenous peoples. Either these peoples are, as Brooke alleges, “so-called pirates” committed to disrupting trade, pillaging, and endangering peace and prosperity or they are helpless victims—“half-naked blacks,” using Betts’ phrase. Calling the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks “half-naked” refers not only to a characterization of their costume but also to their defenseless nature and lack of arms and sophistication. It is similar to the invocations deployed by Sherwood, Aspin, and Mortimer. By characterizing this event as a “wholesale slaughter of half-naked blacks,” Betts highlights the disparity, not only in arms and resources but also in numbers. He points out that “several thousands” of Brooke’s forces engaged with about 1500 Dayaks, who were greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the superior force. Yet the group of 1500 seems too great a number to be engaged in coordinated piracy. What Betts has uncovered may be a contingent of resistance to Brooke’s rule, put down by imperial firepower. As Said notes, “Opposition and resistance to imperialism are articulated together on a largely common although disputed terrain” (Culture and Imperialism 200). The common terrain that Betts and Brooke dispute is marked by these native bodies, dismissed as pirates, but characterized by Betts as victims of Brooke’s greed.

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Though Betts marks this loss of life and the unfair odds, he reserves the greatest moral outrage for the all caps announcement that Brooke demanded £20,700 (equivalent to about £2 million today) from the British government as “head-money” for this engagement (Knapman 184). For Betts, the collection of head money casts doubt on Brooke’s accusation of piracy, marking it as an expedient way to earn money from the blood of the slaughtered Dayaks. Characterizing it as an “extraordinary achievement” suggests that Betts finds it remarkable, but that could be for Brooke’s temerity, duplicity, cold execution of a military enterprise, or his greed in seeking remuneration. It would be difficult to interpret the “extraordinary” here as a positive accolade since the numbers and the arms were all on Brooke’s side. Betts’ own ambivalence about this complex political scenario can be surmised from the pace and progress of play. The space bears no special direction; players are advised neither to spin again nor to pause. As seen in the take-or-pay economics of Spooner’s game, both these games depict brutal actions taken against indigenous people. Betts characterizes the unequal contest as a massacre. Yet for both Spooner and Betts, and perhaps for their players, the bottom line is financial: protecting British trade and interests in the colonies at any cost. As the masthead with its cannons established, and as the presence of British officers supporting the authority of the mapmaker in New Zealand attested, peace and prosperity occasionally require the exercise of force. The emphasis in Betts’ game, however, is weighted to show the benefits of such carefully guarded trade and inclusion in the imperial network. Singapore “was ceded to the British in 1824, and being made a depot for ships trading with China, its commerce and population increased with almost unprecedented rapidity, and it is now a place of great importance” (A Tour 12). British rule assigns Singapore its identity as a “depot” for trading ships, and an “unprecedented rapidity” in population growth follows. This growth and prosperity imply that colonial governance has a generative quality. As well, though, Singapore’s assigned “great importance” is contextualized within the imperial system that assigns roles to its colonies based on its own needs. Even islands such as the Ascension Islands, St. Helena, and the Falklands, which have no mahogany, oranges, or spices to offer, may nonetheless prove valuable as stops for merchant ships to replenish their supplies. The same is true of Aden, which was considered “very valuable as a coal depot” (7). As with Singapore, Betts explains, “It was formerly an insignificant place, but since falling into the hands of the British, its commerce and population have greatly increased” (7). Elevated from its former “insignifican[ce]” to its status as a “very valuable” coal depot demonstrates how a place can be assigned importance through inclusion in the imperial network. The stop for coal in Aden underscores the game’s methodology and the way that movement across the board can be restricted or advanced

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in accordance with the territory. This methodology reveals more broadly that, like colonial citizens from Singapore to Aden, players must also accept that their own “significance” exists within the context of the imperial mission. Betts signals this to players by regulating their movement: enforced stasis or the chance to spin again. Players are required to stop one turn eight times (5, 7, 8, 12, 18, 21, 31, 36). This means that of the 37 spaces in this game, 21% check forward motion, and their distribution across the board from spaces 5 to 36 gives players a likelihood of landing on them, perhaps even more than once. Though this slows the game down, the reasons for the stops vary, and the tone is not punitive. For the most part, checks to players’ progress are not associated with places where the Empire has suffered setbacks. One stop has to do with the necessary business of taking in coal (A Tour 7). The other five stops represent typical tourist ports on a world tour: seeing Gibraltar (4), “regal[ing] yourself with the delicious fruits” in Cape Town (9), being “allowed to stop a turn” to see a grand tiger hunt in Bengal (12), visiting the “universal attraction” of a gold field in Melbourne, marveling at the “magnificent scene” at Niagara (21), and, finally, “recruit[ing] his strength” in Halifax before an Atlantic crossing (23). These stops are distributed across Africa, India, and Australia, with two in Canada, so no one place is associated negatively with stasis. Closer examination reveals that these stops promote a kind of imperial tourism. The Empire’s military power is a theme in three of them. In Gibraltar, for example, the visitor is directed to examine the “remarkable fortifications” of “the most impregnable [fortress] in the world” (A Tour 4), and Halifax’s fine harbor, a hub for trade, is also “the principal station of the British navy, in America” (23). As well, tiger hunting under the banner of the East India Company was a way to display authority and practice British imperial masculinity through domination of wild creatures. The final two stops view tradable goods: African fruit markets and gold fields in Australia. In these instances, Betts manages to turn a forced check to progress into a pleasing opportunity for players, a characterization very different from Edward Wallis’ The Game of the Star-Spangled Banner discussed in Chapter 4 and Betts’ own space 21, where players pause for an unpleasant purpose. If players land on space 21 for Norfolk Island, located 880 miles east of New South Wales, they must stop two turns. Betts informs players that at this “penal settlement,” they must “stop two turns, and lament the degraded condition to which sin has reduced some of our fellow men” (A Tour 16). Checking players’ movement here reflects the corrective justice that checks the convicts’ movement as well. Like the players, they cannot move forward, but their sentence lasts longer than two turns. Betts explains that Norfolk Island is for “only the worst class of convicts, and re-transports from other colonies, being banished here. These degraded men work in gangs, chained together, and strictly guarded by

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soldiers;—the most vigorous watch, and discipline, being necessary to keep subordination amongst such desperate characters” (16). In the illustration, hunched, shirtless men turn their faces down to the earth as they strain to pull a cart laden with an enormous copper vat (Figure 2.7). They are sharply contrasted with the British soldiers, who, in their red coats, shining boots, and hats sporting crisp feathers, look straight ahead and make emphatic gestures to direct the prisoners’ work with “vigorous watch, and discipline.” Betts codes the convicts’ “degraded condition” not as a matter of labor, justice, or forced emigration, but as a result of “sin,” referring to the transgressions that led to their transportation. Acknowledging their stasis, Betts forces players to stop for a remarkable two turns. The multiple missed turns, as well as the punitive nature, distinguish this from other spaces where players pause. This space shows what happens to those who break the rules in Empire’s game. As “re-transports from other colonies,” these men are dehumanized “exports” from the mother country who have been exported again. Betts uses this kind of language elsewhere when introducing Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania. He calculates that “a considerable portion” of the 60,000 residents “are, or have been, convicts” (A Tour 15). The mix of past and present tense is in keeping with the ameliorative frame Betts imposes on the colonies as regions of rehabilitation and growth. Since the first group of convicts arrived there in 1788, the demands of cultivation have required “occasional shipments of convicts” (16). Within this economy of human labor, Betts’ phrasing assigns these people as much agency as other “shipments,” like the breadfruit Britons gathered and shipped within the colonies. Yet once in the colonies, these convicts can rehabilitate and transform them. Sydney’s “shipments of convicts” have augmented the emigrant community and helped to transform it in a positive way. Sydney “continues to increase in importance” as a result, boasting “a cathedral, several churches and other places of worship; hospitals, insurance and banking companies, and benevolent and scientific institutions” (16). As a counterpoint to spaces with enforced stops and checks to advancement, Betts’ game also has five rapid-advance spaces—11, 23, 28, 32, and 33—where travelers are invited to spin again or to move ahead to a specified space. Three of these five advancement spaces are keyed to the abolition of slavery. In the Falklands, for instance, where Betts notes that there is no cultivation, “as there is little here of interest to detain the traveller, he is at liberty to proceed to no. 25, and witness the cultivation of cotton by free blacks” (A Tour 18). Though the transition may seem forced, it actually works within the game’s moral system. Betts contrasts a barren, uncultivated place with a fertile area where cultivation occurs under a British system of free labor. By linking the player’s rapid advance across the board to the Empire’s successful abolition of slavery, Betts models how to unite an individual’s pursuits with imperial duty. Not only do

Credit line: Published with permission of Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Figure 2.7 Betts’ A Tour detail: spaces with mapmaker, slaves, convicts

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travelers to the Falklands get to advance for this reason, but travelers to Jamaica get to as well. In Jamaica, Betts’ players advance while noting the improper practices of imperial rivals in Europe and in America. Players learn that the sixteenth-century Spanish settlers “treated the natives with great cruelty. It was taken by the English in 1656, and was cultivated by the aid of negro slaves until the year 1834, when slavery was happily abolished throughout the British dominions. The scenery of this island is extremely delightful, and the soil very fertile” (A Tour 19). The “taking” of the colony from the Spanish leads to the abolition of slavery and the resulting “delightful” scenery and “fertile” soil. Jamaica’s fertility is symbolically linked to correct colonial practices and moral commerce. To reinforce the point, players are rewarded as agents of the British Empire that seeded all of this prosperity and are told to “spin again to commemorate the abolition of negro slavery throughout the British dominions” (20). This emphasizes that the player advances when the Empire achieves a moral triumph. Betts draws another contrast between Britain and its rivals when travelers to Canada also find it “a place of refuge to many negro slaves, who have the happiness to escape from cruel bondage in the United States, and who, once setting their foot on these shores, are beyond the power of the man-hunter” (A Tour 21–22) (Figure 2.7). With an invocation of biblical language reminiscent of the Israelites in their flight from the Egyptians, the game casts the Canadian shores as a type of Canaan. Betts pointedly contrasts this British “refuge” with America, where peoples in “cruel bondage” are under the “power of the man-hunter” (22). Conjuring up visions of predators from Kipling’s Jungle Book, “man-hunter” refers to the slave catchers, whose occupation was legally practiced under the Fugitive Slaw Law in the United States until its abolition of slavery ten years after Betts’ game. In a single stroke, the game manages to praise British morality and tar the American commerce and governance that permit slave-catchers to track and terrorize fugitive slaves, as players may have read about in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Betts’ contemporary, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Betts does not require players to pause in the United States to punish them for this country’s system. Instead, he frames a positive contrast to this rival nation by highlighting the abolition of slavery in the Empire. In Canada, this means that players may “spin again to commemorate the occurrence of one of these happy events” (22). Just as the child player will not advance in the game by passing over the struggles of these fellow human beings, Britain itself would not advance by sanctioning slave labor. If Canada offers one refuge, Sierra Leone provides another. Mawuena Logan calls the Sierra Leone enterprise a “test case on the part of the British to formally colonize Africa, because the settlers (among whom were few Whites) were to promote, and be ruled by, English culture

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and laws” (Logan 14).26 Betts describes Sierra Leone “as a settlement formed by the British nation, with the philanthropic object of promoting African civilisation” (A Tour 5). Due to this “philanthropic” goal, “the colony is now happily increasing both in prosperity and population” (5). It, too, is transformed under British governance despite the climate being “signally fatal to the white man” (5). Betts argues that “promoting African civilisation” requires a British catalyst, just as it did in Australia to green the land and in Calcutta to order the streets. Like Australia, the colony’s population is imported, “augmented by the cargoes of captured slave-ships” (5). In describing these new colonists, Betts’ language shifts from objectification to acknowledging human agency. While on board the slave ship, people are identified as “cargoes of captured slave-ships,” but once landed at Fourah Bay in Freetown, the identifier changes to “kidnapped negroes from condemned ships” (5). The illustration shows these people streaming off a longboat and dancing with great joy, also transformed by contact with a British colony. Jack Tar, seated in the boat, happily waves his hat, acknowledging their shift in status, knowing that he and his fellow sailors are the instruments of that transformation (Figure 2.7). Though this is a children’s game, these moments demonstrate that it is far from simplistic. Instead, the game takes on the complex, politicized, and humanitarian issue of enslavement and human trafficking. The idea of transforming “cargo” into “kidnapped negroes” and “promoting African civilisation” was not unique to Betts, though the way he expresses it certainly is. In her geography primer, Wakefield expresses her hope that Africans will be “opened to receive the precepts of Christianity; and, instead of the degrading traffic in men, the number of commodities may be increased by cultivation, and exchange of the productions congenial to each climate promote the general welfare of mankind” (Traveller in Africa 335). Linking “the precepts of Christianity” to the abolition of slavery, she characterizes the “traffic in men” as a kind of wicked trade that can be replaced with more “congenial” commodities. This ameliorated trade leads to cultivation and the “general welfare of mankind.” Both Wakefield’s remarks and Betts’ system of accelerated movement demonstrate that the abolition of human trafficking leads to a more fruitful commerce, as modeled by the British Empire in the Americas and Africa, especially when juxtaposed with the commercial colonial practices of its rivals. In a game about trade, it may be surprising that there is no system of forfeit exchange, but this is where Betts breaks from Spooner’s takeor-pay economics. For Betts, winning the game is not about acquiring wealth, but about fostering the right kind of commerce within a system ordered and governed with judicious care. Just as his game is neatly parsed and organized in a series of bands encircling the London heart at the center, so, too, does the Empire offer an orderly framework through

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which the colonies can prosper in a mutually beneficial relationship. Barbara Hofland describes this thinking in her primer Africa Described in its Ancient and Present State: Since it is generally thought that both England and Ireland would be benefited by emigration, we cannot doubt but this thinly peopled but abundant country [Africa] will be investigated more and more, for the purpose of rendering it an extensive and wealthy colony; and we quit it with the hope that such changes may prove alike valuable to the natives and the settlers. (267) If the British foster an “extensive and wealthy colony” peopled with English and Irish emigrants, both this colony and the mother country will indeed create a “valuable” relationship. The excerpts from Hofland and Wakefield demonstrate that abolishing slavery was not only a moral issue but was also implicated in commercial imperial politics and the transformation of trade. Abolishing slavery gives Britain a moral high ground from which to view the world. Betts uses the center space to showcase this vantage point, underscoring the metropole’s importance and power. The center space, number 37, features a mother and son perched on a high bridge looking down the Thames and over a river full of ships and bridges, bordered by St. Paul’s Cathedral dome on the left. The placement of St. Paul’s identifies that they are looking in the direction of the river where it meets the sea, the vanishing horizon from which ships go out into the world. This is effectively the finish line for the game, but visually, it is also the heart and center. Betts describes London in a series of superlatives as “the largest, richest, and perhaps the most populous city in the world” with a commerce “greater than that of any other city” (A Tour 23–24). He also goes on to wrangle a tricky claim about London’s commerce in relation to other countries, asserting that “with the exception of the United States of America, and two or three of the larger European states, [the commerce] is greater than that of any other country; and the number of vessels from all parts of the world, that annually enter its port, is without parallel” (23–24). The hyperbolic language here—“largest,” “richest,” “most populous,” “greater,” and “without parallel”—sets London up as a city without equal (except for its rivals). This does in words what the game does in images by placing London at the center of the game in a place of privilege and honor. St. Paul’s presence reinforces the moral power of this Christian nation and the ships that sail from this source at a period when Muscular Christianity was flexing its sinews. Part of the Christian mission was the abolition of slavery, as well as careful colonial stewardship, transforming spaces into fertile, productive, orderly commercial hubs and agrarian districts.

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After the string of superlatives about London’s wealth and commercial importance, Betts puts wealth in its proper relation to morality: If London exceeds all other cities in magnitude and wealth, she is not behind them in mental culture, philanthropy, and benevolence; which will hardly be questioned by any one who is acquainted with her numerous scientific and charitable institutions; and, without entering into detail, which is beyond the limit of this little work, we may refer to her twenty-seven hospitals for the sick poor, as going far to establish the fact. (A Tour 24) Betts ties London’s “magnitude and wealth” to her “mental culture” of philanthropy and benevolence. Linking wealth and charity continues the game’s theme of moral commerce as a transformative source of power. Betts makes this point by noting London’s philanthropic institutions as well as enumerating the 27 charitable hospitals for the poor. London, according to this argument, has earned and maintained its place not simply through trade but also through a type of moral righteousness. This enumeration also indicates Betts’ awareness of the rhetorical power of numbers, and it is likely that he used that rhetorical power in putting his own game together.27 Almost extraneous is the line at the end: “The traveller who first arrives here, wins the game” (24). After reading this expansive description, all the players may certainly feel justified in thinking they have won the game too, simply by virtue of membership in this nation. In plotting London at the center of the world and the culmination of a triumphant commercial race, Betts’ game is consistent with the way historians situate London. Erika Rappaport notes, “London, of course, had long been a flourishing commercial center. As the seat of government, a port, and a financial, manufacturing, cultural, and social center, earlymodern London was already a massive marketplace trading in goods, services, and amusements” (8). Children’s nineteenth-century guides such as George Mogridge’s Old Humphrey’s Walks in London and its neighborhood published by the Religious Tract Society in [1800]28 figure London in a series of metaphors as “the treasure-house of the earth for wealth and power, as the queen of nations [. . .] the big heart of the breathing world, animating through the people avenues of society the industry, the knowledge, and the piety of the uttermost parts of the earth” (4). This “heart of the breathing world” is naturally located at the center of Betts’ game and Britons’ world, its greatness predicated on its identity as a center for the kind of trade that will “animat[e]” its colonies. Its exports also include virtues such as industry, knowledge, and piety. Another child’s guide to London declares it “the magnificent metropolis of the British Empire and the emporium of the commerce of the world”

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(A Visit to Uncle William iii). By discursively linking Empire and “emporium,” colonization and commerce, this portrayal of London as world marketplace supports Linda Colley’s characterization of nineteenth-century Londoners’ belief that “commerce, especially foreign commerce, was the engine that drove a state’s power and wealth” (62). This is evidenced when the travel guide describes the emblematic figures ornamenting the East India House, especially the figured muse of Commerce introducing Asia to British markets, initiating the rich trading and commercial relationships that Betts chronicles in his game (A Visit to Uncle William 44). Though this takes place well before the Great Exhibition that showcased Anglo-Indian goods, discussed in the following chapter, the text anticipates the type of survey of goods and raw materials that Betts presents in his game. Examples like these, drawn from geography primers and children’s travel guides to London, build a larger educational and social context in which to understand Spooner’s and Betts’ games. As Voyage and A Tour suggest, the imperial enterprise was multi-valent and required “cartographers, botanists, artists and writers as well as soldiers to support their enterprise, and sailors to ensure their traffic across the seas” (Hall 25). Games were a part of that story. Spooner’s Voyage took child players through the contact zone, showing the perils of navigating the seas and the even more difficult shoals of the human relationships between the sailors and the islanders, especially when the former had a take-or-pay economic agenda. Their profit trumped human cultural exchange and often led to violence, offering a troubling template for imperial interaction in these nameless, metonymic islands. Twenty years later, Betts’ A Tour took a broader, more benign view of how contact could lead to trade that would transform wilderness or settlements ruled brutishly by imperial rivals who trafficked in human cargo into flourishing, orderly plantations and neatly plotted urban centers. Under Britannia’s banner, upheld by Jack Tar and a few cannons, Betts gives child players a glimpse of an Empire that is interconnected, industrious, and backed by considerable force. That force is both military and rhetorical in the images on the masthead, in the game’s illustration of the mapmaker backed by soldiers, and in the guide’s description of colonial cities flourishing behind fortified harbors. While at a glance, children’s games may seem transparent, simple, and innocent, like other texts, these, too, were fraught with meaning and urgency, particularly those that addressed the imperial realm from the stronghold of the British middle-class home. In his discussion of the public/ private binary in relation to contemporary feminism, Homi Bhabha reasserts that “the personal-is-political; the world-in-the-home” (11). For postcolonial studies, this is an important mantra when looking at nineteenthcentury homes, nurseries, and schoolrooms. What children learned, how they learned it, and what their recreational play reinforced offer important insights into the ways that ideology was transmitted. As Said argues, “Scarcely a corner of life was untouched by the facts of empire;

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the economies were hungry for overseas markets, raw materials, cheap labor, and hugely profitable land” plus colonial defense and infrastructure (Culture and Imperialism 8). Games articulated the meaning and importance of this vast Empire to the impressionable child players who would grow up to rule it.

Notes 1. See the Appendix for a glimpse of how these games fit within the game tradition’s focus on commerce. 2. In his early work on games, F.R.B. Whitehouse describes the production: “Like the early maps, these old games were printed from engraved copper or steel plates and coloured by hand with water colour paint” (3). 3. On the box cover for Life of Nelson [c. 1846], Spooner features a series of six puzzles. The Life of Nelson [c. 1846] features Nelson’s portrait with the words “England expects every man to do his duty.” The puzzle features images from Nelson’s life, from attacking a bear as a youth, to boarding an American frigate, to battle on the Nile, to his death. 4. E. and M.A. Ogilvy published The Fancy Bazaar, or Aristocratic Traders (3s, 6d) and Outward bound; or ships and their cargoes (1865). Outward requires players to collect “cargo” cards, following Spooner’s take-or-pay economics, but adding imperial rivals and enforcing fair play with the threat of paying forfeits. These games were social exercises for players to learn moral principles and practical skills in negotiation with their playfellows. 5. Islands were a recognizable literary landscape: from Prospero wresting his island from Caliban to Robinson Crusoe industriously colonizing, including Gulliver and the Swiss Family Robinson. Later in the century, R.M. Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jules Verne plot Coral Islands, Treasure Islands, and Mysterious Islands. 6. Since some of the topics are overlapping, I have done my best to sort them based on primary interest. Weather and sailing could potentially have two more entries, and discovery and exploration could potentially have one more. 7. See Matthew Edney’s work on the surveying of India by British cartographers in Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago University Press, 1997). 8. If some games emphasized the broad scope of the colonial world and the adventures that waited there, William Sallis’ The New Game of the Overland Route to India [185–?] shows the difficulty of arriving there in the first place. The game features a series of long, stacked horizontal bubbles. The bubbles feature scenes of travel through islands, cities, and a desert oasis within sight of the Egyptian pyramids. The game celebrates British naval might and shipbuilding technology but also acknowledges the dangers. Space 19 depicts a naval battle between two equally matched rows of ships. Below, space 6 features a deadly storm in which the ship careens dangerously to one side. 9. Though Cook’s death is the most likely precedent given the island setting, there are probably many, many more occasions in which Europeans left smoldering villages behind them in return for slights. In one instance of what historian George Bancroft calls an act of “inconsiderate revenge” (97, 10th ed), Sir Richard Grenville ordered a native village to be burnt and the standing corn destroyed after a silver cup was stolen from his ship and not promptly returned during his 1585 voyage to explore the Carolina and Virginia coast (95–97, 10th ed).

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10. Edward Said notes that “the scenes where Kim banters, bargains, repartees with his elders, friendly and hostile alike, are indications of Kipling’s seemingly inexhaustible fund of boyish enjoyment in the sheer momentary pleasure of playing a game, any sort of game” (Introduction 13). Kipling identifies the process of bartering for information as a “game,” one that we now know child players had engaged in for decades in games like Spooner’s. 11. In addition to exploration and trade, islands were also a spiritual contact zone. In 1796, the London Missionary Society sent 30 missionaries to Tahiti, concerned not with the content of the islanders’ larders and gold pans, but with their souls. Despite their prominence as a kinder, gentler face of the imperial project, missionaries did not inspire games inviting players to practice conversion. This absence reinforces that despite the Empire’s nominal interest in the souls of its colonists, the focus was on successful barter and trade, backed by necessary force. 12. Spooner’s contemporary John Murray published incredibly popular travel guides. Like the games, these guides offered specific itineraries, or tracks, through foreign territory, with stops where travelers were encouraged to gather souvenirs. Guidebooks warn about untrustworthy local innkeepers, shopkeepers, maids, and guides, urging travelers to “take” as much as possible while “paying” as little as they could, thus adopting a similar methodology to the games. 13. The primacy of ends over means is underscored when players “Fall in with a wreck, and find much Treasure” and “Take 3” (Voyage Royal [9]). This big reward overshadows the reality that the wrecked ship’s crew has clearly perished. The priority is taking the cargo, rather than mourning the loss of fellow sailors or the vessel. 14. Spooner’s characterization of taking is consistent with other children’s games that reduce nations to the commodities that can be extracted. Sutton’s Geography Cards [1892], edited by Arthur Montefiore, uses commodities to teach countries. Cards depict maps of Scotland, Ireland, and France, with commodities like “Wheat,” “Barley,” “Oysters,” “Farm Produce,” “Iron,” “Cotton,” and “Fruit.” The England card celebrates “her coals, iron and manufactured goods” sold globally “especially to her Colonies [. . .] [S]he buys or imports food and raw, i.e. unmanufactured goods, from all countries of the world— especially from her Colonies. Thus England is a great commercial or trading country, aided and enriched by a colonial Empire” (Montefiore). The repeated qualifier “especially to her Colonies” indicates their commercial importance as marketplaces and sources of raw materials. 15. Sources suggest that George Philip & Son took over production of Betts’ globes around 1880 and continued even into 1920, but in an 1890 catalogue, Edwin Stanford advertises Betts’ portable globes (Dekker 276). 16. In his catalogue, Betts advertises a portable globe priced at 3s, 6d, so there may have been another version. 17. In Bombay, an 1865–1866 inventory of the Government Book Depot lists “six copies of Betts’s portable globe with stand” and “five copies of a much more affordable Betts’s portable globe” (Ramaswamy 177). 18. A Tour [c. 1850] appears in the 1946 exhibition catalogue Children’s Books of Yesterday (44). 19. Chu-chueh Cheng argues that John Bartholomew’s British Empire throughout the World Exhibited in One View [c. 1850s] deploys a deliberate structure to promote British superiority: “This intention is doubly accentuated by the centring of Europe on the map and the panoramic illustration of different races around the margin. Positioning itself at the centre of One View, Britain effectively deploys an ocular rhetoric to dictate how it wishes to be viewed” (3).

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20. The route proceeds to the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, and Malta, but there is an alternative. If players land on an asterisked space, they proceed “to India by way of the overland route—as Malta, Alexandria, Aden, Bombay. The others will proceed by way of Sierra Leone, Ascension, St. Helena, and the Cape” (A Tour [2]). 21. Betts describes Bombay as a wedding present in the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Portugal. It contains a “strong and capacious fortress, splendid harbor, dockyard, and marine arsenal; and here some of the finest merchant ships are built” (A Tour 8). This city thrives under British rule, and “the markets are well supplied with every delicacy” (8). Trade is a generative force, enriching the markets, homes, and shops of a place otherwise described as barren, with scarce water resources. Its merchant ships circulate throughout the Empire. 22. At mid-century, two games respond to the discovery of gold in Australia by making that a central topic: Race to the Gold Diggings of Australia [c. 185–?] and James Barfoot and Darton & Co.’s Gold Fields of Australia [c. 1856]. America followed this model with Game of the Klondike, or Trip to the Gold Fields of Alaska (1897). 23. In “Tom Tiddler’s Ground,” the child playing Tom “presides in solitary state” over a section of the field while other players pretend to gather nuggets, singing, “‘Here I am on Tom Tiddler’s ground, picking up gold and silver!’ He rushes after them, and if he succeeds in catching anybody, that one has to take his place as Tom Tiddler. Tom may not leave his own ground” (Greenaway 30–31). Embodying the scramble for territory, games like this also preserve the urgency around the control of raw materials and commodities. This simple game taught players to stay in their places, do their duty, and protect their assets. This protectionism also appears in Betts’ game with the continual notice of forts and in Spooner’s game when the ship captains punish islanders who challenge the terms of barter. With the discovery of gold in India and Australia and diamonds in Africa at mid-century, the games reflect the yoking of imperial commercial domination and personal interest. 24. Piracy is depicted as a high-stakes game in Treasure Island. After Silver double-crosses the mutineers, Jim mulls “my own perilous position .  .  . in the remarkable game that I saw Silver now engaged upon” (Stevenson 129). Silver’s “remarkable game” involves the gathering of sets of allies and the balancing of assets—the ship, the map, the gold. 25. Spooner’s The Pirate and traders of the West Indies (1847) features a map of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico along with instructions for one player to be the “pirate” and the others to be the traders who must spin the teetotum and move about the board, trying to protect their goods from the pirates that “infest these seas.” Instead of pirates plundering, the game really focuses on protecting trade for all players. Spooner stipulates, “Should the pirate, in the course of the game, capture all but one trader, the uncaptured trader takes half the pool, and the other half is left towards forming a pool for a new game” (Pirate 11). The winner’s victory is reduced if his or her fellows are captured by pirates. This move encourages unity among players against a common enemy. 26. In 1786, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor proposed the Sierra Leone relocation for some of London’s 15,000 Blacks. The following April, 411 immigrants left for Sierra Leone, where 200 square miles of land were purchased “in exchange for about fifty-nine British pounds worth of goods such as beads, iron bars tobacco and rum” (Logan 14). Yet four months into the enterprise, nearly half of the settlers had died from illness on the voyage and starvation in the colony. Undaunted, in 1790, abolitionists formed the St. George’s Bay Company, chartered as the Sierra Leone Company, “to promote

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Christianity, commerce, and Western civilization” (14). The British government offered monetary support that rose to £10,000 a year in 1798, leading to the establishment of a naval base and a Crown Colony designation by 1808 and formal colonization after the Berlin partition in 1884. 27. Christian Johnstone’s The public buildings of the city of London described (1831) uses the rhetorical power of numbers to situate London at the center of world commerce, estimating that “upwards of 3500 ships, British and foreign, are employed; and 13,000 cargoes annually enter the Thames, while its exports and imports exceed in value 60,000,000 pounds annually” (9). Whether readers would have been interested in such minutiae or players of Betts’ game would have pored eagerly over a catalogue of trade goods is difficult to determine. What remains clear is that these texts persistently yoke Britain’s imperial greatness to its commercial power using hard data. 28. The text went through four editions by 1845 in Britain and in America. The earliest copy I could locate was in the Opie Collection, on microfiche, from 1800.

3

Games in Glass Houses Children’s Board Games Display and Critique Imperial Power through the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace

“So Geographers in Afric-Maps With Savage-Pictures fill their Gaps; And o’er unhabitable Downs Place Elephants for want of Towns” —Jonathan Swift “On Poetry: A Rhapsody” 408

Each game in this study fills in an important chapter in the imperial story, representing to players what Empire is for, whom it is for, and what profit can be gained. As discussed in the previous chapter, Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery represented the experience of exploration, discovery, and first contact; if managed properly, these contacts with indigenous peoples could lead to the establishment of beneficial trade relationships for the Empire. From this well-established trade, Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions showed players how trade could transform wilderness into flourishing urban centers and commercial hubs given meaning and importance within an imperial system. The games discussed in this chapter focus on how to display the fruits of these imperial triumphs to other rivals. This means showcasing raw materials hewn from colonies coordinated in a display of imperial power and authority. The inspiration for this politics of display was the Great Exhibition. The first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition of 1851, drew visitors to London from all over the world, welcoming over 20,000 on its opening day in May and over 6 million before its doors closed in October. Visitors saw over 100,000 exhibits, including giant blocks of raw coal, the first facsimile machine, and an enormous, unpolished Koh-i-Noor diamond, “the concretization of the jewel in the crown” (Gill 159).1 The 15,000 exhibited objects “illustrated every conceivable branch of human industry from engines to dolls” (Hayward 135). Housed in an elaborate iron-and-glass structure designed by Joseph Paxton, the Exhibition was dubbed a “Crystal Palace” by humorists at Punch. Like Paxton’s structure at Kew Gardens, this glass house would also hold the spoils of imperial exploration. It displayed the orderly classification characteristic of British scientific practice, encyclopedia writing, and museum curating in

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its 30-part classification system, from raw materials to machinery, manufactures, and fine arts. The move to catalogue, organize, and classify grew out of eighteenth-century traditions of natural science and anthropology as well as cartography and ethnography.2 For visitors, moving through the displays was like embarking upon a highly concentrated world tour, complete with interactive sensory experiences. They could “taste tobacco, snuff and chocolate drops, smell perfumes, and touch textiles and materials” and be “seduced” into “believing that they had indeed experienced the whole world” (Clemm 214).3 The Exhibition gave visitors an accessible chart of the near world. Historians and cultural critics have theorized the event as a threshold event for tourism, manufacturing, consumerism, industrial design, commodity fetishism, gender, and social class relations.4 Even after its doors were closed, its displays packed up, and the dust swept away, the Exhibition continued to fascinate and left a powerful mark on the British cultural imagination. Narratives of the Exhibition portray it as “a monumental and monolithic event . . . the pre-eminent symbol of the Victorian age” (Auerbach GE of 1851 1). The exhibits became the basis for what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. Likenesses of the Crystal Palace appeared on postcards, tea trays, paintings, commemorative coins, in illustrated books, in ads for Huntley & Palmers biscuits, and in “peep shows” such as Lane’s telescopic view, of the ceremony of Her Majesty opening the Great Exhibition, of All Nations (1851) and Spooner’s Perspective view of the Great Exhibition (1851), which reproduced the Exhibition in miniature.5 Printers also produced card games, dissected maps, and books, and game publishers created popular board and table games inspired by the Exhibition. This production was facilitated by advances in printing: “From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, cheap colour printing made all kinds of games increasingly widely available” (Hill 14). Exhibition games were marketable products. The games discussed here were not only about the Exhibition but also mimic its methodology: they contain, frame, and order the world, showcasing British power and authority and prefiguring late-century imperial propaganda agencies whose “ideas and influence extended deeply into the educational system, the armed forces, uniformed youth movements, the Churches and missionary societies, and forms of public entertainment like the music hall and exhibitions” (MacKenzie 2–3). Mid-century board games were already doing this work by celebrating the Crystal Palace, privileging Britishness, and grooming players for membership in an imagined imperial community. Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game: Voyage Round the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy [c. 1855] uses the Exhibition’s strategies, embellishing a standard world map with a frame of boxed “displays.” Evans identifies commodities and the dangers of acquiring them in fierce illustrations of threatening animals and indigenous peoples who resist imperial rule. He casts child players as

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future imperial stewards whose success in the game is linked to Britain’s imperial success. In contrast to Evans’ straightforward celebration of imperial power, his rival William Spooner satirized the Exhibition and Empire itself in Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851), with illustrations attributed to George Cruikshank. Spooner’s spiral game caricatures the displays, the participating nations, and foreign and domestic visitors. By satirizing the Exhibition as well as the discourse surrounding it, the game lampoons the narrative of national and imperial progress. In building games on the nation’s most famous “glass house,” Evans and Spooner show the glamor, transparency, and even fragility of the imperial narrative.

Commanding Resources in Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game [c. 1855] As part of the developing mass market for children’s books and toys in mid-eighteenth-century England, board games became increasingly sophisticated and specialized. They could feature an image-based landscape, as we saw with Spooner’s Voyage, or a spiral track with a welldefined center, like Betts’ A Tour, or a traditional cartographic map, embellished or not. The largest subset of games, at least at the start, were those instructing children in geography and history, using play to promote learning through traditional cartographic forms with inset images on the border or the map. Adopting a traditional world map, Henry Smith Evans published The Crystal Palace Game [c. 1855], likely celebrating the removal and reopening of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham. Unlike Betts, Spooner, and the prominent Wallis family, Evans did not approach his board game from the perspective of a children’s publisher who planned to produce a series of works. Among Evans’ texts, this game stands alone. On the Crystal Palace board, he identifies himself as a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and on the frontispiece of his Geology made easy [1858], his credentials include an LLD (a doctoratelevel law degree or an honorary degree) and “Fellow of the Geological Society” (Figure 3.1). Though the list of professional affiliations following his name establishes a bookish, gentlemanly persona, Evans was a more colorful and combative character than his honoraria might suggest, with a professional interest in emigration.6 In his early career, Evans joined John Clemmitt, Henry Chambers and Richard Bullock in the firm Clemmitt, Evans, & Co in the New Inn, Old Bailey, offering services as “waggon and coach-office keepers, and general agents.” After dissolving his partnership in 1810, he went on to form the firm of Smyth and Evans, Colonial Agents and Accountants, providing services of advice, bookings, and supplies to would-be emigrants (“Henry Smith Evans” Law). The work seems to have brought difficulties since he was called to court in 1846 as “an insolvent debtor, having been filed in the Court of Bankruptcy” (“Henry Smith Evans” London 5478).

Credit line: Evans, Smith. (1851). The Crystal Palace Game, Voyage Around the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy. National Library of Australia Map NK 2981

Figure 3.1 Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game, wide shot

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Considering this context, Evans’ Crystal Palace seems to be transparent in its goal of encouraging emigration and showcasing its profits. I begin the analysis of Evans’ game by examining how he uses the Crystal Palace as a vehicle to encourage emigration. I will also investigate the symbolic apparatus surrounding and framing the game: the display cases around the board, the chart of “possessions” at the bottom, and the map itself all function as instruments of imperial power. Finally, I will also analyze the game’s methodology, how the play is distributed across this traditional cartographic board, discussing the rewards and cautions that accompany an imperial life. Since the accompanying booklet is missing from the major archives that hold surviving copies of the game, there is guesswork involved, but according to an early review of Evans’ game, perhaps the lack of a key may not be much of a loss. The Athenaeum’s 1855 review of Evans’ game calls learning through play “capital,” but expresses less enthusiasm for Evans’ accompanying “Key.” The reviewer objects on the grounds that it asks a great many questions without giving answers; and in place of necessary information, we have not unfrequently bad puns and wretched street slang. Take the following balderdash by way of illustration—(the ship is supposed to have arrived at the Antipodes):—“Read the Tables, and reflect on the vast extent of the British Empire, ‘on which the sun never sets’—to which curious notion add, ‘nor the tax-gatherer goes to bed!!’ Well may our gracious Queen be proud of her dominions, in which slaves cannot live. Sing ‘God save the Queen’—if you can. You are also at liberty to turn two summersaults, by way of exemplifying the revolutions of the globe. Suppose you were shot through the tunnel, what a glorious ‘bore’ it would be!!” Surely Mr. Evans cannot think this pleasantry! [. . .] The purchaser will do well to put the “Key” into the fire. Without it the board is perfectly intelligible. (704) The reviewer here disapproves less of Evans’ politics than he does of the levity and the slang used to express them. The “balderdash” about the tax gatherer as well as the suggestion that players turn summersaults and sing songs would disrupt notions of decorous play and learning. Evans’ game is a linen-mounted, brightly colored folding map bordered on three sides with 14 images that appear to be scenes from around the Empire and look like display cases at an exhibition or museum. At the top near the masthead, two more display boxes (large ovals) depict the Crystal Palace and then Queen Victoria and the Royal Family inside. The effect of this arrangement suggests that these displays of scenes from around the world are topped by the Crystal Palace (the framework that contains them) and by the sovereign who orders the structure. They are at the top of, but also supported by, the imperial displays in a visible spatial

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hierarchy.7 The different kinds of frames for the scenes from Empire and the Royal Family are significant since “a character framed in a series of circular enclosures is more likely to be secure and content than one framed in a series of utterly rectangular objects” (Moebius 150). This spatial arrangement also reflects the Exhibition’s design to represent England’s privileged position in relation to its rivals. The building featured an east wing to house “foreign” countries and a west wing reserved entirely for Britain and its colonies. The distribution reveals “how much the Empire was at the heart of the British self-perception” (Clemm 213). Deborah Philips affirms that the Royal Family was also at the “centre of British national identity. The Great Exhibition was organized and designed by Prince Albert, and was ceremonially opened by his admiring wife Queen Victoria” (96). Their importance as an organizing force and a representative symbol of British family life is represented by the placement and size of the oval. The 14 display cases have intertwining branch borders, suggesting that they are growing together, that they are part of the same story. These displays broadcast opportunities for imperial activity across the seas, polar regions, jungles, and deserts of the world. Within the display cases, Evans strategically places animals such as kangaroos, camels, tigers, giant snakes, and polar bears to help players identify the regions. Landmarks such as the Sphinx and the pyramids in one case point more directly to Egypt; though not a British settlement colony, it was an area of interest, and the British had a presence there. Even compared to other maps in an exhibit in the 1970s, curator Gillian Hill calls Evans’ game “an extremely decorative map” (14), perhaps because of these display cases and the inset images upon the map. The game’s highly visual nature, which Hill’s comment points out, links it to the Exhibition, an event designed as a spectacle. Just as Exhibition visitors would have been busy looking at the displays and the building itself, so, too, would game players have been busy examining the display cases and images in Evans’ game. The display boxes are numbered, but the numbers do not correspond to the numbered regions on the map, suggesting they may be part of an alternative system of play.8 Of the 14 images, roughly one-third of them (five scenes) depict violent contact with animals, a theme continued in the images on the board. A man shoots a snarling polar bear, a giant snake is depicted as large as the hut beside it, a tiger attacks Indians, and a white man and child stare at an ostrich that has breached their compound. The narrative suggested by these images is the danger of colonial life, yet it also appeals to Britons’ sense of duty to subdue the wild beasts and make these regions safe. A careful look at the scenes of animal-human conflict reveals that native bodies are the ones in the most active danger. Unlike British agents, they do not bear guns to protect themselves. Though young Nelson bravely shoots an attacking polar bear, in another image, a polar bear mauls what seems to be a native figure in furs.9 Elsewhere, an Indian man in a loincloth falls from an elephant into the path of the prowling tiger, and

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his unarmed companions seem unable to save him. In her work on hunting culture, Harriet Ritvo theorizes, “When natives were threatened by wild animals, especially by man-eating predators, business and pleasure overlapped,” and narratives about these hunts “emphasized the physical and moral superiority of Europeans to non-Europeans” (Animal 275). Evans’ replication of contests between wild animals and humans takes on an imperial charge when considered in this context. Another way to read these scenes of violent animal-human conflict is as Evans’ attempt to displace the violence of colonization onto animals who oppose the coming of British agents determined to transform jungles into orderly plantations. In that light, the animals’ behavior can be read as the coded resistance of indigenous peoples who also resisted foreign domination. Ritvo’s work indicates, “Dead wild animals, especially if there were a lot of them, symbolized the British suppression of the Afghans or the Ashante more compellingly than their pampered captive cousins. Rows of horns and hides, mounted heads and stuffed bodies, clearly alluded to the violent, heroic underside of imperialism” (248). For Ritvo, the display of animal heads, horns, or entire bodies expresses aggressive, imperial masculinity.10 These visual politics are at work in Evans’ game through the moments of violent animal-human contact. Instances that depict indigenous people hunting either end in death and disaster, like the man falling from the elephant into the tiger’s path, or are part of a larger story of British domination, like the Australian kangaroo hunt. In this display case, warriors chasing a kangaroo pause to gaze out across a wilderness broken only by the lone spire of a newly constructed church (Crystal Palace box 14). Their pause suggests surprise that the landscape is being transformed through Christianity, and that a new imperial narrative is being imposed on their own story of hunting. Yoking Christianity to imperialism softens the imperial narrative, in contrast to images of violent conflict. Evans shores up this positive narrative in one of the larger display boxes at the bottom featuring a scene of enslavement (Figure 3.2). The image reminds players that despite the obvious dangers, they can participate in what is framed as a Christian mission to end cruel enslavement. The image is also rigidly framed, and William Moebius’ image analysis strategies indicate that “the frame usually marks a limit beyond which text cannot go, or from which image cannot escape” (150). In Evans’ image, that is particularly telling since the scene features African peoples being enslaved by white men, perhaps from the United States, where the practice of slavery would continue for another ten years after Evans’ game (Crystal Palace box 11). Evans knew his audience. By 1830, there were antislavery societies in almost every British town; the largest petition delivered to the House of Commons in 1838 contained signatures from half a million women (Colley 278). In the image, African women are grouped on the ground while a white man brandishes a sword over a woman clutching her child and holding up her hand protectively.

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Figure 3.2 Evans’ Crystal detail: space with enslavement Credit line: Evans, Smith. (1851). The Crystal Palace Game, Voyage Around the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy. National Library of Australia Map NK 2981

His confederate wrests a baby from its mother’s grasp, and in the background, a third white man pulls two African children along, their free hands raised in supplication. By focusing on women and children, Evans’ depiction of slavery generates moral outrage at the slavers’ cruelty and the helplessness of their victims. Since Britain had abolished the importation and trade of slaves in 1808, and then subsequently banned slave ownership in its colonies, this picture reinforces the Empire’s moral authority and its duty to colonize in order to abolish such practices.11 This viewpoint is expressed in geography books of the period. Mary F.E. Boscawen’s Conversations on Geography (1854) acknowledges that English colonies have a partial commercial purpose but “even more in the hope of establishing settlements of Negroes, who should be instructed in religion and civilization, and be thus enabled to carry these blessings, by degrees, into the center of the continent. The Negroes intended to be placed here are chiefly those slaves who have been set free by the vessels sent from England to put down the slave-trade in these parts” (241–42). In Boscawen’s narrative, colonization serves a larger moral, protective purpose. Evans deploys this narrative as well. In populating the display box with enslaved mothers and children, nary a man in sight, Evans is launching a direct, sentimental appeal aimed right at the heart of his target audience: child players who were in the unique

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position to feel the anguish of being separated from their mothers with particular keenness. This is a rare moment in which English child players are encouraged to identify with indigenous peoples, rather than people of their own color or nation. These moments of identification are important, too, for scholars and historians seeking to interpolate the agencies of enslaved peoples by imagining their experiences. By including these scenes of the enslaved mothers and children alongside the ones of Aboriginal peoples looking at the church, and the attacking tiger, Evans builds a positive colonization narrative: a system to keep people safe from ferocious animals, to spread Christianity, and to save families from the destruction of slavery. These humanitarian concerns are the most visible endorsement for the spread of British colonization, but Evans also acknowledges the remunerative benefits of this colonial system as well, using a boxed chart at the bottom center of the game headed “British Possessions.” The chart offers a specific accounting of territory, enumerates import and export statistics, and then lists colonial populations, Great Britain’s population, and, finally, a combined “Total of the British Empire” at 132 million. Evans then shows how the totaled territory of Great Britain and colonies reaches the “Colonial Empire” at 2,153,246 square miles (Crystal Palace). This accounting of export and import statistics and tallying of population and territory make a visual argument about the value of the colonies. They also tie the colony to England as an imperial unit. This is a significant extension of the Exhibition’s ideological work to display the Empire and its colonies. Evans’ game clarifies ownership and imperial duty through the displays and the chart. An artifact of knowledge politics, this chart displays Empire’s power and authority over territory and inhabitants. Anthropologist Johannes Fabian remarks that using maps, charts, and tables to represent territory “signals convictions deeply ingrained in an empirical, scientific tradition,” and it encourages the belief that “the ability to ‘visualize’ a culture or society almost becomes synonymous for understanding it” (106). An emblem above the chart (which Evans used also as a frontispiece for his texts) features a small image of a ship positioned atop a globe with the proclamation “Britain upon whose Empire the sun never sets” (Crystal Palace). Through this rich captioned image, along with traditional cartography and charts, Evans uses various strategies to articulate imperial might, an example of J.B. Harley’s contention that “cartographers manufacture power” (244). The spirit of the carefully labeled and chart echoes the “elaborate classification” system at the Great Exhibition, which mapped the world as “an orderly, compartmentalized space” (Clemm 213) that was “ranged in four classes—Raw Materials, machinery, Manufactures and Fine Arts” (Hayward 132). Evans’ game replicates both the ideological insistence of the Exhibition and its spatial methods. His disbursement of images and charts suggests a two-pronged approach to make imperial power transparent and to appeal to players’ hearts and pocketbooks. As

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Bhabha has pointed out elsewhere, “Transparency is the action of the distribution and arrangement of differential spaces, positions, knowledges in relation to each other, relative to a discriminatory, not inherent sense of order” (109). In other words, Evans imposes an order and a meaning on the statistics he charts. The chart’s central placement gives the impression of drawing together the surrounding colorful display cases with their polar bears and pyramids into a practical, clear arrangement. Both the chart and the displays are visual instruments of imperial power. The masthead, display cases, and chart are the symbolic apparatus that frames the board’s central map. The map is a typical piece of cartography marked out with 82 stops and small images inset beside or on countries. Names of countries, cities, and prominent geographical features are marked, along with their commodities, in a system of five different font sizes and styles that overlap in crowded spaces and become difficult to decipher. The biggest font is in stylized block letters, used to identify continents. The next level is all caps for countries, and the third level is in italics for products that can be harvested from a region. The fourth level is unitalicized and identifies major cities. The final type is small italics for marking out rivers and secondary cities. The different kinds of fonts reveal interest in the territory: marking out physical or political features, eyeing the map with a commercial eye, or figuring out the precedence of cities. The inset images are the only direct appeals to child users; the game board’s map and illustrations are not depicted in a style that is cartoonish, simple, or as playful as the Athenaeum charges the Key to be. Instead, the map gives the impression of inviolable authority, carrying an invisible “nonfiction label,” in Robert Karrow’s phrase.12 The map presents a carefully cartographed version of the world, much like the Exhibition did in its arrangement of exhibits. Clemm contends that the Exhibition “was not so much a realistic representation of the countries that appeared in the Crystal Palace, but an impression of the world as it looked on the ‘psychological map’ of the early Victorian Empire” (223). That “psychological map” in Evans’ game promotes imperial authority through the surrounding display cases, the chart of “possessions,” and the map itself. Since Evans tabulated the square miles of the British Empire in the chart, size and power are already linked, and he deals with the potential problem of England’s size by featuring it twice on the map. It appears on both the far left and far right so that as players read the map from left to right, standard in Western modes of consuming a text, they see England as the beginning and end of the game world. This move fulfills the proclamation that the sun never sets on the Empire, and it models imperial adventure stories that begin with the hero in England, journeying out to the colonies and then returning home to England enriched by the experience.13 It also suggests that Evans used the map as a tool to make an argument about England’s importance. Nor was this unusual. As map historian Matthew Edney points out, “Maps are not records of what each part of the world actually is; regardless

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of historical and cultural context, maps are careful imaginings of what people have wanted the world to be” (“Mapping parts” 157). England is rising and setting, everywhere visible on Evans’ map as a reference point, a projection of desire and power onto mapped space. In addition to appearing twice on Evans’ “psychological map,” England is also a referential center. New Zealand is marked as “Antipodes of Greenwich,” and west of Africa, a sea route is labeled “homeward course.” Territories are marked with distance estimates from the metropolitan center and with their dates of incorporation into the Empire. The dates range across time and territory from the West Indies, “Barbadoes 1605,” to Africa, “Timbo 1787” and to South America, “Guiana 1803.” These dates overlay space with time, offering players a ready timeline for imperial expansion and showing that these places are mapped and made visible through colonization. Players are also invited to trace explorers’ routes marked across the surface of Africa (“Livingstone’s Route”), Australia (“Thomas Mitchell’s Explorations”), north of Canada (“Here Capt Parry wintered”), and even across the ocean (“Ship Alfred Capt Flint Outward course 1842”).14 Tracing these routes had a pedagogical function. Educators encourage emerging readers to trace letters with their fingers to acquire knowledge through tactile experience. What, then, could players learn from using their fingers to trace the lines that English explorers had made? Richard Phillips theorizes that “in these malleable spaces, writers and readers of adventure stories dream of the world(s) they might find, the adventures they might have, the kinds of men and women they might become” (3). Unlike Joseph Conrad’s map-gazing dreamer who broods over blank spaces, Evans’ players had a clear directive. At the very least, they were shown that inscribing a track led to inclusion in a Great[er] Game, where their names could be mapped while gaining adventure, fame, and riches. That commenced with gameplay. According to the map’s numbering, players began the game on the left in England, following the numbers along the west coast of Africa, then around the Cape and up to the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. They would then proceed to India, East Asia, Russia, and then through present-day Alaska, down the western coast of America. They went back out to the Pacific islands, then Australia, over to Central America, South America, up the eastern coast of America to Greenland, and from there across the Atlantic, back to England.15 The distribution of the stops works out so that 20% focus on the Pacific islands, Australia, and New Zealand. In Australia and New Zealand, there are eight stops alone, compared to only three stops for the entire Indian subcontinent. Given the recent discovery of gold in Australia prior to the game’s publication, Evans may be privileging it as an opportunity for quick profit. An illustration near Australia even depicts “Gold Diggings,” part of Evans’ overall interest in the resources available in the colonies. Evans’ preoccupation with commodities and raw materials is one of the most prominent and consistent features of the game. The identification of

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places with commodities models the visual associations a Great Exhibition visitor could have made standing in front of a booth. Gill characterizes Exhibition display cases as featuring “captured exotic objects and peoples, the spoils of war and aggressive commercialism” (157). The East India Company showcased India through a display of primitive-looking tools and raw materials as well as decadent luxury items and elaborate jewelry, depicting it as “a profitable resource, which was in need of the expert control that the East India Company offered” (Clemm 214). The display of these resources is a transparent communication of power, authority, and ownership. In his game, Evans inscribes wealth and power on the map with annotations of the resources available in imperial territories. Like its Hyde Park predecessor, Evans’ game offers a shorthand reconnaissance for the development of commercial opportunities. Commodities are emblazoned across and alongside territories, an imperial caption indicating sites for development and commerce. Over the map of Hindoostan, Evans identifies commodities such as cotton, silk, spice, indigo, tea, and sugar; South America provides “Precious Ores, Sugar, Coffee, Cotton, &c,” and China, not a British colony but certainly a region of interest for trade (as the Opium Wars would attest), provides “Tea, Silks, &c.”16 Central Africa is noted for its wood, gold dust, ivory, and palm oil. South Africa is “found [. . .] fertile, rich in gold, wool, wine, and ivory,” and Evans points to gold on Africa’s “Gold Coast” and, in California, “Gold, Silver, &c, Copper Ores.”17 The exhausting litany of products had a pedagogical function, letting children know where the resources are. As Edney contends, “Maps enable people to configure and delineate specific spaces which they can comprehend, govern, and control” (“Mapping parts” 121). Evans notes territories where control is exerted, but also places that are resistant. Near Japan, for instance, Evan notes, “Trade with the Dutch only” (Crystal Palace 30). It bears noticing that the commodities appear only on non-European countries, suggesting that the map is less a reflection of production and raw materials than it is a reconnaissance survey, looking outward for prospecting opportunities. Evans’ lists of commodities also creates the sense of the British Empire as a global enterprise requiring the steady, coordinated activity of colonial outposts, plantations, ports, and factories, assured through the installation and supervision of civil servants, military officers, merchants, and even teachers and parents in the metropole. John MacKenzie relates that “teachers were enjoined to stimulate children’s interests in the value of the Empire by revealing the manner in which their diet and clothing relied on supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials from it” (186). As geography primer writer Priscilla Wakefield remarks, the reader “will soon perceive that he cannot procure his usual breakfast, or clothe himself in his accustomed dress, without the assistance of his fellow-creatures who inhabit countries beyond the ocean” (Sketches 190). Though Wakefield seems to take for granted (or overlook entirely) the cooperation or

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coercion involved in what she gently characterizes as “assistance” from fellow creatures who labored in fields, forests, paddies, and busy ports, colonized populations did not have much choice about this decision, unlike the emigrants who chose their work deliberately. Postcolonial geographers urge critical map readers to ask “‘Who made this map (or paid for it), and why?’” (Karrow 7). In this case, the question is particularly productive. Evans’ interest in opportunities for colonial development links to his professional activities. Not only did he style himself as an emigration agent through his commercial firm, but he also became a recognized authority in geology and geography texts marketed to help emigrants choose a destination. Known best for Map of the World on Mercator’s projection, featuring lithography by John Anthony L’Enfant (who also did the lithography on The Crystal Palace Game), Evans published variations of this work from 1847 to 1852.18 He also used geology as a starting point for emigration in The old and new world; or, geology made easy: to assist explorers and agriculturists in selecting lands; miners to discover iron, coal, and other minerals; architects and builders—slate, stone, &c.19 The catalogue at the end of one of his geology texts, Geology made easy [1851?], lists Evans’ works. The titles seem overtly speculative about the opportunities for colonial profit, including British Colonies: their capabilities and resources; CornField map of the world, showing where food for man grows advantageously, including Rice, Maize, Cocoa, Coffee, Tea, &c; and Map of all the known coal-fields of the world, for extending oceanic steam navigation, the primary and carboniferous formations are distinctly marked in which gold is found. The implication of the titles is that a careful study of these texts will help emigrants make strategic, profitable choices about settlement. Many of the same named commodities from Evans’ books, e.g., rice, cocoa, coffee, tea, gold, also appear on the Crystal Palace map, connecting adult emigration with children’s play. Based perhaps on his earlier Mercator map text, Evans’ Emigration map of the world: geographical and physical map of the world on Mercator’s projection, shewing the British possessions, with the date of their accession, population, &c. [1849] was engraved by B. R. Davies. Many of the same strategies he would use in the game are highlighted here, from the notation of geography and physical features to the prominence of British possessions, along with notes about incorporation and population. Evans’ next version of this title is even more direct: Emigration: a guide to the British colonies; their capabilities and resources, etc. [1851], along with A guide to emigration colonies: including Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Canada, and the other British possessions of North America [1851]. This work was 28 pages, included a folded map book, and sold cheaply for 1s, 6d or in a mounted cloth case for 2s, 6d.20 Maps such as Evans’ are screens displaying opportunities for mining, harvesting, exploiting, trading, and disciplining transgressive

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subjects throughout the imperial world. They suggest strategies not only for traversing imperial space, but also for managing it. Considering his commercial background in emigration, aspects of Evans’ work seem more practical than diversionary. Gillian Hill, who helped curate an exhibit at the British Library in the 1970s, had a glimpse of the Key booklet (now lost) accompanying Evans’ game and noted that it provides not only place descriptions but also practical advice on the cost of the voyage: All Provisions, Wine, Spirits, and Sugar being shipped “duty free,”— the cost of living on board would be much less than on shore. Contracts could be made to supply the Sailors with provisions, &c., according to an agreed dietary table from 10d. to 1s. per diem, and the Cabin Passengers, including Wine, &c., at 3s. 6d. to 5s. (qtd in Hill 14) Since the provision of spirits and duty-free goods is outside children’s typical concerns, Evans may be counting on children playing this game with their parents, or perhaps he takes a long view of the children themselves. Whatever his intent, these practical details about provisions and cost of living provide a guide for would-be emigrants. The specific details also establish Evans’ authority and credibility in this game, perhaps encouraging players to read his emigration books. Eric Richards’ research on emigration gives a sense of the broad market Evans’ work would have had; he estimates that from 1853 to 1894, almost 8 million people left Britain and Ireland for destinations outside Europe (145). All would have needed some level of preparation. Evans’ passion for emigration culminated with his political ambitions. In 1857, the Evening Mail reported that Evans offered himself as a candidate for Berwick county, noting that he opposed all taxes on industry but favored “any plan for promoting and facilitating emigration to the colonies as well as establishing home colonization, whereby thousands of acres of waste land in Great Britain could be brought into profitable occupation” (5). Turning “waste land” into “profitable occupation” could only happen if industrious emigrants could be sufficiently motivated to create this change. Evans is not romantic about the “blank spaces” on the map. As his Crystal Palace game demonstrates, those spaces can be filled with lists of commodities and resources. Evans’ game meticulously notes the resources and raw materials available in the colonies.21 For instance, the image off the Australian coast labeled “Gold Diggings” illustrates men panning for gold; the placement of the image draws a sight line between it and the mapped territory of Australia, thus associating the activity, the resource, and the location. By placing the image beside and not overlapping Australia, Evans grants the territory more physical space, amplifying its importance, just as he did when he apportioned this territory so many stops. These discursive moves create a bridge between the “waste” reality

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he described in his political platform and the “profitable” future he could imagine in the colonies. Evans’ professional, political, and personal interest was to promote and facilitate emigration, as manifested in the way he aligned his maps, books, Crystal Palace game, and political ambitions. Even as he promoted emigration, Evans also acknowledged the many dangers facing those who emigrated to work in colonial offices as clerks, in churches and schools as ministers and missionaries, in forts as soldiers, and at ports and plantations as overseers, managers, shipping agents, and sailors. Just as Spooner does in Voyage, Evans’ game also showcases the dangers in harvesting, acquiring, and shipping these goods and resources. Numerous ships, widely dispersed across the map, must face maelstroms, sea monsters off the Cape of Good Hope, volcanoes, and typhoons. The bulk of Evans’ game concentrates on the dispersal of symbolic imagery, tables, and  cartographic devices to bolster the importance and power of Britain and its Empire in much the same way that the Exhibition sought to make that power visible to visitors. Yet Crystal Palace also features two deaths that disrupt the positive, profitable narrative of imperialism and emigration. Between the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands are two scenes in which islanders overrun and battle Englishmen (Figure 3.3). Most of the territory on Evans’ map features commodities instead of images of indigenous peoples. Where they do appear, they are either part of the exotic scenery, like the kangaroo hunters contemplating the church,

Figure 3.3 Evans’ Crystal detail: conflicts in South Pacific Credit line: Evans, Smith. (1851). The Crystal Palace Game, Voyage Around the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy. National Library of Australia Map NK 2981

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or victims awaiting delivery from slavers or ferocious animals. There are two notable exceptions to this rule. Stops 42 and 46 feature the deaths of Englishmen at the hands of South Pacific islanders, and both images are bristling with spears and bodies at sharp angles. The illustrations embody Moebius’ claim that “jagged lines and those that run at sharp or odd angles to each other usually accompany troubled emotions or an endangered life” (151). In these scenes, death is imminent for the English figures. In “Owhyhee,” Evans notes “Captain Cook Killed” in 1779, with an accompanying image on the map (The Crystal Palace Game 42). The illustration juxtaposes the peaceful tropical setting in Kealakekua Bay with the violent clash arising over the theft of a cutter. In the foreground, with one of his men fallen at his feet, Cook stands with legs astride and holds up a hand with palm raised in a quieting or commanding gesture. His bright blue and yellow clothing distinguishes him from the islanders, who are an undifferentiated mass shaded in gray, wielding spears. Cook is vastly outnumbered but remains calm and authoritative even as he is about to be struck down by an islander from behind. Generally regarded as the greatest eighteenth-century explorer, Cook had enjoyed many triumphs in his voyages to Tahiti and along the coasts of New Zealand and Australia, where he claimed territory for Britain, and in circumnavigating Antarctica. On this, his final voyage, he had just charted the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). Given this legacy, it is a pause-worthy decision on Evans’ part to depict the moment of Cook’s death instead of placing him in some triumphant position aboard his ship or marking his death on the map by using a laurel-encircled formal portrait. The precedent for Evans’ decision may have been the eighteenth-century engravings that poured out after Cook’s death became known in England. W. Grainger’s late-eighteenth-century engraving The Death of Captain Cook by the Natives of Owyhee [n.d.] depicts a very similar image to the one Evans proffers in this game. In Grainger’s print, Cook holds up a commanding hand toward his own people firing from a longboat even as he is about to be stabbed from behind. This is also the case with John Webber’s The Death of Captain Cook (1784). Reports state that Cook sought to answer the theft of the expedition’s cutter by taking the local chief hostage; in the ensuing conflict, Cook shot an islander, sparking the battle that ended in his death. Yet the images that popularize his death tell a different story. These images choose not the moment of death when Cook may have been lying on the ground or moments before when he was threatening a local chief. Instead, the most popular illustrations show him standing alone in this last moment of command before being attacked from behind, a mode of aggression traditionally considered treacherous bad form according to English military and masculine codes. These images tend to place Cook at a distance from the viewer, rather than in close-up perspective. Jane Doonan asks readers of images to consider how perspective “establish[es] the viewpoint of

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the beholder in relation to the picture. Is the artist inviting us to look up to, or to look down upon the subject matter: or to look it in the eye? This has a marked psychological effect upon how we relate to what we are looking at” (35). In Evans’ image, the perspective distances viewers from Cook’s death, the wide shot giving the impression that it provides the whole picture, when in fact there are causative factors missing from these depictions. Evans chose this image of Cook, rather than other possible imagined depictions, and over readily available portraits of Cook, which he could have placed on the map to keep the focus on the explorer’s accomplishments and status. Instead, by showing the moment before his death—about to be stabbed from behind—the event becomes about the Hawaiians’ nature, rather than about Cook’s, and in a work that otherwise celebrates emigration and colonization, it is a discordant moment. It also puts Evans’ map within the corpus of texts memorializing Cook in a particular way. James Akerman discusses this tradition: “As part of the volumes commemorating Cook’s discoveries and achievements the map became a way of leading the entire British nation, defined at that time above all others by its naval prowess, on a memorializing and celebratory (if virtual) journey” (58). The islands (and the islanders on them) are mapped as the end of Cook’s story, regardless of what story of their own they may have to tell; they are visible only as Cook’s killers and are inscribed with the “firm, immutable authority of the inscription” (Moebius 144). This move occludes their narratives and layers Cook’s story over theirs. Nearby, a second illustration depicts another Englishman’s death on spot 46. Islanders brandish clubs as they run through the waves to attack an unarmed fallen man who holds up a hand in supplication or defense. The location suggests that the man is likely the Reverend John Williams (1796–1839) of the London Missionary Society.22 Williams proselytized in the South Pacific on the Society Islands, Raiatea, Samoa, and elsewhere from 1817 onward. He and his companion were killed—and some reports suggest cannibalized—on Erromango Island in the New Hebrides (present-day Vanuatu). Following his death, back in England, his friend George Baxter painted two companion pieces titled The Reception of the Rev. J. Williams, at Tanna in the South Seas, the Day Before He was Massacred in 1841, showing the positive greeting Williams enjoyed when landing in the islands in one painting and his violent death at the hands of those same peoples in the next. When considering Baxter’s painting next to Evans’ illustration, it seems that Evans may have been directly influenced by this source material, as he was with the engravings of Cook’s demise. In both Baxter’s and Evans’ images, the fight is represented as unfair in numbers, position, and arms. The Erromangoans rush from right to left (reversing the traditional flow of reading text in the West, thus signaling a type of disruption or “backwardness”). They brandish clubs over a fallen figure who is at a disadvantage in position and numbers. He also raises a hand in supplication, a sign ignored by his attackers. These elements of

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the image tell a story about Williams, characterizing the attack as unjust and casting the islanders as villains. In slowing down to analyze this image in detail, close readers follow Jane Doonan’s lead in her study of picture books. Doonan teaches readers how “to make meaning from visual information,” and that the “total experience of a work of art includes the cultural assumptions we bring to it” (48). The “cultural assumptions” at work here are drawn from a wellstocked visual library of imperial relations that extend beyond these individual actors. The ready visuals Evans appropriated from contemporary paintings depicting Cook’s and Williams’ deaths support J.A. Mangan’s metaphor that an “imperial printing plate with a well-defined picture existed with identical copies in wide circulation throughout the empire: an inferior native and a superior European” (“Images” 22). In Evans’ game, the Erromangoans and Hawaiians are stock characters from an imperial library of ready images, waiting to be imprinted. Bhabha asserts that the “exercise of colonialist authority” relies on the “production of differentiations” between the ruling power and those it purports to rule, marking the latter “with the visible and transparent mark of power” (111). Evans exercises that “mark of power” in the choice to represent the Hawaiians and Erromangoans as subjects in a particular kind of imperial interaction, one that invites subjugation of these dangerous, resistant peoples. By illustrating the deaths of Cook and Williams so close to one another on the map, Evans also confines the violence and danger of the imperial project to a particular region, one not associated with commodities. One effect is that players could dismiss these isolated islands, setting their sights on more profitable shores. In addition to demonstrating the dangers of exploration, discovery, and conquest effectively, Cook’s and William’s deaths may also fulfill a ludic function typical in period board games. Games designed in the tradition of the Game of the Goose featured built-in “death” squares that booted players out of the game if they were unfortunate enough to land on them.23 In Evans’ game, these deaths are offset by spaces offering wealth, imperial glory, and a measure of immortality. Even on the death spaces, immortality could still bring comfort to ejected players. After all, Baxter’s painting succeeded in placing Williams firmly in the public eye as a martyr, remembered because his death crowns his ministry. Notably, neither Cook nor Williams was involved in emigration. Cook mapped and claimed territory and Williams worked for religious conversion, both part of the softer side of imperialism. By contrast, players could assuage themselves that emigration for settlement purposes is both more profitable and safer. The illustrated deaths of Cook and Williams underscore the violence of the contact zone, perhaps to be expected when one set of peoples impose their authority over others, whether through maps, trade, or religious practices. The images offer “the immediacy of their testimony” when the

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“historical moment is literally there before our eyes” (Berger 31). As spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre puts it, “Nationhood implies violence [. . .] It implies, in other words, a political power controlling and exploiting the resources of the market or the growth of the productive forces in order to maintain and further its rule” (112). Lefebvre’s identification of the violence undergirding nationhood (and by extension imperialism) is difficult to resolve in a society that prided itself in its rule of law and commitment to ending slavery. Yet it was also an Empire that met resistance with force, as seen six years after the Exhibition in its response to the nationalist uprising described in the press as the “Indian Mutiny.” How, then, could publishers acknowledge the implicit violence involved when two cultures come into contact? Though the Crystal Palace itself sanitized this contact through the metaphoric transparency of its glass divisions and nicely ordered galleries, Evans’ game acknowledges the messy realities of the contact zone. In contrast to the violent conflicts with indigenous peoples and the display case featuring African enslavement, Evans’ game offers an alternative form of interaction for the English child, through a scene from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) (Figure 3.4). Crusoe’s adventures in the novel were loosely based on the castaway experience of sailor Alexander Selkirk on the Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of South America. Mapping this scene from fiction on the face of a real map calls attention to the blurred lines and questionable distinctions

Figure 3.4 Evans’ Crystal detail: Robinson Crusoe and Friday Credit line: Evans, Smith. (1851). The Crystal Palace Game, Voyage Around the World. An Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge, Whereby Geography Is Made Easy. National Library of Australia Map NK 2981

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between fictional adventure and ostensibly nonfiction geography. A close examination of a digital copy of the map, zoomed in for detail, reveals that the colored image of Crusoe and Friday is imposed on the map’s surface, covering lines of text that emerge behind and around it. This creates a palimpsest on the map, suggesting multiple, competing, layered realities that are fictional, textual, visual, and cartographic. Elleke Boehmer characterizes colonial territories as “contact zones criss-crossed by other cultural perceptions, multiple different histories and stories” (xxiii). By its nature, a palimpsest provides only limited transparency, but it preserves multiple texts. Why Evans would create a palimpsest is an interesting question. Either Evans is making a stylistic choice by creating the illusion that there is another map beneath his imposed illustrations, or Evans may be actively appropriating an earlier map and imposing his own stamp of illustrations on it, failing to erase it completely.24 In either case, his move is reminiscent of the imperial project writ large: to take territory and impose one’s own claims on it, covering what was already there. It also offers a ready metaphor for the postcolonial scholar’s work in scraping back the visible layer to uncover traces of the pre-imperial past and questioning the imposition and discursive power of imperial texts. Evans’ map not only features an image of Crusoe’s island prominently, but the image also shows Crusoe directing Friday’s labor in a field outside his stockade (Crystal Palace 63). Crusoe holds a rifle over his shoulder and uses another rifle for support while Friday crouches at his feet tending a fire or doing another task while Crusoe supervises. This image reinforces the positionality of the imperial agent overseeing indigenous labor in a harvest that the agent will reap. The instance is not overtly coded as slavery per se, yet in the novel, Crusoe does insist that Friday call him “Master,” and the hierarchy of power is very clear. Mawuena Logan identifies Friday as “a stereotype of what the Other is supposed to be [. . .] Renamed, he becomes a ‘civilized’ person and Crusoe’s possession” (33). A busy and eager landholder, Crusoe acquires wealth through herds of animals and stocks of crops, and he circles his domain with fences and walls. In Evans’ image, Crusoe is doubly armed as well, carrying the threat of force as he watches Friday’s labor. Since Crusoe’s novel inspired a welter of “Robinsonades” throughout the nineteenth century, players would likely have been familiar with the allusion that also reinforces the imperial narrative of discovery, accumulation, and domination. At the Exhibition, Helene Gill sees this strategy at work in the design of the Indian Court, calling it an “expression of Western superiority and imperial triumphalism” (157). Both the Exhibition and the game use display to map the expression of imperial power and dominance. The compelling nature of this imperial narrative cannot be underestimated, especially because of the way it was, and continues to be, marketed to children and their parents. Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles posit

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that “colonialism was made up of a mass of small processes with global effects” (xix). In other words, imagine a child’s hand moving a piece across the sea to Australia, crossing over the “gold diggings” space and arriving in port. What were the global effects of such a move? What happened inside the head of that child while his or her hand was moving? How did it affect the child’s conceptions of Australia, Empire, and Britishness in ways that may later have been played out in consumer experiences, in written discourse and social interactions, in a critical voting context, through a career choice, or even in an emigration experience? The “smallness” of a hand on a piece on a family game night or in an afternoon’s play with a governess or on a rainy day with friends could have global consequences.25 In the case of Australia, emigration was an urgent and ongoing enterprise. Colonization programs encouraged 100,000 free settlers to relocate there in the 1830s, and the gold rush in 1851 added another incentive. There were also those emigrants who were transported, as shown in Betts’ A Tour, discussed in the previous chapter. By the 1860s, this included some 160,000 men, women, and children (Parsons 13). Yet Eric Richards’ research shows that from 1837 onward, emigrants were increasingly “selffinancing” (145), meaning that they chose to emigrate under their own power, not as slaves, transports, or indentured servants, and statistically, most were “young and usually slightly better off and more skilled and literate than most of the home population,” including miners, agriculturalists, and capitalist entrepreneurs (142). Long after child players and adult and child emigrants had grown, lived, and died, copies of the game have survived in museums, and their persistence tells a story about the families who purchased and played them. In 2006, an image of Evans’ Crystal Palace game board was reproduced as a free handout for kids visiting the South Australian Maritime Museum’s exhibition South Australia on the Map, 1606–2006 (South Australian). In their work, Gosden and Knowles discuss how objects in museum cases “are always in a state of becoming, and this is true not just when produced and used in their original cultural context, but once collected and housed in the museum. The physical circumstances of the object change continuously, but so also do its sets of significances as it accumulates a history” (4). The photocopies for child visitors to the South Australian museum’s exhibition were not distributed for use in their “original cultural context,” but as artifacts. This underscores Gosden and Knowles’ point that an artifact has shifting “sets of significances as it accumulates a history.” In the intervening 152 years between 1854, when Evans’ game was marketed in The Family Herald as a game for families to enjoy together, and 2006, when the photocopy was distributed to children and families visiting the museum, the meaning of the game has changed. Its original significance was its visibility as an object celebrating the Great Exhibition. Yet just as its Crusoe image covered over the prior existing text on the

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map, this game’s ostensible significance is not chiefly rooted in the Great Exhibition, but in its layered, palimpsestic narratives. Below the Crystal Palace narrative is the game’s operation as an emigration guide or reconnaissance map intended for use by citizens of the metropole interested in imperial trade or emigration. This was a less visible significance, but layered with the celebration of the Exhibition, the two layers make it a persuasive and powerful imperial instrument. As a contemporary artifact, the game has an added layer of “significance,” in Gosden and Knowles’ phrase. It is a museum object, a type of imperial artifact preserved for the future as a curio of the past and then selected and reproduced in a former colony to help its citizens trace and construct their own historical and postcolonial identity in line with, or in opposition to, its closures. The “physical circumstances” of the object and its world have changed tremendously, yet its survival, preservation, and distribution offer a glimpse into the world it came from and the one we now inhabit. Map theorist J.B. Harley recognizes the hermeneutic power of maps as expressions of visual power, writing, “Cartographers manufacture power: they create a spatial panopticon. It is a power embedded in the map text. We can talk about the power of the map just as we already talk about the power of the word or about the book as a force for change” (244). Harley’s “spatial panopticon” allows the map viewer to possess territory through the act of looking, as though sight leads immediately to insight about a mapped place. Harley’s point that this has long been the discursive function of literary texts connects to Said’s summary of Kipling’s Kim: “The ultimate analogy is between the Great Game and the novel itself. To be able to see all India from the vantage of controlled observation: this is one great satisfaction” (Culture and Imperialism 155). The “great satisfaction” that arises from “controlled observation” indicates that visibility is an exercise of power and, from there, may lead to control and containment. Just as the exhibits were contained in their glassed galleries at the Crystal Palace, so, too, are Evans’ display boxes filled with images, his chart with tabulations, and his map with imperial inscriptions in a manner that makes power visible, while overlaying, occluding, or erasing other inscriptions or narratives.

Prizing Technology in William Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851) Taking his cue from the positive goals of the Great Exhibition, Evans’ game promoted the spread of emigration and Empire through the identification of resources for harvest and trade. His contemporary William Spooner adopted a different approach to the Exhibition and its goal to create a transparent showcase in which to view and celebrate imperial might. Nor was he alone in eyeing it askance. Though an avowed goal of the Exhibition was to promote international harmony, it did provoke “some quite jingoistic responses” (Clemm 208) from visitors and, at

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times, a sense of competition. The displays exerted an enormous impact on Victorian conceptions of other cultures (especially the ones under the flag of Empire) while simultaneously promoting to English visitors the reassuring certainty of their superiority. Many of the 6 million Exhibition visitors were foreigners who aroused “both fear and fascination” in the British public (Auerbach Great Exhibition of 1851 187). Publications like Punch subverted the Exhibition committee’s goal of international harmony, using it instead as a chance to expose and mock foreigners. The satiric approach follows from a humorous print souvenir of the exhibition that Jill Shefrin claims inspired Spooner’s Comic Game (14): Mr. Goggleye’s Visit to the Exhibition of National Industry to be held in London on the 1st of April 1851: with a catalogue containing notes & remarks on the most remarkable works in the exhibition (1851). Illustrated by Thomas Onwhyn (1814–1886), Mr. Goggleyes featured 23 joined pages that unfold in an accordion-like strip.26 The work’s parodied exhibits include a device for extracting sunshine from cucumbers, a means of building castles in the air, and an Irish scarecrow modeling clothing [9, 6]. While Spooner creates different exhibit parodies, he may have been inspired by the style, as he follows Onwhyn’s and Punch’s lead in A Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1851). His colored lithograph distorts the Exhibition and its displays through caricatures attributed to George Cruikshank (Shefrin 14) (Figure 3.5). Though some of Spooner’s games were fairly straightforward and educational, designed in the restrained, formal style of Evans’ Crystal Palace game (e.g., Voyage of Discovery, Travellers of Europe), other productions were comic, punny, and absurd (e.g., his spoof on moral games in Cottage of Content or his send-up of the aristocracy in Funnyshire Fox Chase). Spooner’s range in approaching his material indicates that he made deliberate choices about how to represent his topics. His Comic Game was published near the end of a career begun in the 1830s; after 20 years in the industry, Spooner knew his craft. Though he could have chosen an artist to render the Crystal Palace formally, he adopted a different approach with a spiral track in the tradition of the Game of the Goose, “a gambling game popular in western Europe from around the sixteenth century” (Dillon 337). Characterized by Adrian Seville as the “most important spiral race game ever devised” (1001), Goose had been a Continental gambling game in Italy and Spain, appearing in England when John Wolfe published The Newe and most Pleasant Game of the Goose (1597) (Shefrin 7). In that lively tradition, Spooner also incorporates caricatures attributed to George Cruikshank. By the 1850s, Cruikshank was established as one of the period’s most prolific illustrators and caricaturists. His career began with political cartoons, but after a firm discussion with King George IV, he turned to book and magazine illustrations in the 1820s. His 800 works include illustrations for Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the Temperance Society’s The Bottle (1847), and his own Comic Almanack (1835–1853). Spooner’s game

Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

Figure 3.5 William Spooner’s Comic Game of the Great Exhibition, wide shot

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would have been familiar territory for Cruikshank, who also illustrated Henry Mayhew’s comic novel 1851: or, The adventures of Mr and Mrs [Cursty] Sandboys and family who came up to London to “enjoy themselves,” and to see the Great Exhibition (1851). Cruikshank’s talent is displayed in the central image—traditionally reserved in spiral games for a triumphant image of British power and supremacy (e.g., the dome of St. Paul’s as seen in Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies). Here, it could have been the Crystal Palace itself with flags flying or the Palm Court with the Royal Family inside. Spooner’s center space features the Crystal Palace, but only as a distant backdrop for the play of garishly colorful humanity parading in front of it; they, rather than the grand structure in the background, are the focus (Figure 3.6). This aligns Spooner with Punch’s approach. Richard Pearson contends that for Punch, “the Exhibition offers a chance to glimpse humanity in microcosm—all races and classes, and both sexes, accommodated under the same transparent roof. They are all observable, all contained, in what Punch thinks of as a great zoo” (202). In Spooner’s “zoo,” a British gentleman and ladies stroll past caricatured Native American, Chinese, and Turkish peoples, regarding these foreigners with a mixture of frank curiosity, fear, and outright hostility—hardly the international harmony the Exhibition aimed for. J.A. Mangan’s study of colonial imagery notes that selective images of the colonized “were an effective means of maintaining a sense of moral difference and distance” (“Images” 10). A similar image also appears on the cover of the board game box. This is significant because as Perry Nodelman says regarding children’s books, readers use the information from a cover “as the foundation for our response to the rest of a book,” and they “sum up the essential nature of the story” (49). The “essential nature” of Spooner’s story is leering figures against an Exhibition backdrop. The effect of this distribution of caricatured bodies is to build a common understanding or set of assumptions about

Figure 3.6 Spooner’s Comic detail: center space Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

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foreigners. M.O. Grenby identifies children’s literature as an “important agent of consensus-building,” asserting that “it spread and solidified the moral and ideological positions that would characterize Victorian culture and it contributed to the increasing coherence of national identity” (92). Spooner’s game, a part of the larger material culture surrounding and marketed to children and their parents, participates in the way consensus about others is built. To understand how unusual Spooner’s choices are, his work can be considered in the context of other games like Evans’ and John Betts’ Royal Game of the Gathering of Nations (1851), a straightforward spiral race game. The spiral track is where the similarity ends since Betts’ game features carefully detailed, elegant illustrations of the Crystal Palace inside and out, along with its exhibits. Betts describes his Royal Game as “affording to the young an agreeable pastime” but also “calculated to store their minds with many interesting facts, which may prove useful to them in after years” (A Tour catalogue). Framing it as educational device, Betts also acknowledges the “agreeable” nature of the game through elaborate illustrations with a grand, formal tone. Butterflies frame elegant urns, colored gold and highly ornamented. They flank the central image, a long view across the lawn of the Crystal Palace building with a handful of visitors gazing in wonder. Though different national costumes are represented, no one appears ridiculous. The Scotsman in his kilt rests on his walking stick and gazes ahead at the Palace. A man in a turban and flowing robes engages in earnest conversation with an Englishman in a top hat. Betts’ focus seems to be on the international visitors as much as on the exhibits themselves, yet Betts grants them quiet dignity, rather than caricaturing them, as Spooner’s game does, and they are always secondary to the grand surroundings. Betts offers a glimpse of exhibits, such as “The Fire Fly,” an early railway engine (Royal Game 34), a plough (33), and raw materials in situ with an image from a mine (28). Betts’ sources are not only raw materials but also the visitors themselves. His own “exhibits” feature scenes from around the world, including folks riding a camel (2) or hunting kangaroos (15), the Piazza San Marco in Venice (26), a windmill farm (25), children in the Alps (18), and a palmfringed river bordered by a temple in what may be India (20). The overall effect is that the Exhibition has exerted its own type of gravity and pulled in visitors from the surrounding spaces to the central Palace. The Palace itself is also an exhibit, with exterior and interior views cropping up throughout the game (1, 11, 14, 29, 30, 32). There was also a mass of dissected map puzzles inspired by and celebrating the Exhibition. The puzzle output may take its cue from the Exhibition’s focus on arts and manufactures because the puzzles are often hand-colored lithographs, beautifully and tastefully rendered and then carefully cut out. The pieces do not interlock, rendering them more “dissected maps” than puzzles. John Betts’ Gleanings from the Great

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Exhibition features the Royal Family on its cover, Albert holding the hand of the young princess and offering his arm to Victoria, who looks at the trumpet tribute. They are surrounded by dignified representatives of foreign nations, including China, Russia, and Ireland. The puzzle features images from the Exhibition, fountains, and courts: looms, textiles, statues, and modes of transport, such as a sled and a locomotive. France, Tunis, and China are all labeled on the puzzle, with Queen Victoria’s statue and palm court at the center.27 This is also the case in E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s card game Silver Bell Crystal Palace A Game [c. 1854]. The Ogilvys focus on nine courts of the Crystal Palace, with cards featuring 20 views of the Crystal Palace, including the Crystal Fountain, Screen of the Sovereigns of England, African Department, and others, giving the players a taste of the exhibits and their scale (Silver). In all of these games, the Exhibition’s “glass house” offers a visible showcase for objects but also functions as a powerful, corrective imperial lens through which to view the world. Spooner took the opportunity to throw a few stones at this “glass house” to puncture what he saw as hypocrisy, puffery of technology, and the value assigned to labor and leisure. Unlike his contemporaries, whose puzzles, board games, and card games celebrated the Exhibition, Spooner’s work has a cheeky, satirical tone. The only other game I have seen with a comparable tone is W. Roxbrough’s 1s game To the Great Exhibition of all the Nations and the Funny People Going There (1851). This game is a hybrid, combining card play with puzzling. Players assemble cards featuring cartoonish illustrations of international travelers heading to the Exhibition. London’s own Lord Mayor is represented struggling under the weight of the heavy monument he carries to the Exhibition to represent his city and nation. An Inuit bears an actual “North Pole,” an African runs from a charging lion, a crew of Indians are thrown from their bucking elephant, and China is represented by an official whose long queue is a rope grasped by a line of his subjects. The casual racism of these illustrations exposes Victorian concerns, particularly about the Chinese Empire and the imputed assumption that his numerous subjects will follow the Emperor in train. The figures in the illustration for America, on the other hand, have no choice about following. The “Land of the Free” blazoned on the America card features a plantation owner pulling a chain labeled “to be sold” binding two Africans, one with clasped, pleading hands. The dark irony of the card’s text “The Land of the Free” juxtaposed with this image of enslavement skewers the hypocrisy of the vaunted American freedoms that are not available to all people. Rather than showcasing resources, raw materials, art, or manufactures, the card game offers a counterexample of the kinds of “exhibits” that really characterize a nation, highlighting the key moral failing that affects America’s standing as a rival imperial power, a point discussed in Chapter 4.

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Like this card game, composed of broken cards that need to be puzzled over, Spooner’s Comic Game also dallies with form. Instead of featuring interior scenes of the Exhibition arranged in an orderly linear fashion, Spooner chose the spiral track, proceeding around in circles for 76 spaces until the winner reaches the central Crystal Palace space, rather than moving forward as a model of linear progress. He also arranges the displays on this track in no discernible order. Unlike the real Exhibition, which had designated wings and courts, grouping nations with their respective colonies, Spooner’s arrangement is entirely arbitrary. He begins with China, jumps to France, England, Holland, Prussia, Spain, Egypt, and Turkey, over to America, and then back to Germany. From there, it is Russia, Scotland, Africa, Australia, Asia, Ireland, South America, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Belgium. It does not appear that the track through these countries is ordered by geography, size, importance, or colonial relationships. The order is random, unlike the Exhibition’s clear and transparent plan. Following from this disorganized progress, Spooner’s exhibits question the notion of progress in the arts and manufactures. His displays feature both punny jokes and more serious satirical jabs. Spooner puns about the size of the crowds, touting a fabricated exhibit of “anti-crush” clothing, modeled by two dour tourists whose arms poke out stiffly from iron clothing, which is neither comfortable nor beautiful (Figure 3.7). The “anti-crush” clothing offers both a send-up of the Exhibition’s crowds and Prince Albert and the committee’s hope to refine and educate English visitors’ tastes “to elevate the character and habits of British men and women and provide greater incentive for British manufacturers to produce high-quality, aesthetically pleasing work” (Auerbach Great Exhibition of 1851 15). Spooner mocks both hopes for elevated taste and manufacturing in his display of a range of cleverly punned products, such as a seasick bottle of “pale” ale that has doubled the Cape, an alarum “belle/bell” (a woman in a bell-shaped skirt), and a merry Damascus “blade” (punning on a rakish gentleman and a knife). Spooner’s cheeky use of clever puns to trivialize the Exhibition brings together the adult audience of Punch, with their appetite for satire and caricature, and a burgeoning child audience eager for nonsense verse. The tradition of irreverent children’s nonsense verse and rhyme was in its infant stages at mid-century in the hands of humorists such as Edward Lear (A Book of Nonsense, 1846; Nonsense, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets, 1870), with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) on the horizon. Such works are part of the output anchoring the “Golden Age of Children’s Literature.” They are characterized by an irreverent approach to the existing children’s literature canon, which often adopted an uncompromising moral stance. Carroll’s target was Isaac Watts, author of Divine Songs for the Use of Children (1715), whose verse about sluggards and busy bees he mimicked. It is silly to read, yet the mockery also

Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

Figure 3.7 Spooner’s Comic detail: right side of the game

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calls into question the goals of children’s literature, the representation of childhood, and a system of British education founded on rote memorization and recitation. With Alice’s jumbled moral precepts, Carroll skewers the sententious memorization (without practical application) of moral precepts. Yet like Carroll’s novel, which satirizes everything from tea-taking to British law, in Spooner’s game, it is difficult to reconstruct whether children would have understood all these jokes. A good guess is that this game, like Carroll’s novel, would have had a mixed adult and child audience of those who could appreciate the puns, as well as the politics behind them. The way Spooner allocates space in his displays is also reminiscent of the distribution of space in the Great Exhibition and the ways Evans used his map to show Britain’s imperial power and influence. Though Spooner grants even small European countries such as Holland and Belgium their own display boxes, beyond Europe’s borders, he constricts the distribution of space. The entire continents of South America, Australia, and Asia are crammed into one display box each. Africa’s one-space summary focuses on liberation from slavery, celebrating English intervention on that continent, without the point that Europeans forged those chains to begin with. Individual countries and regions within these continents are not distinguished (with the exception of Egypt and China, both imperial powers, past and present), though they are often followed by exhibits of their representative products and harvests. Displays of coconuts and barberries appear after the Africa space, Indian curry follows the Asia space, and a “Bullocks Head Chair & Horse Hair from the Pampas” (Comic Game 65) is the unlikely exhibit following South America (Figure 3.8). Not only is this enormous continent with its many countries and regions represented in a single box, but the absurd bullock’s head chair also has no use value. A gentleman models sitting on the severed, inverted bullock’s head, holding onto the horns for support, ignoring the mess below. In comparison, the England space is followed by seven display boxes of inventions, many of them absurd (such as the punny “masked ball” or the cow with the clairvoyant tail), but nonetheless claiming an outsized territory on the board (9–15). The space assigned to other European countries is less than England but more than the colonizable continents: Germany merits five, France four, Spain three, and Russia two. England is also directly visible at the top of the game right-side up, whereas its “antipodes” (Australia, but also Africa and Asia) are upside down on the track below the center image. To see them properly, players would have to rotate the board. These methodological choices show that Spooner mocks imperial power and technology even as he reinscribes it through the assignment and arrangement of space. This illustrates Linda Hutcheon’s point about parody: “Any concept of textual appropriation must implicitly place a certain value upon the original” (107). Spooner’s parody of the Exhibition would not work unless it were readily recognizable to audiences.

Credit line: Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

Figure 3.8 Spooner’s Comic detail: top half of the game

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Though no accompanying booklet survives, Spooner indicates the method of play on the spaces, which direct players to “Take” or “Pay” specified forfeits. The focus is less on advancement and progress (e.g., skipping ahead, going backward, or being booted from the game entirely) than it is on “paying” or “taking” forfeits. This suggests that the aim of the game, and the Exhibition, is the acquisition or loss of capital, rather than other noble purposes. Out of the 76 total spaces on the board, 61 are spaces for exchange, meaning that 80% of the game focused on taking or paying. In Spooner’s game then, the Exhibition is more about profit than harmony, and profit is made and lost quickly, rather than players acquiring capital slowly and steadily. The game’s economics of wealth work out so that there are more “Pay” spaces than “Take” (39 to 22, respectively), meaning that 51% of the board’s total spaces involve paying, compared to the roughly 29% for taking. The preponderance of paying spaces reveals Spooner’s opinion about what players “pay” for the Exhibition versus what they can “take” away from it. The contrast is even starker when considering that only 61 spaces focused on exchange. Roughly 64% of these spaces involve paying, compared to the 36% offering opportunities to take. Unlike Evans’ vision of profitable emigration, indicated by his chart, images, and commodity lists, in Spooner’s game, the Exhibition and imperial experience make players pay. The distribution of “taking” and “paying” in the exchange spaces does not always follow a clear pattern, but it does seem on the whole that players “take” or “pay” according to how the featured exhibits—and more pointedly technology—add value to the life of humanity or detract from it. For instance, players who land on a steam plough may “Take 2.” The caption explains, “Steam plough to do the work while Farmers eat and drink” (Comic Game 15) (Figure 3.8). Advances in ploughing could certainly reduce a farmer’s time and labor and lead to a more efficient harvest. Yet the plough is in the background, while in the foreground, the farmer leans back smoking a pipe and resembling the locomotive machine puffing in his fields. The farmer’s body is outlined by cross-hatching lines. According to William Moebius’ study of images in children’s texts, “an abundance of such marks often signals vitality or even a surfeit of energy, rendering the scene crowded, nervous, busy, as if each line were a living organism, part of a giant organism. Swabs of plain colour provide relief from such jungles of line” (151). In Cruikshank’s image, the farmer is surrounded by the equivalent of visual noise, creating a mood of “nervous, busy” energy at odds with his own body, washed in plain colors. He either is unaware of the tensions created by his actions or he does not care. By shifting the focus to the farmer, rather than the plough, Spooner prompts viewers to ask what use the farmer is making of his newfound leisure time thanks to the shining technological wonder doing his work in the field. He sits at table all dressed up before a spread of decanted wine and a pineapple. This menu recalls

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the Exhibition’s goal to bring the public into contact with commodities and products from faraway places, but on this dandified farmer’s table, they seem as ridiculous as the idea of an unsupervised locomotive steam plough running in his fields. Spooner’s point is that replacing human labor with machines is not necessarily positive. In assigning his labor to the plough, the farmer has time to drink, smoke, and sample pineapple. He is not sitting down to a good, wholesome English dinner, nor is he engaged in studying books or art or practicing science or hobbies. The plough offers him a labor savings, but this “take” may lead to sloth, idleness, self-importance, and possible overindulgence. Spooner’s game also probes the dark consequences of progress. “The last Continental fashion in Iron work” exhibit (Comic Game 4) features a dancing iron cannon with bayonets for arms, swords for legs, and a cannon ball for the head, topped perhaps by a globe (Figure 3.8). Rather than a celebration of ingenuity and progress, Spooner’s anthropomorphized display presents ironwork as offering more effective ways of destroying humanity, rather than elevating it through decorative arts or practical daily use. To underscore this exhibit’s deadly nature, players must “Pay 3” in acknowledgment of the human cost of facing this invention in battle. Calling it a “Continental fashion” mocks British consumption of foreign (especially French) fashion trends and calls attention to the Continental “fashion” of the revolutions happening all over Europe in 1848. If Britons follow the “fashion” established in France, Germany, Italy, and Austria, it will indeed lead to destruction through the very arms featured in the display. Even the lighter “Domestic telegraph,” allowing a wife to “call to Husband in the Library, Scold children in the Nursery & order Cook in the Kitchen” (Comic Game 48), shows a disruption to domestic harmony within a “networked” home (Figure 3.7). The illustration is divided into four panels, and as the wife in the bottom panel frowns severely and pulls strings, in the other boxes, the cook and husband look wary, and the children topple chairs in fear. Cruikshank’s division of the rectangular panel into four other rectangular panels creates a nested effect and increases anxiety. Moebius notes that “an emphasis on rectangular shapes is coupled with a problem, or with an encounter with the disadvantages of discipline or civilized life” (150). The problems of “civilized life” are addressed here. Since the severe wife pauses her piano playing to use the telegraph, one may question the “labor saving” value of this device since the wife is pointedly at leisure while they are at work. She interrupts the cook leaning over a smoking stove and her husband writing at his desk. In using this new technology, whose labor is being saved? What is being accomplished more efficiently? Spooner does not assign a “Take” or “Pay” to this space, so readers must debate the matter themselves, arriving at their own conclusions about well-to-do women and their administrative work (perhaps dangerously akin to Queen Victoria’s

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own labor in overseeing the labor of the nation from her palace). Like the lazing farmer in the steam plough illustration, the “Domestic Telegraph” invites readers to consider the value assigned to speedy communication, leisure time, and productivity. In addition to exposing how technology may interfere with selfimprovement and honest labor, Spooner’s exhibits also demonstrate how industrialization has altered human relationships to animals. Players who land on his “Locomotive Pig Carriage” must “Pay 2” (Comic Game 62); Figure 3.8. Absurdly combining the ignoble pig as a power source with the trendy “locomotive” tag, Spooner mocks both the homely farmer and the industrial, urbane inventor in one space. The locomotive pig carriage features a carriage bench perched atop a giant wheel with a group of swine inside who run to spin the wheel and power the carriage. The invisible labor of this unglamorous herd moves the carriage forward, but players must “Pay” for the ride and perhaps for the absurdity. Like the bullock’s head chair, these riders ignore the messiness beneath them as they take their ease. The erasure of the labor associated with animals occurs again in another image, this time one associated with England. Players who land on the “Magic Stove” must “Pay 3” to watch “The Animals go in at one side and come out in cooked joints at the other” (9) (Figure 3.8). In the illustration, an inquisitive sheep mildly steps into the oven. At the other end, a butcher pulls out a plate with a smoking mutton joint. The illustration points to the separation between agrarian sites of production and urban spaces of consumption, sanitizing food production by removing the labor involved in butchering. Since the sheep effectively cook themselves, the butcher’s labor is removed from this production because of the efficiency of the machines. John Burnett notes, “Agriculture provided in fact the largest single occupational group in 1851,” yet “of the ten largest occupations at the time of the Great Exhibition only two—cotton and wool—had yet been radically transformed by mechanization” (248). The mechanization displayed in the “radica[l] transformation” of sheep into mutton does not include wool production, but it implicates the same animal in the industrial system through this showy invention. Players “Pay 3” for the spectacle, not the mutton, emphasizing that the focus is less on substance than show. The importance of the images to deliver this message supports Peter Hunt’s contention that in children’s texts “the words are superseded by the pictures, which provide their own coherence and depth of reference” (179). Cruikshank’s illustrations are arresting, startling, and complex texts that invite even a preliterate audience to see the silliness of this supposed progress. Taken together, the inventions offer insight into the mingled feelings of excitement and suspicion inspired by the Industrial Revolution’s promised progress. While the locomotive pig carriage mocks newfangled ideas, the steam plough celebrates the possibilities of industrialization and ingenuity that the Exhibition steering committee hoped would “inspire

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comparison and mutual improvement [. . .] to educate British manufacturers and improve their goods for the British consumer” (Clemm 213). Discounted shilling days were important to educate workers and consumers and keep British industry on top. Auerbach acknowledges the indoctrinating “belief that educating workers would foster stronger social ties and keep them out of Chartist mischief” (Great Exhibition of 1851 11).28 Nor were the Chartists the only ones peddling “mischief” among laboring classes. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto (1848) appeared only a few years before the Exhibition and called for workingmen of all countries to unite, advocate for a classless society, end alienation, adopt a progressive income tax, and offer free education. The Manifesto’s radical ideas align with Spooner’s critique that the laboring classes themselves—the farmer and the butcher—not just the goods they produce, are on display for the British consuming public and are exploited by that visibility. Though Marx wanted to unite workers across national borders, the Exhibition’s goal was to keep those borders (albeit glass) firmly in place to preserve distinctions between nations. Though the goal was international collaboration, trade, and harmony, Clemm reveals that “[p]opular commentators took this to signify a competition between different nations and a chance for Britain to outdo them all” (213). This was particularly marked in colonial exhibits. Gill argues that Britain’s perceived superiority over Africa and Asia was “represented as an effect of industrial skill rather than the result of military conquest” (159). Spooner’s mockery of industrial inventions effectively counters the Exhibition’s earnest hopes that displays of skilled manufacturing would spark productive competition among nations. At a glance, Spooner’s game does feature nations represented by their distinctive products (e.g., Dutch tulips, Spanish sherry, Australian wool). As Dennis Denisoff notes, “The international participation in the Exhibition made it clear that many nations besides Britain had also begun to use commodities as markers of their vitality and self-image” (16). Spooner parodies this by creating his own commodities to mirror caricatured national reflections, especially through cultural norms of beauty and fashion. An image of a Chinese man holding a shoe with a tightening key reads, “CHINA, with a model shoe for making the foot small & beautifully less” (Comic Game 1; Figure 3.8). Rather than feature items from China’s actual booth, Spooner creates his own to question norms of beauty, gender, and even mobility. As with the weaponized ironwork, this invention achieves an end: the foot shrinks, but at the expense of painful bodily disfiguration. As with the ironwork, this model shoe invention asks the viewer to consider if all technology should be celebrated even if its purposes are questionable. Since China with the tightening shoe is the first space, Spooner uses it to set the tone for a game satirizing an Exhibition celebrating international arts and manufactures, perhaps indiscriminately.

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Lest the English viewer feel too smug, Spooner cannily links this four spaces later to tight-lacing. An Englishwoman, color flooding her face, calmly persists in turning the gears of “The Waist Contractor and Tight Lacing Machine” even though she has made her waist a grossly disproportionate, exaggerated wasp shape (Figure 3.8). Spooner questions consumers’ sense in adopting self-destructive technology and critiques consumer desire. This is significant given Denisoff’s assertion that “toys were being conceptualized not only as lures for young shoppers, but also as tools for constructing them as consuming subjects” (12). Consumers can be constructed by what they consume—even this game. By placing these images close together in the game, Spooner connects cultural practices of beauty that disfigure the female form. Though British women would make a bid for suffrage to save their colonial sisters from practices such as footbinding, sati, the harem, and child marriage, Spooner’s exhibit shows that Englishwomen also disfigured their bodies.29 Women are not the only ones disfigured by machines. The human body is industrialized in “New and Ventilating Hats” (Comic Game 74), which features various stove pipes and a top hat with a vent built in, poking fun at both fashion and the industrialization that reduces human beings to smoking factory chimneys. This follows the earlier image of the farmer puffing away on his pipe, akin to the steam plough working in his fields. Though the Industrial Revolution should be freeing people to pursue human interests and productive leisure time, instead, Spooner threatens players with a vision of humans becoming mechanized.30 On a surface level, the Ventilating Hats, the “anti-crush clothing,” the tightlacing machine, and the “French poodle fashions” exhibit (featuring dogs dressed up in the latest fashions) (6) satirize the fashion and textile industry and trivialize the Exhibition’s goal to showcase arts and manufactures. Spooner’s mix of satiric playfulness and vicious skewering through these parodied exhibits of other nations triangulates England’s character. All of Asia appears in a single display, a tiger dressed in a top hat and waistcoat, snarling with a paw in a sling (Comic Game 56). This wounded, dangerous animal tries to assume a character that does not suit its nature. The next space, “Indian curry and Mogul sauce,” features two bottles. From the first, a fire-breathing demon emerges, with fireworks popping on its tail, while a turbaned man sneers from the second. Players landing here must “Pay 3” (57) since the sauce rebukes both the tame British palate and the over-adventurous memsahib trying to diversify her family’s fare with colonial flavors. Just as the tiger should not assume English dress, the English table should not feature colonial cookery. Spooner’s imagery reinforces the public opinion that “[a] national British identity cannot exist in itself however, but must be defined by its relation to, and position in, the rest of the world” (Philips 96). Visitors to the Crystal Palace strengthened their notion of what it meant to be British by observing other countries’ displays as well as foreign visitors.

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Spooner’s displays of Asia, Indian curry, and Ireland follow suit. Identified as “a broth of a boy” (60), Ireland is a mirthful figure, mouth open in song, clutching a club and a bottle, followed by “Tumbler of punch and the Matarials [sic]” (61) (Figure 3.8). Viewers “Take 1” at the expense of the Irish, exhibited as drunken, infantilized “boy[s]” with thick brogues. Like Punch cartoons, Spooner’s exhibits demonstrate “the process of Britons defining themselves against, and in comparison to, other nations and peoples” (Auerbach “GE and Historical Memory” 107). This exaggerated Irish foil highlights English moderation and self-control, and this comparison is profitable for players. In these moments of “take,” British players profit from colonial subjects. Spooner also contrasts England with faraway colonial regions: Africa and Australia. The entire African continent, contained in one display box, bears the caption “Africa with the chain Great Britain has broken” (Comic Game 50) (Figure 3.7); the illustration features a smartly dressed African man with exaggerated features holding two lengths of broken chain. He frowns impressively as he dances on beribboned feet. The imputation of this costume is that a freed Africa will adopt English dress and social practices. He is followed by a load of tusks, “Cocoa Nut and Box of Ivories” (51). Viewers “Take 2,” perhaps in congratulation for helping Africans break the yoke of slavery or in recognition that a newly freed Africa offers a fresh, profitable commodities market to exploit. Like Evans’ game, Spooner’s Comic Game encourages commodity identification with territory. A few spaces on, in the Australia display box, a kangaroo with a cargo pack is briefly captioned “AUSTRALIA. Kangaroo & Wool” (54), framing a colonial territory in terms of goods to be extracted from it. Spooner’s display of colonial territories demonstrates that the exhibition is less about the unique cultures of Africa, Ireland, and Australia than it is about extracting and circulating their commodities. Spooner offers a prize to those seeking to be part of colonial commerce in the Australian “Emigrants[’] Domestic & Travelling Kettle” (Comic Game 55). It features a family sitting at table inside a giant wheeled teakettle. Their choice to travel inside a vessel of British culture isolates them from their new colonial surroundings. One cannot appreciate the view of Sydney’s harbor from within a teakettle. Unlike Evans, who built his professional career on a pro-emigration platform, Spooner satirizes emigrants who barricade themselves with their own cultural traditions. The teakettle, a vessel of English culture, not only limits emigrants’ experience of the world around them, but they also run the risk of being destroyed by it as well. A kettle is made for boiling water, after all, and this one has steam issuing from its spout. Spooner highlights the selfdestructive nature of people’s choices about technology when they insist on the trappings of Britishness despite making a new home abroad—or as seen earlier with the dangerous ironwork weapon, constricting shoe, and tight-lacing machine.

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Perhaps because of its emigrants’ blinkered behavior, the game predicts that Britain’s imperial power will not last forever. Spooner questions its longevity by juxtaposing it with empires of the past, not simply current imperial rivals. England’s display box is captioned “John Bull and Brother Bull of Nineveh” (Comic Game 8), presenting a British John Bull sporting a coat, waistcoat, boots, and top hat beside a bearded Assyrian bull in a turban who casts a weighty glance at him (Figure 3.8). Even though the British bull is smartly dressed, they are still the same animal, and in the end, John Bull is just a bull whose clothing indicates his inflated sense of importance. Thus, the display aligns the Assyrian Empire with the British, leading to the uncomfortable conclusion that despite its colonies and character, the sun will eventually set on Britain as well. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Burden of Nineveh” also uses an Assyrian bull to warn readers of the decline of empire. Contemplating the unloading of an enormous winged bull statue at the British Museum, Rossetti’s London narrator speculates that this “Bull-god” (l. 171) may be someday transported to Australia or other emerging colonies, “a relic now/ Of London, not of Nineveh” (ll. 180–81), thus making it an exhibit of Britain’s own ambitions and aligning it directly with the empires of the past. At William Michael Rossetti’s estimation, Dante’s “Burden of Nineveh” was composed in the autumn of 1850, printed in an early form in 1856, and revised for publication in 1869 (Rossetti, William 55). Though I have not uncovered evidence that William Spooner knew the Rossettis well enough to have been familiar with their work in draft form, Dante Gabriel Rossetti did know and admire George Cruikshank, the illustrator credited with the caricatures for Spooner’s game.31 This shows that selfconscious imperial anxiety is an artistic concern. The decline of empire is also underscored in the display of modern Italy, featuring a garish gentleman labeled “a model brigand” (Comic Game 66), followed by “Relics from Herculaneum” (67). These “relics,” however, are ordinary pots and pans with faces on them, rather than sublime images of Roman architecture or sculpture—all that remain of the ancient empire, an “Ozymandian” caution for viewers. Though Auerbach has characterized the Exhibition as a “cultural battlefield” on which “competing visions of Britain fought for ascendency in a struggle to define Britain’s past, present, and future” (Great Exhibition of 1851 5), Spooner presents viewers with a satiric caution about Britain’s celebration of technology and a sobering vision of its future. Far from celebrating the Exhibition as the apex of progress, Spooner’s game glimpses its diminution at the very moment the Exhibition lauded its prosperity. Spooner’s mockery reveals the extent to which exhibition and display, typified in Evans’ game, had become a norm, which he goes on to satirize. One space featuring a hippo pacing in front of a pointing crowd is labeled “Zoological Magnet to attract shillings and sixpences” (Comic Game 29). Like the depicted viewers, players must “Pay 3,” suggesting

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that exhibitions are showy spectacles designed to part people from their shillings. This fits neatly within the take-or-pay economy of the game, with the result that players end up “paying” more than they “take.” Characterizing the Exhibition as profit-based spectacle, Spooner uses the gamed space to undercut its goal to create an immersive celebration of manufacturing and arts to educate public tastes. In this way, Spooner, with Cruikshank’s collaboration, produces a satirical parody, a form of “imitation characterized by ironic inversion. . . . Parody is, in another formulation, repetition with critical distance, which marks difference rather than similarity” (Hutcheon 6). Spooner and Cruikshank visually reproduce the Exhibition with ironic differences in order to defamiliarize and critique what they see as its excesses. Timothy Onwhyn’s Mr. Goggleyes (1851), a work that may have inspired Spooner, features an exhibit of spectacles and binoculars captioned “Glasses, for enabling everybody to take the same view of everything, so that there will never be no disagreement on nothing!” [7], an allusion that Chris Hopkins connects to Prince Albert’s Mansion House speech calling for unity. Hopkins also notes that the name of the “hero, Mr Goggleye, may suggest that his wonder at the exhibition is part of an indiscriminate and deluding love of spectacle, rather than a realistically progressive attitude” (55). Looking at a glass house is not the same as seeing it. Doubling down on his cynical impression of Exhibitions as empty spectacles, Spooner liberally awards “PRIZE” designations throughout the game to every country. The wool-toting kangaroo gets a prize, as does a seedy-looking American with a ticket to a Jenny Lind concert (Comic Game 33) as well as Spain with a Cuban cigar (23), a concerned Egypt riding a bucking crocodile (27), and all other national or continental displays. Rather than democratizing the efforts of all nations, this liberal prize distribution suggests that if all earn prizes, then none of them are actually extraordinary. The “prize” designation itself is worthless; it is not associated with a “pay” spot, so players do not acquire wealth from it. Nor does the prize lead to advancement in the game; players are not invited to skip ahead. Instead, the “prize” is simply an empty honorific that does not benefit the player of the game in a tangible way in either progress or wealth. Throughout his Comic Game, Spooner’s satirical take is significant, not only for the way it cuts against the grain of the majority of other games that celebrate the Exhibition but also for its place within his own body of work. Spooner’s Comic Game appeared on the market around 20 years after his Voyage of Discovery. As discussed in Chapter 2, Voyage represented the contact experience as a starting point for establishing trade relationships profitable to the Empire. If Spooner is satirizing the consuming public and the spectacle of Empire on display at the Great Exhibition, this may reflect a shift in his politics and perspective in the intervening period. Though the choice of illustrator gives Comic Game

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a bold, humorous visual character, the game differs in methodology as well. Whereas in Voyage players could advance along the board by overcoming storms and making islanders pay with resources, the very idea of advancing is called into question in Comic Game, and by extension in the Great Exhibition and the Empire itself. Players of Comic Game simply race around a spiral track. There is no mapped horizon or sounding sea, but instead dozens of exhibits tucked into a dizzying, nested space. Seen at best as playful and punny, at worst as subversive or even antiimperialist, Spooner’s game opens up a space for players to think about advancement in the game as well as in their country and Empire. What were they progressing toward and for what goal? What role did the colonies play in a vision of the future? Other game makers took up these questions (discussed in the next chapter). Taken together, Spooner’s and Evans’ games commemorate the Crystal Palace by “creat[ing] little universes of meaning,” in Clifford Geertz’s phrase (“Blurred” 25), with their own rules governing movement, forfeits, and players’ expectations. The games reveal the ways children’s play dispenses the kind of cultural ideology promoted by the Exhibition in its setup, displays, and subsequent discourse. David Cannadine points out that the British Empire was a “culturally created and imaginatively constructed artifact”—a vast, varied space that Britons had to “imagine and envisage” (3). Wrapping one’s head around the immense imperium plugged into Evans’ chart of the British possessions is a formidable task. The Exhibition offered one way to make the far-reaching Empire visible to child players. These games were another. Visibility is a trick in both games. For Evans, the apparent visibility masks the words underneath— the imposition of images and charts over a mapped surface—the same way the curated images of Cook’s and Williams’ deaths overwrite indigenous narratives about those events. For Spooner, visibility is a lure, a spectacle, designed for profit; when visitors look too closely, they see the absurdity of the pig locomotive or the bullock’s head chair, or they glimpse the larger problems of labor and leisure represented by the farmer and the piano-playing lady of the house. For those playing games in glass houses, visibility is never simple. Evans’ decision to draw on the imperial archive of images depicting the deaths of Cook and Williams and Spooner’s caricatures that satirize other nations and their products take different stands on the politics of visibility. These can be considered from the perspective of artists and anthropologists. In a broad sense, visibility is an artifact of the artist’s thinking. Jane Doonan asks viewers to remember that the “drawn (or painted) line is a direct record of the movement of the artist’s hand, describing objects and events. The line that tells you about the pictured world reveals at the same time something of the personality of the picture-maker and how he thinks and feels about what he is doing” (23). Spooner and Cruikshank leave players in no doubt about this. Visualization was also an

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important way to help metropolitan citizens picture other cultures. Early ethnography depended on “visualization and spatialization” through the exhibition of the exotic in illustrated “travelogues, museums, fairs, and expositions,” and ethnographic activity was primarily defined as “a visual and spatial activity” (Fabian 121–122). Activity in the contact zones is linked to a series of decisions about how to display that activity’s purpose (humanitarian or profit-driven?) and how to exhibit its fruits. For Evans, displays, charts, and lists of commodities make the authority and power of the Empire visible to child players and exhibit reasons to emigrate. For Spooner, the structure of exhibitions is questionable, and the visuals that seem exciting and innovative at a glance quickly become absurd, messy, or even dangerous when examined closely. Spooner’s game challenges the narrative of imperial might and progress even as it acknowledges its bewitching power. He questions the committee’s goal to promote harmony and manufacturing and interrogates whether technology and progress really benefit human life, using a liberal “prize” distribution to satirize visitors’ unthinking awe of the Exhibition and its displays. He amuses, but also indicts, the player touring his version of the Exhibition. Evans’ game, on the other hand, uses the framework of the Exhibition to make imperial power visible in a way designed to inspire shock and awe, rather than cynicism and skepticism. Employing the cartographic tradition, inset images and charts, and textual interventions on the face of the map, he displays the world within a comprehensive, highly visible imperial hierarchy. Rather than indicting players or demanding that they question the authority of the Exhibition or the Empire, Evans’ game urges them to join the imperial enterprise and share in its profits. His game offered homeward trails across the oceans as well as lists of commodities to help players and would-be emigrants traverse the Empire and imagine becoming part of it. For both these games, so divergent in approach, method, and perspective, the Great Exhibition provided a meaningful visual threshold to showcase and critique imperial power.

Notes 1. The evocative power of the Exhibition is seen in the imperial Koh-i-Noor diamond that probably inspired jewels in Wilkie Collins’ sensational The Moonstone (1868) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four (1890). 2. Anthropologist Johannes Fabian borrows the language of play to describe taxonomies: “A drawn-out, serious game” in which “pieces of ethnography, isolated and displaced from their historical context, are used in a series of moves and countermoves” (98–99). The “player” is the scientist, the imperialist, the European authority. 3. Diane Dillon writes about a souvenir lady’s glove by George Shove that bore a printed map of the Exhibition and surrounding London sites: “Shove illustrated the relative positons of other prominent destinations, picturing St. Paul’s Cathedral across two fingers, the Colosseum on the thumb, and Kensington Gardens near the wrist” (315).

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4. Called a “myth-making venture” (Gill 153) and a screen onto which Britons have projected “their hopes and fears, values and beliefs” (Auerbach “GE and Historical” 108), the Great Exhibition is read differently across critical schools. As Gill notes, “Most were ready to ‘buy’ the myth, except for a few perceptive and/or cantankerous commentators” (166) like Spooner. Auerbach contends that the Exhibition’s significance has been “refracted through a Victorian lens: Whiggish historians seeing it as a shining example of midVictorian peace, progress, and prosperity; Marxists as an egregious symbol of industrialization and the formation of rigid social classes; postmodernists as an imperial and commodity spectacle” (“GE and Historical” 89–91). 5. The peep shows were fragile accordion-like pop-ups that, when unfolded, provided the viewer with a small hole through which to view the Exhibition extending back, with various cutouts in the intervening space. In front of the pop-ups are the fountain and central court, and the interiors feature visitors stopping at various galleries. Lane’s peep show offers the viewer a look in at the fountain and the throngs of people gathered around the tree in the center. 6. On March 12, 1844, the Morning Post details the controversy Evans initiated when he used “offensive” language writing to Deputy-Chairman of the Stock Exchange Mr. Hutchinson. When called to court, Evans’ “volley of abuse” convinced everyone that “his language was well calculated to provoke a quarrel” (7). To avoid indictment, Evans agreed in writing to “withdraw, in the fullest manner, all the offensive expressions” in letters to Hutchinson, to the chairmen of the Committee of the Stock Exchange, and the Reform Club (March 13, 7). Evans admits that his charges are “without foundation, and I can only regret that in a moment of irritation I ever made them” (7). 7. Other games inspired by the Exhibition also present a visible spatial hierarchy. For instance, All the World and His Wife at the Great Exhibition [c. 1860] was “an instructive and amusing puzzle” featuring a close-up of a British couple with the Crystal Palace dome in the background. Small figures of various heights surround the central couple, some of them no taller than the British couple’s ankles, representing other nations, such as China and France. Given the varying heights of international couples, in contrast to the giant, central British couple, size reflects importance and evokes power wordlessly. Similarly, Evans’ game situates the largest ovals, associated with England, at the top, and the 14 display cases featuring scenes from other places are secondary in size and position. 8. The second display case’s number two features a man aiming a gun at a snarling polar bear, but “2” also corresponds to Madeira on the map, just above the Canary Islands. Nor does number six, “Cape Verde Islands,” on the map correspond to the Great Sphinx display case. The display cases may represent an alternative way to play—perhaps a shortcut or a mini tour for a lightning round. The ones on the left are even-numbered, and the ones on the right are odd-numbered, suggesting a pattern of hopscotching over the map back and forth if they are to be completed in a numerical sequence. Another possibility is that they are keyed to a system of rewards and punishments. 9. Curator Gillian Hill quotes from the guidebook “Nelson when a Midshipman killing a Bear” (14), discussing an exhibition of maps, but the book no longer appears in the British Library’s collection. 10. Richard Phillips agrees with Ritvo, asserting that “masculinities are spatially constituted; they reflect the characteristics of the spaces in which they are constructed” (18). Therefore, colonial geography illustrated with wild animals dictates that masculinity is expressed through modes of dominance, namely, hunting, killing, and displaying.

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11. Walter Dean Myers’ contemporary nonfiction children’s book At her majesty’s request: An African Princess in Victorian England describes how Commander Forbes rescued a young African girl from a ritual sacrifice; she was then sent as a “gift” to Queen Victoria, who oversaw her education and acted as godmother to her first child. 12. Karrow observes that “maps are not usually labeled as nonfiction. A map, unless titled ‘imaginary’ or employing such gross exaggerations that most people recognize it as inherently false, tends to carry an invisible nonfiction label, an implied certification that it is factual and trustworthy” (4–5). 13. F.R.B. Whitehouse explains that many board games are based on maps, and the early ones are “literally maps with a track incorporated, starting usually—in the case of Europe—from a south coast England port [.  .  .] terminating at London” (5). These games are far more specific than an average atlas; however, they present a specifically regulated itinerary to map trade and colonial relationships. Literature retains traces of these itineraries through global space. Salmon Rushdie writes, “Adventuring is, these days, by and large a movement that originates in the rich parts of the planet and heads for the poor. Or a journey from the crowded cities towards the empty spaces” (224). 14. The “homeward course” marks Captain Flint’s voyage on the Alfred. Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping lists an Alfred sailing to Australia between 1841 and 1842 with a Master J. Flint. A teak barque constructed in 1818 and owned by Flint & Co. was registered in London (Lloyd’s). The Dublin Morning Register records on Thursday, June 6, 1839, that Captain Flint’s ship, the Alfred, arrived safely from London and Plymouth in Sydney, New South Wales, with numerous passengers (2). The British Library’s notes speculate that Flint may have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson, “who would have been just the right age to have enjoyed this kind of game as a boy.” 15. Along the way, Evans marks Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus as well as routes between places for the practical traveler: San Francisco to Sandwich Islands 2300 miles, translating to “12 Days Sail,” and “Gulph Stream 150 Miles a Day” (Crystal Palace 42, 75–76). These estimates could set emigrants’ expectations of time through space. 16. The Opium Wars with China (1839, 1856) were justified as “the defense of free trade and downplayed the fact that the most lucrative British export to China was Indian opium” (Parsons 18). 17. Other parts of the world are similarly mapped for resources: the West Indies provide sugar, coffee, and pimento, and Canada offers deals, flour, and fish. The Grand Banks off Newfoundland promise rich cod fishing, and Greenland offers train oil and a base for the whale fishery. Australian territory provides wool, oil, tallow, gums, wheat, and “tropical productions,” while Borneo offers “Copper Ore” (The Crystal Palace Game). 18. Map of the World on Mercator’s Projection shewing the British Possessions, with the date of their accession, population, &c., all the existing Steam Navigation, the Overland Route to India, with the proposed extension to Australia, also the route to Australia via Panama (1847) was later titled Emigration Map of the World (1849). Another title is Geographical and physical map of the world on Mercator’s projection, shewing the coal fields, all the existing steam navigation, the overland route to India with the proposed extension to Australia [1851]. 19. Published by Read & Co. at the affordable price point of 1s, 6d, Evans’ Geology made easy, illustrated by a section of the Artesian well at the Model Prison, Pentonville [1851?] was reprinted under a slightly different title as Geology made easy: or, the old and new world [1858]. It may also have

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22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

Chapter 3 appeared as Geology illustrated: shewing the various strata of the earth, exemplified by a well sunk at the Bank of England [1859]. If we assume that Evans pitched these inexpensive guides to working-class families, perhaps the Crystal Palace was an attempt to reach a different audience, one that was upper or middle class. Evans’ commodities-based approach was shared by E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Outward Bound, or Ships and their Cargoes [c. 1865], a card game in which players complete cargoes for their nation’s ship: Washington (America), Pelican (Russia), Melbourne (England), Napoleon (France), Sultan (Turkey). England’s cargoes include “Useful & Fancy Goods,” “Agricultural Machines & Implements,” and coal (Outward). America’s cargoes include rice, cotton, tobacco, and “Pine Apples, Cocoa, Sarsaparilla” (Outward), promoting the identification of places with tradable goods. Christian missionary Allen Gardiner perished, who perished in Tierra del Fuego in 1851, but from sickness and starvation. In traditional play, Goose has 63 spaces, with a death space on 58 and a prison or “well” space “requir[ing] the player to remain unless and until rescued by another” (Seville 1003). Thanks to my lawyer brother, Nick, and businesswoman sister-in-law, Gaz, for a rousing discussion of nineteenth-century copyright law. The publication of Evans’ Crystal Palace Game was announced in The family herald in 1854 (796). This endorsement positions the game as a learning tool and a shared space for families to compete for imperial resources. This is similar to Onwhyn’s earlier work A Railway Adventure that Mr. Larkin Encountered with the Lady of Captn. Coleraine. Showing the Power of Platonic Love [1841]. Other formal Exhibition-inspired puzzles include A View of the Building in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition, 1851, featuring a stately carriage and only a sprinkling of quiet, miniscule visitors walking to and from the building, as well as Industrial Exhibition of All Nations, featuring billowing flags, coaches, and visitors in national costumes. These are straightforward, focused on the grand building, with the orderly, quiet visitors as a secondary concern. Punch made sure that discussion around the Exhibition acknowledged the labor and not only the products. On April 13, 1851, Punch satirized British labor in a cartoon that displayed Prince Albert contemplating glass bell jars containing an industrious needle-woman, a distressed shoemaker, and a 75-year-old laborer. Antoinette Burton’s study of English suffrage shows that “arguments for recognition as imperial citizens were predicated on the imagery of Indian women, whom British feminist writers depicted as helpless victims awaiting the representation of their plight and redress of their condition at the hands of their sisters in the metropole” (7). John Ruskin expressed concern about the British laborer’s dehumanization in his Stones of Venice essays. On March 22, 1866, Rossetti invited Mr. Cruikshank to dine with him, his brother, “Mr. Howell, Mr. Rose, and Mr. Madox Brown,” and he states that he was “truly glad to hear from Mr. Howell that our plans are in accordance with your own views and wishes” (412). Rossetti is probably referencing his efforts to honor Cruikshank’s work. Earlier, on March 6, he had written to Robert Browning asking him to allow his name to appear “on a Committee list of subscription for presenting a testimonial to that splendid old fellow George Cruikshank” (404).

4

Gaming America Slavery, Territorial Appropriation, and the Race for Moral Leadership in Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner [c. 1844] and E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West [1850–1860] In the sad old days, the white men in America used to buy the black man for money, and make him a slave. Then the black man used often to run away from his master, and hide himself in the cedar swamp. —Mary and Elizabeth Kirby The World at Home: Pictures and Scenes from Far-off Lands (1873) 70

In representing both time and territory, games with a historical focus present players with a way to negotiate the past and to understand the struggles of the present through a particular lens. Previously discussed games showed how game makers yoked the Empire’s commercial interests to players’ individual successes in the game and how a rehearsal of colonial administrative practices could train players for work as military leaders and ship captains (Voyage of Discovery) and civil servants (A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions). The previous chapters also suggest how the politics of display could make imperial control and management visible in games that recapitulated the Great Exhibition (The Crystal Palace Game and Comic Game of the Great Exhibition). The games discussed also link the player’s individual success to the larger success of the Empire within a moral teleology—in moving the Empire forward, the players would also serve the good of humanity. Yet not every nation was suited for this position as imperial role model, and the games often acknowledge the faults of imperial rivals. This supports Robert McDonald’s study of the language of nineteenth-century history, which becomes “a show of power, a representation of ‘national greatness’ and ‘national strength’; it gave a pedigree to force, it justified a competitive Britain in a race with other powers for control or domination” (51). By mid-century, games such as Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, or Game of Emigrants to the United States [c. 1844] and E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia, Land of the West [1850–1860) turned their

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focus on the United States, framing it as a dangerous, howling wilderness rife with wild animals and hostile indigenous people, corrupted by the immoral system of slavery. Rather than dwelling on the natural wonders and resources of this territory, both Wallis and the Ogilvys framed the United States as a poor contrast to British Canada. For Wallis, the United States’ unfitness as a space to emigrate is rooted in the moral corruption of slavery, whereas the Ogilvys represent the US as a space crossed by the imported conflicts of the Old World. This means that the British must cope with the legacy of the Dutch introduction of slavery and the French Catholic conversion of the indigenous, among other practices. This representation of the US territory as already inscribed and overwritten is ironic considering that the Ogilvys appropriated their source material without attribution from George Bancroft’s The History of the United States (1834). The Ogilvys edited passages to promote their vision of British colonization in America, as opposed to the portrait Bancroft paints of explorers and colonists driven by greed, mad for gold. Moral leadership was a piquant issue in the first half of the nineteenth century as the United States consolidated its power and authority, developing an identity apart from Britain and stepping out from under that colonial shadow. In analyzing card games based on literature or literary characters, Michelle Beissel Heath has uncovered that these texts “resound with anxieties of a young nation (and occasionally an older one worried about the potential might of a younger upstart) and its desires to see itself and its citizens as equal in every way to the country of its colonial origins” (42–43). On its own, however, the United States is represented in British games like the Ogilvys’ Columbia less as an imperial rival than as a wayward colonial child who has shrugged off the governance that could have helped it develop appropriately. As one geography primer writer puts it, the United States, though “for the most part originally British,” changed due to “peculiar circumstances” so that “the present inhabitants have obtained characteristics and adopted manners differing from those of the parent state” (Aspin 214). This parent-child dynamic focuses on moral superiority. The games specifically define moral superiority through the issue of slavery. Though the slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1808—and subsequently throughout the Empire in 1833— after slave uprisings in Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean, the practice of owning human beings as slaves continued in the United States until President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.1 This lack of moral high ground meant that America, despite its size and resources, was doomed to be represented in British games as lacking the kind of moral progress that British geography primers and games represented as necessary for imperial leadership. Though abolitionism was not personally or commercially profitable, games such as Wallis’ Star-Spangled Banner devised ways to sublimate the players’ personal interests within the larger imperial story: the success

Gaming America 143 of the nation becomes the success of the individual. This type of playing and thinking had real political consequences when it came to Britain’s decision not to intervene in the American Civil War on the side of the slave-owning Confederacy despite whatever profits could be made in the mills in Manchester from American cotton. In an earlier game, John Marshall’s Chronological Star of the World (1818), the center of this historical game features Britannia bearing a scroll that proclaims the end of the slave trade. [Figure 1.1 (a)–(d): four games] By situating this at the center of the game as a historical culmination, Marshall represents Britain inheriting the mantle of moral leadership from other empires of the past and moving the world forward. In Wallis’ game, slavery is a more subtle center; though the focus is ostensibly on emigration, the real weight of the game concentrates on how slavery affects the character of this new country. Wallis’ game codes moral leadership through progress on the board. Players do not just move forward in a linear manner; they sometimes are required to pause, to go backward, to begin again, or to be out of the game entirely. Stasis and retrograde motion are keyed responses to the content of the spaces where players land. This not only yokes players’ fates to the success or progress of the nation but can also serve a cautionary end since the games discussed in this chapter position their Empire in the historical record. In this sense, the games are not simply about racing and chasing, but a more complex form of progression. Moving forward indicates both movement in a forward direction and betterment and prosperity. This is the public face of the Empire as an enterprise motivated by what Kipling would later dub “The White Man’s Burden,” the desire to better the lot of peoples around the globe through civic, missionary, legal, and domestic activity. Under that aegis came the early nineteenth century’s dominant moral crusade: the abolition of slavery. In E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s game, the focus on the United States also acknowledges the slavery issue, tracing it back to the actions of imperial rivals who founded cities and colonies. In this game, the United States is represented as a field of conflict involving both the Native Americans— characterized as warlike “hordes”—and the imperial rivals from the Old World, who have imported their conflicts to the New World. The game characterizes the English as more fit to rule than the French or the Dutch, or even the United States’ own leaders. England’s peaceful strategy of colonization by baptism, both of its people and the land itself, is lauded in contrast to rivals, who introduce the practice of slavery and incite the indigenous peoples. The final achievement of its colonial management is knowing when it is prudent to step away from the rebels who throw off its authority. Because of the time the game spends setting up the United States as a theater of colonial rivalry, it seems a confused, disordered space with a lack of clear, unified values. This is reflected in the way the game is played. The Ogilvys also offer many different choices for how to play the game—perhaps a metaphorical nod to the democratic process

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in the new country, which seems to offer choices and agency, but which may actually be simply confusing, much as Alice finds the caucus-race in contemporary Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).2 Like Wallis’ game, the Ogilvys’ does not set up the United States in terms of rich resources or commercial or agricultural opportunity. Instead, the space is striated by colonial conflicts of the Old World and human rights issues of the New. Though the game traces the events leading to the American Revolution, acknowledging Britain’s part in the escalating conflict and the independence of the United States, it nonetheless establishes its own system of values in designating chief cities and measuring their merits. Though the Edgeworths disapproved of “games of chance” because they do not require “mental exertion” and lead to a feeling of false superiority, Wallis’ and the Ogilvys’ games challenge that dismissal. Each is carefully crafted, offering history as a winning narrative that players can trace with their counters. If British superiority is the end result, as it certainly seems to be, the games predicate it on moral practices, such as the abolition of the slave trade and proper propitiation of the indigenous, rather than the greedy accrual of wealth or the amassing of territory associated with other rival imperial powers. Britain’s superiority is an earned status through its disinterested colonial practices and its active moral leadership.

Mapping Moral Leadership through Retrograde Motion The Wallis family was a game-publishing dynasty between 1775 and 1847 and were responsible for many of the games that survive in archives as the best examples of the period.3 John Wallis opened the Map Warehouse in 1775 at Ludgate, moving to Warwick in 1805 to open the Instructive Toy Warehouse, where he published games featuring tours of England, Scotland, Wales, and Europe, as well as Wallis’s Complete Voyage Round the World (1796). He collaborated with some of the key children’s publishers of the day, including Elizabeth Newbery and John Harris (Hannas’ The English Jigsaw Puzzle 32). His son Edward joined him in business in 1813 (another son, John, had served a brief apprenticeship with his father before striking out on his own to found a firm). Publishing together as “J & E Wallis,” the father-son team produced games such as The Panorama of Europe [1815], The Royal Game of British Sovereigns [1817], Who Wears the Crown [between 1814 and 1818], and others. Following his father’s death in 1818, Edward continued the business, publishing for nearly 30 years under the “E. Wallis” imprint. Edward went beyond strictly cartographic games to publish games mapping social class (e.g., Every man to his station [c. 1825]), travel (e.g., The British Tourist [c. 1830–1850]; European Travellers [c. 1845]), and at least two on railroads.4 He also followed his father’s example and

Gaming America 145 continued publishing games exhibiting the wonders of nature, manufacturing, and human invention (see Appendix for detailed list). As he carried on the family tradition of game making, Edward also evolved the style of the company’s games from strictly cartographic to a hybrid form in which he filled cartographic outlines with pictorial elements—a form I call “pictography.” Two examples of pictography appear in his 1840s games Wanderers in the Wilderness [of South America] (Figure 1c) and The Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, or Game of Emigrants to the United States [c. 1844]. Utilizing a pictographic style, Wallis preserves only the barest outlines of the map in Star-Spangled Banner, filling it with images of trees, log cabins, animals, and laboring figures in mines and fields (Figure 4.1). Eschewing the cool, scientific rationalism of traditional map games produced by his father and others, Wallis presents an animated bird’seye view of the territory, rather than a dehydrated reproduction marking cities and neatly labeled political divisions. The Star-Spangled game board focuses on the eastern United States, up to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The marginal territory immediately beyond is depicted as unsettled territory, the dense, wild greenery punctuated by bison bones and Native American camps. The color palette is not brightly saturated; using heavy grays, darker forest greens, navy blues, and dull yellows, Wallis creates a moody, brooding tone. Perry Nodelman says that from such a palette, viewers “expect dramatic emotion from the high contrasts between areas of light and shadow” (66). In Wallis’ game, this is a look at America, rather than a joyous celebration. Though the game’s subtitle proclaims “Game of Emigrants to the United States,” budding emigrants would think twice about their plans after playing the game. For Britons, emigration was a serious business—both a way to spread British ideologies abroad and a means to be part of the imperial story by taking up established roles: missionary, adventurer, settler, civil servant, trader, or farmer. The 1861 census showed that over 2 million Britishborn people were living in the US (Richards 144). For these emigrants, while the “why” to emigrate had many possible responses, the “where” could be plotted in the red-colored dominions on imperial maps, many of them subjects of board games by Wallis and others. Here, the focus is ostensibly the United States, but the close proximity to Canada offers a ready contrast and perhaps another “where” to consider instead. As a lost jewel in the crown, the United States is critiqued in the game’s topic and laws of motion.5 Star-Spangled Banner offers 147 stops in the eastern portion of the United States, beginning in the ocean off the New England coast and making landfall in Long Island. The path proceeds south through Delaware and down to Florida, over to Louisiana, and then northward to Ohio, skirting the Great Lakes, crossing the Canadian border, covering

Figure 4.1 Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, wide shot Credit line: Image credit Yale Center for British Art

Gaming America 147 New England, and traveling to New York State as the endpoint. The numbered sites correspond to brief descriptions in an accompanying guidebook, keyed to cities, animals, trade, cultivation, manufacture, mining, and features of physical geography—an expected, routine way to categorize and understand a space through commercial, physical, productive, and scenic geographies. Yet J.B. Harley reminds scholars of geography that “all maps strive to frame their message in the context of an audience. All maps state an argument about the world, and they are propositional in nature” (242). Figuring out what “argument” Wallis’ map states about the world begins with a quantitative analysis: how many spaces are devoted to particular areas of interest? A quick example is the 24 spaces devoted to waterways. From a British naval perspective, it makes sense to plot lakes, rivers, and capes—one-sixth of the total number of spaces (roughly 16%)—because Britain had developed its navy as a source of imperial pride and dominance and the US and Canada shared a watery border. Discursive analysis affirms what this quantitative data suggest; Wallis heaps praise on the “noble” Hudson and the “magnificent” Chesapeake Bay (Star-Spangled 5–6). This section focuses on patterns of quantitative and qualitative synergy that result in the portrayal of the US as a wilderness space where slavery is practiced and where wild animals threaten human life. The allocation of space indicates not only British priorities and interest in shipping and manufacturing6 but also establishes the character of the US. Catherine Hall contends that nations “are always in process, always being constructed,” and so to understand these dynamic spaces, “scholars must analyze ideas of the nation and national belonging which were in operation at the time” (23). When Wallis made his map, the US was still in the throes of becoming, and his choice to use a pictographic map to emphasize that dynamic process visually frames it as a wilderness space, punctuated by isolated cities and raw settlements. Game players glancing at the map would see dense, moody greenery punctuated by ferocious animals; turning to the guidebook, they would notice only three major cities.7 Of the three major cities, New York receives the most unadulterated praise and is the endpoint of the game, rather than Washington, effectively replacing the United States’ capital with another.8 Wallis includes a rather pointed dismissal of Washington as a city and as an endpoint, noting that it was “planned on the most magnificent scale, but at present consists principally of a few inferior houses, with the Post-Office, Bank, and splendid Capitol, or House of Representatives” (Star-Spangled Banner 8). By passing by the “few inferior houses” that constitute the capital, Wallis emphasizes that this former colony has not perhaps fulfilled its aesthetic or commercial promise.9 Even with their “inferior” houses, the cities are preferable to what Wallis characterizes as a howling wilderness filled with predators. Wallis acknowledges that the “Iowa Territory” remains “nominally under

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the dominion of the United States, but it is mostly in a state of nature, and tenanted by a few scattered adventurers” (Star-Spangled Banner 13). Far from glorifying the lives of these “scattered adventurers” in Leatherstocking fashion, as James Fenimore Cooper would do in his Deerslayer novels, the game paints a grim picture of frontier life. At space 67, the “Woodcutter’s Hut,” represented by a log cabin and stockade fence, players are made to “Stop one drawing to try how you like it” (6). Evaluating the settler experience stops the progress, and the game players are not told “you may stop one turn,” but that they must stop one turn. The settlement experience takes away some of their agency and halts their progress. Having stopped, players may try to evaluate “how you like it,” but Wallis tips the scales in his description in the accompanying guidebook. Players landing on a numbered space would look up the description in the guidebook, which often had further directions commanding them to go forward, backward, or to pause, as they do here. The guidebook states that families who dwell on the fringes of immense forests, cutting timber to supply steamboats going up the Mississippi, “lead a dissolute and miserable life” (10). Perhaps that is not to be wondered at since Wallis characterizes the river itself as the “‘Father of Waters,’ but he is a very dirty father; for the stream is thick and muddy throughout its course of 3000 miles” (10). The “dirty” father with thick mud is a stark contrast to the iconography of Mother Britannia, cool and shining across the sea. Wallis is making a deliberate choice here in this characterization, and it is by no means a unanimously held view of frontier life by British authors. In their primer, Mary and Elizabeth Kirby characterize America as “a glorious country for any one to live in,” citing the fish-filled rivers and forests teeming with game (52). This land of plenty also offers other attractions to settlers beyond its resources. Mary F.E. Boscawen declares in her Conversations on Geography: “In the western states whole districts are unappropriated (that means not set apart) and untouched by the hand of man. A ‘settler,’ as the man is called who begins to cultivate the wilderness, clears away the forest, builds his own hut, and establishes himself, with no interference from any person” (328–329). This life of independent frontiersman characterized by industriousness is echoed later in the century by Anne Cupples in Our Parlour Panorama (1882): “I do not think there is a boy or a girl in Great Britain who has not thought to himself or to herself, ‘Oh, how I should like to live in the backwoods of America! I should have everything to do for myself, and live such a free, happy life!’” (58). In contrast to Cupples’ “free, happy life,” Wallis offers a “state of nature.” While settlers’ lives could be glossed as rich in resources like timber, game, and magnificent vistas, instead, his text circles around the “dissolut[ion]” in store for those who live at the margins of what he casts as a wild, lonely, often hostile landscape. The forms of pioneer “dissolution” can be imagined—dirt, poverty, godlessness, assorted immoralities, intemperance—but the game concentrates instead on the moral problem of slavery.

Gaming America 149 Within this wilderness space, Wallis sets up a discursive pattern of references to slavery in nine of the total sites: 29, 37, 48, 64, 79, 82, 83, 89, 90 (roughly 6% of the total sites in the game). This is surprising not only for the number of sites in a game of 147 spaces (with approximately one-third of the spaces devoted to cities) but also for the distribution of the slavery sites. The positioning of these sites across the game from 29 to 90 (rather than concentrating them sequentially) makes it unlikely that players could get through the game without learning a lesson about slavery; Wallis’ strategic plotting thus emphasizes this lesson broadly and continuously. Furthermore, several of the sites not only refer to slavery but also create a loop through enforced retrograde motion: sites 37, 64, and 82 send players back to 29, and sites 83 and 89 send players back to 64, which, as stated, sends players back to 29. So players not only learn about slavery, but they are also imbricated within knowledge loops that send them back and back again to enforce the lesson.10 Space 29 is the nexus for three other spots and the endpoint for two others, which are routed through 64, so it bears taking a closer look at that space. The description for space 29, situated near Frankfort, Kentucky, reads “Rice is cultivated here. It is sown in rows, and the plants, as they spring up flooded with water. Being your first introduction to a slave plantation, stop two drawings to enquire into their condition” (Star-Spangled Banner 7) (Figure 4.2).11 While the description begins with a neutral discussion of crop cultivation, it is the means of cultivation and the use of slave labor that stop players’ progress in the game—sometimes multiple times if players have the bad fortune to land on any of the five other spaces

Figure 4.2 Wallis’ Spangled detail: bottom half of the game Credit line: Image credit Yale Center for British Art

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that route them back to 29. This check to players’ motion is also a moral check; the game attempts to instill a responsibility in players that extends beyond national borders. They do not just “pause” for a single turn or “miss” a turn, but “stop” for two turns to spend game time thinking about this problem. The problem takes them out of the game, the race, the play, and insists upon a teachable moment. They are urged not simply to consider the issue of slavery but to “enquire into their condition” in a bid for empathetic engagement and active inquiry. Space 29 thus breaks the flow of play and disrupts the game in order to plot it within a larger moral narrative. The player’s success is framed as less important than the problem of enslavement. Of the nine stops that focus on slavery, five route players back to space 29, while space 48, dubbed simply “Slaves,” followed by a description of Virginia’s slave markets, sends players back to space 14, dedicated to Philadelphia and the city of brotherly love, lauded for its Quakers, “the love of brethren,” and “peaceable principles” (Star-Spangled Banner 6). This forced retrograde motion is not arbitrary, but establishes that players who arrive at a Virginia slave market are redirected from a state of profit to one of “peaceable principle.” The description underscores this. Virginia is identified not for its natural resources, position, or political importance but as the center where “slave-holders of the southern states are extensively supplied from the markets” and “where negroes are reared for the purposes of sale and traffic” (9). Wallis could have used this space to note crops such as cotton, rice, tobacco, and sugar, but instead, he casts it as a market for slavery, reporting that “[a]s many as four thousand [slaves] have been sold in one year, and the least taint of negro blood subjects an individual to this degraded condition” (9).12 In focusing on the slave market, rather than routing his study back to the scene of enslavement in Africa or the ports where ships were arriving from the Middle Passage, Wallis establishes the sales of enslaved human beings as part of American economic daily practice. Regardless of where and how people were enslaved, Wallis simplifies and focuses on the space where human beings were vended as “suppl[ies]” to a hungry market and how that establishes the character of the nation that not only allows it but also profits from it.13 Wallis’ description casts slavery as a moral issue that has infected an economic system. The use of stops, pauses, or retrograde motion in games was part of the ludic system the Wallis firm used in games throughout its canon. The Wallis firm links individual acceleration to imperial success, and stops are keyed to places where imperial progress has also been halted. In Wallis’s Complete Voyage Round the World, for example, in Hawaii, “the traveler must stay a turn, to view the bay where Capt. Cook was unfortunately killed in a contest with the natives, Feb. 14, 1779” (Wallis’s Complete Voyages). Cook, mentioned in connection with roughly 10% of the nodes on the board, occupies the position of imperial explorer par

Gaming America 151 excellence. His death stops progress. The history of imperial progress is marked by its halts, yet because the game represents its endpoint through a British icon such as Britannia, Queen Victoria, or London itself, the halts are merely checks along a determined, linear route. The players are similarly detained by skirmishes with imperial rivals or uprisings by those they seek to govern. Calcutta, for example, was “the principal settlement of the East-India Company in Bengal. Stay here one turn to see the black hole where 123 persons were suffocated in 1757” (Wallis’s Complete Voyages). The connection of children’s interests to the Empire’s interests is consistently reinforced by checks to movement. Just as slavery disrupts the progress of this nation and humanity more widely, Wallis uses measures in his game to show how an economy of slavery disrupts players’ progress through the United States. There are more stops for slavery (nine) than for railways and various mines combined (seven stops: two railways, three gold mines, one lead, one coal and iron); this suggests that even when balanced against its natural resources and its technological improvements, the economic story of the United States is still one of human trafficking. While players who land on gold mines in Georgia and South Carolina (59 and 61) are invited to draw again and move forward, gold miners in Virginia (36) have to go on to 49, the coal and iron mines, without reward. Though all three states trafficked in slaves, Virginia is singled out, perhaps because it is identified as the center of the trade, with its flourishing slave markets. This is also true for cultivation. On space 64 (where players from the sugar estates on 83 and 89 are sent and from which they are routed back to 29), players tour “A Sugar Estate. We have now reached a hot country, where the sugar cane is cultivated extensively, and it is found by experience, that it may be raised by the occasional labour of white husbandmen, though at present slaves are employed” (Star-Spangled 10). Pointing out that white laborers could cultivate and harvest the sugar cane themselves, Wallis highlights their choice to use slave labor instead, and that is the reason players are sent backward from 64 to number 29. In doing so, he cuts against a prevailing notion of the period that the bodies of Africans are equipped to handle the climate conditions more effectively than white bodies.14 The association of human suffering with sugar on these three spaces (64, 83, 89) is also notable in a children’s game; the sweetness of the sugar is belied by the anguish of the peoples forced to cultivate it. The lesson may well be that the Americans are going “backward” because they are failing to use this natural resource to move forward, and the result spoils something meant to be sweet.15 The idea of spoiling or corruption through the moral ill of slavery is continuous with other nineteenth-century children’s texts.16 These works consistently present slavery as Britain’s moral imperative to erase. This is important not only for the welfare of the enslaved peoples but also to remove the corruption from the slaveholding population. Harriet Beecher

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Stowe explores this issue not only in her most well-known work Uncle Tom’s Cabin but also in her First Geography for Children, which was revised “by an English lady by direction of the author” and published as New Geography for Children in 1855. After dividing America into “slave states” and “free states” (129), Stowe and the “English lady” speculate that “the people at the south are brought up to think that it is right for men, when they have the power to do it, to force their fellow-men to work for them without wages” (131). Yet in these states, this abusive power has deleterious effects, including turning Americans into hypocrites, as one primer notes: “Slavery also is permitted among men who vaunt of their own freedom” (Aspin 214). Beyond this philosophical problem, Aspin declares, “in the southern states, religion is almost totally disregarded, and slavery prevails with all its concomitant demoralizing effects. Mulattoes are here rapidly increasing” (214). In this chain of effects, slavery leads to moral and philosophical equivocation, loss of religious faith, and “demoralizing effects,” such as rape, sexual license, and the rise of multiracial children born out of wedlock. Stowe does not verge into such territory but stays with the character effects of owning slaves. She and the English lady argue, “The states that are cultivated in this way never prosper as those do which are cultivated by free men; and these are the reasons. The children of those who force their fellow men to work for them are led to feel as if work was disgraceful, and to think it honourable to be idle” (131). By contrast, the “free states” are characterized by “the most industrious and thriving people” (131). With confidence, the authors persuade readers, “I think you will agree with me, that we ought to do all we can to get rid of slavery from the land, and never to rest till we have done all in our power towards undoing an evil caused by our own countrymen” (133–134). Laying the blame on “our own countrymen,” this primer states that though the English king did not actively promote this practice, he failed to pass laws outlawing the practice of slavery in the United States.17 This rhetorical move also charges English readers with the responsibility to correct this problem. Other geography primers source the problem to European rivals. Mrs. E. Burrows’ Might Not Right; or, Stories of the Discovery and Conquest of America (1858) teaches child readers that the problem of slavery is rooted in the practice of iniquitous colonization practices. Burrows was a practiced writer of geography primers, author of Our Eastern Empire, The Martyr Land, and Sunlight through the Mist. In Might Not Right, she adopts the narrative frame in which Mrs. Grenville responds to her nephew’s query about how there came to be slaves in America. The primer shows readers a teachable moment since Charles has just finished reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a “capital story,” and is hungry for more information. In a few strokes, Mrs. Grenville places the blame for the institution of slavery at the feet of Spanish conquistadors. Mrs. Grenville argues that “‘by the conquest of the New World, and by the

Gaming America 153 almost extermination of the native population, the door was opened for the introduction of negro slavery’” (Burrows 240). Burrows characterizes improper “conquest” (distinguished from “colonization”) and “extermination” as creating an economic labor vacuum that was filled by the institution of slavery. Corrupting effects followed this bloody beginning. Though Spain could have had a promising future as a grand empire, “in her eager desire to be rich, she set aside every obligation, human and divine. Like Midas of old, her prayer was that everything she touched might be turned to gold. In an evil hour her request was granted; and hidden beneath the golden gift came luxury, self-indulgence, effeminacy, ruin” (243–244). Burrows’ narrative suggests that empires built on moral quicksand of slavery ultimately corrupt the mother country. By contrast, geography primers from later in the century characterize Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery. In Mary and Elizabeth Kirby’s The World at Home, they point out the West Indies and call attention to Jamaica, which “was not a happy island while it was full of slaves. The slaves were made to work hard among the sugar-canes, and were bought and sold like cattle. But, thank God! There are no slaves now” (87). Fanny Ward’s Child’s Guide to Knowledge [1835; in its 59th edition by 1898) also details how slaves used to work sugar plantations in the West Indies, but that British intervention arrested this moral ill (28). Boscawen can say at mid-century that “although I am afraid that all the good hoped for by setting free our slaves has not been gained, at least not to its full extent, it is undoubtedly a reflection of which Britons may be proud!” (379). British pride is drawn from the moral high ground. That moral high ground finds ready contrast in the systemic allowance for slavery represented in Wallis’ game. Wallis describes the “Lynch Law” in Arkansas as “[a]n odious practice, too frequently indulged in, in the states which are at a great distance from the general government” (Star-Spangled Banner 11; Figure 4.2). This weak central control, established early in the game in the rules section,18 emboldens vigilantes. Wallis insists, “It is no other than a mockery of justice, by which persons who offend against the popular opinion, are tried and executed by illegal and self-constituted judges.—Go back to No 67” (11). The “mockery of justice” ruled by “popular opinion” and “self-constituted judges” is depicted here as a poor imitation of Britain’s own due process of law, implemented in courtrooms by educated, white-wigged judges. In contrast to tradition, strict rules, and moral judgment, Arkansas is represented as ruled by the whim of armed mobs. The image depicts two white men in wide-brimmed hats and red shirts facing a hanging person of color while another person of color stands by, hands in the air in an attitude of distress. Witnessing such “justice” not only halts players’ progress but also forces them to go backward in recognition of the “backwardness” of lynching and vigilante justice. Regressing backward to 67 and the “dissolute and miserable life” (10) at the edge of the wilderness, players are geographically, socially, and morally marginalized just by

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witnessing the lynching in this move even though they do not participate in it. Throughout the game, child players are cast as observers, not as actors, unlike Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery in which players take on the role of ship captains who trade for gold with the natives and sometimes burn their villages. Yet just as these players had to pause to enquire into the condition of enslaved peoples on a plantation, here the check to their progress emphasizes that slavery is their business and its practice affects all people. On the other hand, Mauwena Logan’s research indicates that perhaps British players should feel some responsibility for this problem: “Britain could not have passed the emancipation bill if it had not lost its slave-owning territory, the United States, due to the American War of Independence, or if the slave trade had not produced the necessary capital for British industrial takeoff” (15). Wallis’ game does not take the time to explore this what-if scenario. Instead, British moral supremacy is subtly enforced through tightly restricted movement, retrograde motion, and knowledge loops that reiterate the moral wrong of slavery. Though Wallis’ game deals with the anguish of slavery, it does so from the perspective of the British child’s position in an Empire that frowns upon the practice. The problem of slavery is another lens through which the British can be represented positively, rather than an opportunity to consider the perspective of the peoples who are enslaved. People who are enslaved are never actors in the game, but always acted upon. Like the Native Americans Roderick McGillis writes about, these are “people more written about than writing, more spoken about than speaking” (xxi). Even in the epigraph, which quotes a passage from Mary and Elizabeth Kirby’s geography primer, the description of the “sad old days” reads like a game narrative: people are purchased as slaves, and then they run away and hide, trying to jump on a route for the Underground Railroad and head north to Canada. Despite the evocative possibilities of this narrative, I have not seen any nineteenth-century games that focus on the plight of the runaway slave and invite child players to inhabit this subject position, fleeing northward along safe spaces and avoiding slave hunters, dogs, and wild animals. Nor do the games put child players in the shoes of people at the moment of capture in Africa, through the turmoil of the Middle Passage, on the auction block in America, or along the flight to freedom, perhaps following a lantern held aloft by Harriet Tubman and her lieutenants.19 Instead, the games situate this suffering to triangulate and intensify rivalries between imperial powers and to show Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery in its dominions. In the lynching scene, Wallis uses the visual elements of setting, placement, and shape strategically to characterize this act (Figure 4.2). This aligns with Peter Hunt’s assertion that images are “perceived holistically” (180), rather than in a linear manner. Even a quick glance shows that the figures stand on uncultivated ground, flanked by stony, hard mountains that invade the panel, framed by a wall of vegetation at the top, and on the side bottom

Gaming America 155 there appears to be a wall of flame, perhaps a forest fire. These elements all suggest fruitlessness, hardness, a land that is unproductive, and the effect of the placement of the mountains and the fire makes the scene feel boxed in and claustrophobic—unusual in a country known for its wide-open spaces. The broken tree above them is the only vegetation; its jagged brokenness suggests violence and shows that it will not bear fruit, much like the actions taking place before it. A bear-like lynx and an alligator in bordering panels are turned toward the image of the lynching, and the angles of their gazes and bodies direct the viewer’s eye through what picture book critic Perry Nodelman dubs “visual weight and directed tension.” Nodelman asserts that there are “varying weights of different objects in relation to each other,” and that “pictures do indeed express such directed tensions and that illustrators make use of them to convey information about characters and situations” (125). Operating as pointers, the bear and the alligator “direct” the reader to this image. Wallis chose these animals deliberately over more neutral, peaceful alternatives—a dove or a butterfly as witness would have held a different charge. Instead, the alligator’s and bear’s presence casts a predatory gloss over the assembled animals and humans. In her work with images, Jane Doonan asks middle school students to consider “what values are being promoted, and who is the reader to become—whose life are you sharing—during the reading?” (50). These questions are important ones when processing this image and thinking about Wallis’ goals in setting it up. The image’s value is in shocking the viewer and provoking a humanitarian response, perhaps more effectively than the images featuring laboring bodies in the fields because it represents such an urgent situation. At a systematic level, the Arkansas space is also structurally important because it features the two overlapping systems that Wallis uses to represent America: the unlicensed behavior of the settlers who practice slavery and frontier justice and the threatening presence of predatory animals. The lack of centralized governance permits both sets of behaviors to operate unchecked, unlike in British colonial territories, where courts administered justice while soldiers and administrators led organized hunts of the lion in Africa or the tiger in India. In these settings, as Jean Stringam notes in studying Canadian adventure tales, “young colonists may practice their colonizing forms of power on animals” (136). Such mastery is celebrated in the Kirbys’ primer in another colonial territory: “The more white people go to live in Ceylon, the fewer wild beasts there will be. White men have plenty of courage, and they will try to get rid of the wild beasts, and then it will be as safe to walk about in Ceylon, as it is in England” (210). Part of the colonial authority’s license in these regions is to “get rid of the wild beasts” and make a safer world. Not only does the United States struggle with this, but the lack of centralized authority also means that valuable animals like beaver are “so eagerly hunted for their fur, that they are now very scarce” (10) along with the “nearly extinct” elk (14). These are important examples demonstrating

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the problem of decentralized authority and the resulting lack of discipline and stewardship of resources. The implication is that the American government has not managed to subdue and control them the way the British mastered the animals of their dominions through big game hunts and then displayed them as trophies, or through zoos and exhibitions.20 Star-Spangled Banner features 40 spaces dedicated to animal life— most of it ferocious—and that constitutes approximately a third of its 147 spaces. Quantitative analysis indicates that Wallis dedicates more sites to animals (27% of the game) than to boldfaced cities (approximately 19% of the game), and most of the animals are fierce and dangerous predators, thus offering a gloss of the United States as a wild and dangerous place. In describing these indigenous creatures, the game takes a sensational approach: it references a sea serpent, shark (a “monster of the deep,” Star-Spangled 11), a 17-foot-long oceanic vampire ray weighing four tons (5), the mud-dwelling “Siren” in the Delta, and also the “glutton,” a type of wolverine who drinks blood. Alligators 17 feet long “abound in the Mississippi, and destroy numbers of pigs, calves, and sometimes even children” (10). Yet the most to be feared is the grizzly bear, “largest and fiercest animal on this continent. His very name is dreadful, as his disposition is bloodthirsty” (12). Enormous snakes rivaling the size of houses are depicted eight times. On space 133, players may think they are nearing the safety of the game’s end, but this space is devoted to the wolf, a “destructive creature” that is “still common in the uncultivated plains and forests of New England States” (15). The emphasis on “still” is marked here to alert readers that despite its familiar-sounding name (“New” England) and long colonial settlement, the region is “still” threatened by destructive creatures. The “still” bears an implicit judgment that with all the time passed since its founding, its government should have addressed this issue. The most consistent characteristic of these creatures is the emphasis on their appetites. The lynx “devours every thing it can master” (StarSpangled 7), while the glutton, or “wolverene,” drops onto the backs of deer, “tearing their flesh, and drinking their blood till life is extinct. A greedy and voracious person is named after it” (14). The animal appetites are explicitly linked to moral and social lapses in their human counterparts. The sensational descriptions of animals are notable also because Wallis could have made a different choice here, focusing on different animals or on plants or spending more time describing mountains, views, or canyons or discussing the First People who lived in the United States.21 Instead, his choices show the dire effects of decentralized authority while simultaneously using these animals as a type of shorthand for the American character, much like the British lion was deployed in games such as John Betts’ A Tour to represent Britons’ fierceness, bravery, and nobility.

Gaming America 157 Following a description of Boston as the area where the colonists revolted “against the arms of Britain” (Star-Spangled Banner 15),22 the bald eagle is described as “the adopted emblem of the republic” who “preys on dead carcasses, and is fond of fish, lambs, and young pigs. He is daring, and swift of wing, but not very nice as to honesty and justice, often robbing the Fish-hawk of its lawful prey” (15–16). In light of an earlier comment on the contested border between the United States and British Canada,23 this designation of the eagle as “not very nice as to honesty and justice” seems particularly contentious. As described here, the eagle purloins others’ hard-hunted gains or ignobly dines on carcasses or other animals’ young. Wallis subtly assures players of the British lion’s supremacy with a reference to the cougar, “called the Lion of America, but he has no mane,” a creature “about one-third less than the Lion. He climbs large trees, and from the boughs drops down on his prey” (11). Being related to the British lion, the cougar is nonetheless diminished as “one-third less”—probably in size, but the lack of specificity leaves interpretation open for might, power, character. Like the American eagle, this other American-identified creature hunts from sneaky treetop ambush.24 Animals offer a coded way to demonstrate a lack of fitness for imperial leadership. Analyzing the way Wallis uses animals reveals his argument about the effects of decentralized governance, his presentation of the American character, and perhaps a characterization of Americans as rebellious post-colonialists. Stringam observes, “With little exception, the wild animals in the tales represent the other—other needs, other value systems, other means of power, the other side of the settler’s psyche” (137). Harriet Ritvo’s work concurs that animals were often coded ways to represent foreign others, usually “in the stark, violent terms of conquest” (Animal 17). Either the Americans are not managing the animals in their control effectively or they are themselves the unruly animals who revolted against their masters and formed a new country out of 13 disparate colonies. The threat represented by these animals is real and symbolic. Ritvo outlines how the “best animals were those that displayed the qualities of an industrious, docile, and willing human servant; the worst not only declined to serve, but dared to challenge human supremacy” (Animal 17). Nor was Wallis unusual for deploying animals this way in gamed texts. John Betts also uses animals in a coded way to represent the risk of resistance in A Tour. He sets up a juxtaposition for players between the elephant and the tiger in Bengal, explaining that elephants, when “taken and judiciously trained, become very docile; and are highly valued as beasts of burden, for pageantry, and war” (11). On the other hand, tigers “prove a grievous scourge to the inhabitants; not only carrying away cattle, but, with almost as little scruple, the natives themselves” (Betts 11). By juxtaposing the “judiciously trained” and “docile” elephant with the “grievous scourge” of the tiger who “carr[ies]” away resources and “the natives themselves,” Betts sets up a polarized set

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of responses to imperial rule. As Said observes, “For the colonizer the incorporative apparatus requires unremitting effort to maintain. For the victim, imperialism offers these alternatives: serve or be destroyed” (Culture and Imperialism 168). The elephant agrees to the training and is then an agent of the Empire, used to carry burdens, to be on display in pageants and even in armed combat. The tiger cannot and will not submit to rule in this way, and instead actively resists it by attacking and depleting resources and even leading the “natives themselves” to harm. Betts’ use of the qualifier “themselves” suggests that the tigers are either much stronger than their human masters imagined or are not bound by any “scruple.” Subduing the wild animals who threaten British colonization is a theme in games of the period.25 It is here in this point of identification that we may rethink this polarized play of elephant and tiger to consider whether Betts is talking about animals or whether he might be using them to show two different responses to British rule. Their resistance to rule may be coded for human resistance. Said notes that “resistance, far from being merely a reaction to imperialism, is an alternative way of conceiving human history” (Culture and Imperialism 216). We can recover anxieties about resistance from coded moments and patterns of resistance, especially when it comes to the deployment of ferocious animals and the few representations of native figures. Wallis represents Native Americans only a few times in the game: showing corn to a white man in a long coat (65), being mauled by a wild bear (103), at ease in a wilderness camp (104, 111), or walking in the forest (105). The accompanying descriptions for these images in the guidebook do not mention these figures at all in 65, 103, or 105; in 104 and 111, Wallis cursorily names the tribes. This suggests that these native bodies are present simply as part of the scenery, rather than as part of a narrative of resistance. Where resistance may be read is in the Native American man grouped with the game’s title inscribed on a large rock off the coast. Dressed in an unlikely red, white, and blue ensemble, this figure appears to be reading the title, and his bow, held at a right angle, intersects the words (Figure 4.3). He is an alert, muscular figure, and the hand that does not hold the bow is open and active—he is not studying this title at leisure, but is in the act of turning and moving as a result of seeing it. His body may represent the United States as a territory that is turning, becoming, and flexing its muscles, or his body and his stance may offer a rebuke to that territory’s transformation as an indigenous person. The words the figure stares at declare “Emigrants to the United States,” and he is pointedly not an emigrant. Whether he is reading the text on the rock or reacting to the act of inscription, literally upon part of the land itself, the active lines of his body communicate alarm. Both what he may be reading and what it is a harbinger of show the balance between words and images in this visual text. Peter Hunt explains how “words can add to, contradict, expand, echo, or interpret the pictures” (176). The

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Figure 4.3 Wallis’ Spangled detail: game title Credit line: Image credit Yale Center for British Art

line of his arm holding the bow underlines the first few letters of “Emigrants,” visually directing our attention to it and helping to “orchestrate the movement of the eye” (Hunt 176). Wallis is using this native body as a pointer to indicate the emigration that will inscribe his homeland and ultimately threaten his way of life. His red, white, and blue ensemble may suggest he is either endorsing the US or he has appropriated the flag and made clothing out of it as a show of resistance. The game goes no further in representing resistance through native bodies, but his alarm at the threshold of the gamed world comes across in ways that are fulfilled by the hostile animals that do resist incursions into their territory. If child players take their role as emigrants seriously, then the animals represent a formidable challenge to their progress. They actively prey on human settlers or create a domestic nuisance and unsanitary conditions. Wallis depicts pigeons that “darken the sky” (7), squirrels that “commit dreadful ravages on the corn crops” (16), and pigs that are “filthy animals [. . .] extensively reared in the United States, as to amount to almost to a pest in some of the towns” (8). Though humorous and idiosyncratic when considered alone, when taken together, these animals represent a pattern in which even innocuous domestic creatures become threatening or insalubrious in this landscape, and they exert an effect on the player’s game. The Turkey buzzard “feeds on carrion, and if attempted to be taken, vomits the

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contents of its stomach in the face of its pursuer, emitting the most intolerable stench—Get out of its way, and begin again” (6). After encountering the disgusting Turkey buzzard, which must have created a delightful uproar in a gaming scenario, players are not just setback in their progress but must also begin the whole game again. This happens also with those who “fall into the jaws of this monster of the deep [shark],” and therefore, “must begin the Game again” (11). In this game of emigration, animals—rather than weather, disease, or poor management of resources—hold the power to make the emigrant start again. Even dead animals exert a powerful pull on players’ movement. Players landing on the “Missourium” space (101), featuring mammoth fossils, must regress to the past and return back to 32 (12).26 The Turkey buzzard, shark, and Missourium serve the important narrative functions of further establishing the sensational, dangerous character of the landscape, tying it to a check on players’ progress. Wallis presents players, in their character of emigrants, with an America inhibited by the moral problem of slavery and the administrative threat of predacious animals. In the face of these threats, players are forced backward, ejected from the game, or sent to Canada—an opportunity for Wallis to contrast the US with a British colony. This occurs through an act of destruction on prairies, which Wallis characterizes as “destitute” of trees (Star-Spangled 12). Reading the landscape through a system that valued timber as a natural resource, Wallis assigns the lack of trees to negligent human behavior: “prairies and forests take fire from the carelessness of native Indians, or settlers, when thousands of acres become the prey of the devouring element; men and beasts flying from it in all directions” (12). In the face of this terrific conflagration, Wallis commands players to “Fly for your life to No. 116” (12). On space 116, a “small town on the Thames, in Upper Canada” (13), emigrants to the United States become emigrants to British Canada. This space not only offers another example of a failure of stewardship but also presents Wallis with the opportunity to contrast the US and Canada. The hovering presence of Canadian cities on the edges of the game board is an important strategic intervention. In other games of the period, the edges and borders of the gamed world are marginalized, perhaps unworthy of inclusion within the frame of interest.27 In Wallis’ StarSpangled Banner, however, the edges of the game are not so much a margin as a promising horizon where the greatness of British institutions beckons those fleeing fire, predation, and moral ills. To underscore that, eight sites on the board are not in the United States at all, but are Canadian: London, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Quebec (Star-Spangled 115–118, 121–124); this is remarkable, in that they constitute nearly 5.5% of the total sites in this game and 5 out of only 28 cities represented (more than 25%). This accounting suggests the triumph of British government and urban development. While Wallis glancingly acknowledges Annapolis, the seat of Maryland, as “A small place” (8), Toronto is later

Gaming America 161 described as “A large and flourishing city in Upper Canada” (13). In Conversations on Geography (1854), Mary Boscawen characterizes Canada as “one of the greatest and most powerful of modern states” (282).28 She touts the success of the Canadian colony, noting that in these British colonies, and though so far away, they may enjoy the same protection from the laws and the same freedom and independence that is the glory of our English constitution. Canada offers great advantages to the emigrants; with common regularity and industry, they are generally successful, and it has been calculated that about 30,000 persons have, on an average, emigrated thither, every year for the last eighteen years. (Boscawen 314) Though Wallis’ game is ostensibly subtitled “Emigrants to the United States,” the contrast between the US and Canada, crystallized in his description of “large and flourishing” cities like Toronto and given a full description in texts like Boscawen’s, shows the triumph of the British colonial system. Boscawen concretizes this in terms of the tangible benefits of British law and emigration statistics, whereas Wallis addresses his child audience by playing on their sympathies and fears through patterns of discussing slavery and threatening animals, using retrograde motion to reinforce his arguments. Reared and apprenticed in a family firm specializing in children’s games, Wallis was an expert in their construction and marketing. One example of his market savvy appears in the instruction booklet for The Royal Game of British Sovereigns [c. 1820–1823]. Alderson and Oyens call him “particularly ingenious, for on page 35 of his instruction book he notes against the final move of the game, to square no. (53): ‘Whoever arrives here first is declared winner, and is recommended to proceed immediately to the Publisher’s, to purchase another Game, equally instructive and amusing’” (260). What we have here is no babe in the woods, but a savvy publisher making careful and deliberate choices in the crafting of his gamed text, and the effects are open-ended. Though Wallis’ game “ends” in New York, the game’s world of imagined immigration extends beyond the parameters of the game, and that is where Britain’s real “win” takes place. As games historian David Parlett reminds us, “The play of the game centers, so to speak, ‘above’ the board, in the minds and interactions of the players themselves” (7). Parlett’s point applies to players who would have discussed above and around the board stories they heard about emigration, family members’ experiences, adventure novels and travelogues they may have read, and ambitions and dreams they may have harbored, sparked into flame by interactions on the board. We cannot trace with certainty how those ambitions played out in the Great Game, but in Wallis’ twodimensional one, it seems fairly clear that players were being groomed

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for imperial roles in their Empire, to assume the kind of moral leadership evoked by the banner beneath which they slept, worked, and lived.

Territorial and Textual Appropriation in E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia, Land of the West [1850–1860] Active at mid-century, the Ogilvy firm’s output included card games, board games, and dissected maps (a nineteenth-century version of puzzles). Their card games included The Cries of London [c. 1845], a matching card game in which child players complete a divided image of a street hawker by pairing it with his or her wares. Along this line, there were also Anagrams (1850) and Conundrums (1860) as well as undated catalog entries for Childe’s Play, or Alphabetical Dominoes and The Numeroscope, an arithmetical game. Board game offerings included Outward Bound [c. 1865]; The Fancy Bazaar or Aristocratic Traders [c. 1865]; The New Game of Wellington’s Victories [n.d.], The Tar of all Weathers, or the British Colonies, a Game [c. 1860]; and many others covering topics ranging from travel to India to yacht racing (see Appendix for a detailed list). The availability of products as either puzzles or game boards appears to be a distinctive characteristic of the Ogilvy offerings. Like Tar of all Weathers, La Belle France, and Wellington’s Victories, Columbia: Land of the West was also available in dissected form. Ogilvy also offered a line of Edgeworth’s Tales dissected puzzles featuring “Lazy Lawrence,” “Simple Susan,” “Waste Not, Want Not,” and the “Purple Jar” for 2s, 6d.29 In embracing the popular dissected puzzle trade, the Ogilvys display their market savvy. Richard and Maria Edgeworth cite the benefits of puzzles in Practical Education (1798), avowing that they offer a “trial between wit and judgement” (30).30 Hannas notes, “Made from mahogany, cardboard, plastic, softwood, plywood, even gingerbread and solid silver, they have been used for education, amusement, propaganda and escapism” (The Jigsaw Book 8). The first dissected map puzzle had been created by John Spilsbury, apprentice to the king’s geographer Thomas Jefferys, in 1762. Spilsbury then went into the dissected map business on his own: “He would mount a map on a thin piece of mahogany, then cut it up into a number of pieces, so that children might learn their geography by putting it together again” (Hill 14). Between 1820 and 1855, Hannas estimates that 30 new puzzles appeared yearly, one-fifth of them map-based games (The English Jigsaw 78).31 Puzzles also became a pastime for adults. In her journal, Queen Victoria described an evening spent assembling dissected pictures with Lords Melbourne and Conyngham as “the pleasantest gayest evening I have passed for some time. I sat up until ½ past 11” (qtd in Hannas’ The Jigsaw Book 12). Anecdotal evidence like this acknowledges the broad use of these texts. Columbia: Land of the West [c. 1850–1860]32 was sold “in a handsome case” for 5s

Gaming America 163 or dissected in a box for 7s 6d, a comparable price to the firm’s Tar of all Weathers, La Belle France, and Wellington’s Victories games. Puzzle historian Linda Hannas has pointed out that this price point could be a bit steep since puzzles could cost more than an agricultural worker’s weekly wage (The Jigsaw Book 10). These playthings were in the range of middle- or upper-class children, for whom these would have been a special gift. Beyond their catalog and attention to the market for board games, cards, and puzzles, little is known about the Ogilvy firm. The attribution of the “E.” and “M.A.” in the game’s imprint is a bit puzzling. The Games Board (GARD) characterizes the Ogilvy firm as a family business, and this is keeping with what we have seen from the Wallises as well as the Dartons and John Marshall.33 GARD notes that a firm called Ogilvy and Son, Holborn, published a print of Chessmen in 1806, and a David Ogilvy ran a bookshop and circulating library in Hampstead in 1826. By 1841, a David Ogilvy (perhaps the same person or possibly a son) began publishing games out of Brunswick Square, sold by Darton & Clark. Addresses for Ogilvy include Russell Square, Soho Square, Edgeware Road, Christ Church Road, and Hampstead. The imprint “E. & M.A. Ogilvy” appears around 1855, flourishing for nearly 20 years. This fits the approximate dates assigned to the mid-century games discussed here. Jill Shefrin notes, “Although there is no recorded relationship between this publisher and the firm of D. Ogilvy, the Collection holds a card game about London, published by D. Ogilvy, which includes an advertisement for the same charade games” (16). GARD speculates on the interesting possibility that “the records lead to the possibility these were unmarried sisters and that David was needed to run the family bookshop and library business. David seems to have remained the inventor of the games during this period” (Games Board). In the absence of conclusive evidence, it remains an open question. A glimpse of their catalog does suggest a cohesive design and marketing strategy. Many of their board games were repurposed and available as dissected maps as well (a 2s “add-on” feature), and many of the works, such as Tar of all Weathers, Columbia, and L’Orient, have an imperial focus. There were also content-related connections among these works. The catalog bills Columbia, or the Land of the West, a Game as “a companion to the above [Tar of all Weathers]” that is “constructed on a plan showing the first discovery of America in 1492, and its gradual progress until the separation of the United States from England in 1782.” The game marks the United States’ “gradual progress” from 1492 to 1782— “until the separation of the United States from England.” The sentence structure suggests that 300 years of slow progress ended with independence. Like Wallis’ Star-Spangled game, this framing sets up a story about a lost colony, rather than a burgeoning imperial rival. The catalog entry describes that the “centre part possesses views of the 37 States, with their

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capital cities,”34 and retails it “in a neat case” for 5s or dissected in a box for 7s, 6d. Printed by S. Straker, the game is a hand-colored lithograph with accompanying small cards naming the chief cities, along with a book of instructions. A small attribution in the left bottom corner reads “Design’d & drawn by J.R. Barfoot.” The elusive Barfoot and his son J.W. Barfoot illustrated works for the Ogilvy firm as well as John Betts, and they published their own work as well from 1845 to 1865. The Ogilvys’ game is an unusual one for the period because those who purchased the deluxe version acquired a linen sheet board game and puzzle pieces, giving them choices about how to play. If they opted for the board game, the guidebook presented further choices: to play the historical version or the topographical version, choosing time or territory as a focus. The “boards” for these two versions of the game are nested inside one another. The center spiral focuses on the states in muted, limited colors, whereas the two outer bands depict historical events in more vivid colors. The historical version involves luck and number matching as it moves through 300 years of discovery and colonial history, whereas the topographical version requires memorization of chief cities in quicker, more condensed play. By splitting the game into these two possibilities, the Ogilvys offer players different options for engagement and appeal to their interests. The accompanying game book lays out a one-page explanation of each version’s rules. The historical version, played by four, six, or eight people, requires players to take turns spinning a teetotum and matching their cards to the numbers on the board until they use them all. Play proceeds “all round the table until a player can complete one of the two outer circles on the picture by covering the last of the eighteen scenes, when he may take the pool and the game is ended” [Columbia [3]]. Acknowledging concerns about associations with gambling, “A Six-sided Teetotum may be used instead of the Cube, if preferred” ([3]). The accompanying guidebook presents nine pages describing historical events identified by dates ([5]–14). To win the game, players did not necessarily need to read the descriptions, although that was certainly the hope of parents and educators. At best, this version promotes number identification and rudimentary arithmetic, but since advancement does not depend on a recollection or display of knowledge about these historical events, the educative value is not as strong as the topographical version. Instead, luck is rewarded with wealth, as the game acknowledges: “If any one or more of the players part with all their cards without completing a circle, the other players must pay one counter each to him or them” [3]. Finishing the game is less important for players than shedding their cards, and as players are eliminated, the “game becomes very exciting” [3]. For playing the city-focused version of the game, players are directed to the “centre of the sheet, it will be perceived, contains the names of the States, with the chief city in each” (Columbia [4]). The guidebook

Credit line: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Figure 4.4 E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia: Land of the West, wide shot

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includes a one-page list headed “Columbia; Names of States and their Capitals,” including 38 states. Upon closer analysis, of the 38 states, six of them (almost 16%) are actually British Canada: Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Lower Canada, and Upper Canada. Like Wallis’ Star-Spangled game, though the focus is ostensibly on the US, the Ogilvys privilege and mark these “English Possessions,” listing them first (1–6) before any of the United States, thus establishing a subtle order of precedence.35 As well, not all the cities in the list are state capitals, but are “chief cit[ies]” instead. For instance, Maine’s Portland is listed as the chief city, rather than the capital Augusta, established in 1831. In New Hampshire, the Ogilvys identify Lancaster as the chief city, rather than the 1808-established capital Concord. In designating the “chiefness” of a city, apart from its political designation as capital, the Ogilvys undermine the judgment of American citizens who selected their state and national capitals. What renders a city more “chief” than the designated capital invites speculation. Is it population? Architecture? Cultural institutions? The discernment of metropolitan publishers from the former mother country? Whatever the chiefness of the city relies upon, the Ogilvys arbitrate it, and the child must reiterate this choice through play, memorization, and recall. The player draws a card, reads the name of the city, “and if he can tell the State in which it is situated, he may place it on the corresponding compartment on the sheet; but if he cannot tell, return it to the bag, and pay one counter to the pool” [Columbia 4]. The game itself teaches which cities to value and recall in subsequent instances of play. The game rewards this recall with the honor of victory and the contents of the pool. Though the pool has no actual monetary value, it represents wealth and suggests a means for acquiring it by following the game’s system of assigning value. The alternative system of precedence is also reflected in the masthead. While Washington, DC, does occupy the small center circle, the Ogilvys do not distinguish it by size or color from the surrounding states, and they choose a large, detailed image of New York City’s ship-filled harbor to fill the masthead instead of DC. This reinforces Wallis’ similar distinction in Star-Spangled Banner when he lavished praise on NY, dismissing DC with its “few inferior houses” (8). The perspective in the masthead is from a ship coming into the harbor. The game thus offers child players the subject position of discoverers, traders, or visitors, who may embrace George Bancroft’s praise: “The harbor of New York especially attracted notice, for its great convenience and pleasantness” (17, 10th ed). This provides a clue as to why New York is assigned pride of place. Given Britain’s investment in its naval power, the Ogilvys represent New York centrally because of its shipping, shown in the crowded harbor with ships coming and going and others anchored at port. The densely occupied shores are thick with houses and spires, subsiding gradually into a vanishing horizon upriver. Though New York is positioned at the top, the

Gaming America 167 Ogilvys represent it as lacking color, symmetry, and variety. The city is rendered in black, white, and smudgy gray, with the ships tinted in a yellowish brown. In other words, unlike the colorful flags of the United States and Britain that flank it, or the outer circles of the board depicting historical events, this eye-catching masthead is not saturated with color, but instead characterized by a bland palette. This recalls Wallis’ depiction of America in Star-Spangled Banner, with its lack of saturated color and moody tones. The states within the central ribbon also use this bland palette, but the more vivid reds and blues are confined to the two outer circles of the historical version of the game—the ones from America’s colonial period. At the most basic level, the use of color suggests that the colonial period was more “colorful” than the bland states at the center or the undistinguished, crowded New York City shoreline at the top. The lack of color combined with the crowded shorelines and shipping lanes indicates that New York is focused on commerce, shipping, and trade, perhaps to the exclusion of more elegant cultural markers like architecture or wide, well laid out streets. Contrast this with the glimpse of Paris, where the treaty that ends the game is signed in the historical version. The space depicts an elegant room with a crystal chandelier, a hint of paneling, and gilded chairs. The crowded New York harbor also offers a contrast to the graceful prospects of the Canadian harbor spaces, featuring a distant city on rising ground, starred by a church steeple, not too crowded, balanced by sea and green space (Columbia 1, 2, 3, 5). As shown by the alternative system of value it assigns to chief, rather than capital, cities as well as the precedence it gives to Canadian territories in a game ostensibly about the US, the Ogilvys approach their gamed territory with a clearly established point of view about the US. By carefully selecting the period in the historical version, they appropriate not only American space but also time. The historical version specifically chooses to concentrate on the period between 1492 and 1782, from “Columbus Discovering America” to “The Treaty Signed at Paris,” marking the United States’ separation from Britain. This is a deliberate choice since the game, published at mid-century, could have recorded events up to the present (as it does in the chief city version by acknowledging states and cities incorporated through 1850). Instead, the Ogilvys present a more packaged national story, framing US history as a narrative authored by the Old World, beginning with European discovery and colonization, continuing until the US separates from Great Britain. Once it is no longer part of the Empire, the game is over. Of the 36 total spaces, two focus on discovery, 17 focus on the founding of colonies and cities (only eight spaces focus on colonies established by European rivals), and 13 are assigned to the Revolution. The allocation of space suggests that discovery was a relatively short period, quickly followed by the bulk of the story, which focuses on the laborious work

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of founding colonies—most laborious for Britain since they have nine entries, as opposed to the French and Dutch, who share eight. This work of colonization is undone in the 13 spaces of Revolution, underscoring that it takes more time to found colonies than it does to dismantle them. Suggesting how quickly imperial projects can unravel, this game offers a cautionary tale for the middle- and upper-class child players—perhaps aspiring civil servants, military officers, merchants, and missionaries— who stood to profit from the imperial enterprise. In line with the ways the Ogilvys appropriate space, historical time, and gamed illustrations to characterize the US as a lost colony lacking in judgment, taste, and discernment, they also appropriate a written account of American history and adapt it for their own purposes in the guidebook. Large portions of the descriptions are appropriated without attribution from American historian George Bancroft’s ten-volume The History of the United States (1834–1874). The first volume established Bancroft’s reputation as “the nation’s leading contemporary historian” (Handlin).36 Bancroft (1800–1891) would also go on to a political and diplomatic career in which he would help found the Naval Academy and serve as Polk’s secretary of war and the ambassador to Great Britain (1846–1849). In the course of his History, Bancroft “brilliantly recorded [his country’s] complex social and political evolution,” according to Lillian Handlin, and it was popular enough to be in a third edition by 1838 and a tenth by 1844. The Ogilvys’ use of this source material is important not only as a copyright and methods issue for a study of intellectual property but also for the ways they selectively appropriated, edited, and added to Bancroft’s history to promote their own argument about the US. They used his research and system of dating but omitted his views on taxation without representation, his opinion of English monarchs, and, most significantly, his characterization of British and European colonization as an enterprise motivated almost solely by greed. Since the topic at hand is the appropriation of territory in America and overweening British control (at least in Bancroft’s telling), the irony of this textual imperialism, without attribution, should be appreciated.37 Though Bancroft’s version begins with a discussion of the possibility of Icelandic “Northmen” visiting America, the Ogilvys eschew that entirely, beginning with the year 1492: “Imagination had conceived the idea that vast uninhabited regions lay unexplored in the west. Columbus deserves the undivided glory of having first realized that belief” (Bancroft 6, 10th ed; Columbia 5).38 These “vast uninhabited regions” would be romanticized by Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World) as “blank spaces” in the high imperial period.39 For Richard Phillips, the fact that Conrad uses the “image of a child gazing at a map and dreaming of adventure invokes late-Victorian associations between adventure and children’s literature, and between children and innocence” (3). Anthropologist Johannes Fabian calls the blank space

Gaming America 169 trope “a monstrous lie perpetuated for the benefit of one part of humanity, for a few societies of that part, and, in the end, for one part of these societies, its dominant classes” (144). Manufacturing cartographic space as blank invites inscription while masking the knowledge gaps of the cartographer and erasing the indigenous peoples’ villages and names. The game title itself “Columbia” imposes Columbus’ name on this territory, overwriting the indigenous peoples’ names for their homeland as well as the political designation “United States” that the colonies chose for themselves. The Ogilvys assign their own identifier instead, asserting an alternative system of value, just as they do with the “chief cities” and masthead image. With discovery by Columbus and Cabot occupying the first two events, the game marks the smooth movement from discovery to colonization. Whereas, for the Ogilvys, colonization is a process to access the benefits of British legal, commercial, and cultural systems, in Bancroft’s history, it is driven by proprietary interests motivated by greed. Describing John and Sebastian Cabots’ patent as “containing the worst features of colonial monopoly and commercial restriction” (9, 10th edition), he asserts that it is far better than the “insane passions of the age” for gold, which meant that “America and mines were always thought of together” (82). He characterizes Queen Elizabeth “and her adventurers” as “dazzled by the glittering prospects of mines of gold in the frozen regions of the remote north” (88). Claiming that colonization occurs in a “spirit of commercial gain and political oppression” (213, 10th ed), Bancroft disabuses readers of ideas that colonization proceeded from humanitarian benevolence. Instead, he asserts in his discussion of the Virginia colony that “whatever false display of zeal might be made for religion, the conversion of the heathen, the organization of the government, and the establishment of justice, the subject of tobacco was never forgotten” (219). His frankness about imperial greed is neatly edited from the Ogilvys’ version. Instead, acquisitiveness is assigned to rivals like the French. Until 1613, when the Dutch establish Manhattan, the Ogilvys’ chronology is mostly a tabulation of competing colonial claims by the French and British. The acquisitive nature of the French as a colonial rival is marked in the 1504 notation “French establish fisheries.” Ogilvys note, “The immense quantities of fish to be obtained on the northern coasts of the American Continent at a very early period attracted the attention of the French, who were amongst the first to establish fisheries there” (Columbia 6; mentioned in Bancroft 15, 14th ed). This description contrasts French opportunism with English settlements founded to glorify the monarch. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh names a colony in “honor of the virgin queen, Virginia” (6), and in 1607, headlands in the Chesapeake are dubbed “Cape Henry and Cape Charles from the sons of the King, whose own name afterwards gave the title to the chief city Jamestown” (Columbia 6; Bancroft 124, 14th ed). In the Ogilvys’ account,

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colonization is represented as a type of royal baptism. In Bancroft’s history, Jamestown is important because it indicates a shift to a “higher design” and the decision “not to plunder, nor to destroy, nor to enslave; but to found states, to plant permanent Christian colonies, to establish for the oppressed and the enterprising places of refuge and abode, with all the elements of independent national existence” (118, 10th ed). The Ogilvys omit this and keep the focus on how acts of naming stamp this country with the mother country’s signature. There is no mention of “the elements of an independent national existence.” French colonial activity is marked in Canada in 1608 as well as in 1613. In 1608, the game notes that the French had previously sent an unsuccessful expedition to America, “but met with much opposition from the Indians,” nonetheless resulting in the first French settlement, established in 1608 at Port Royal (Columbia 6). This is also the first reference to the indigenous Americans, introduced through their opposition to colonization and kept visible throughout the game mostly for this reason. The game describes Maryland as “untenanted by any but the scattered hordes of the native tribes” (Columbia 9; Bancroft 241, 10th ed). By labeling them “hordes,” the Ogilvys use a term taken to designate nomadic Asiatic tribes from 1555 onward, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The second definition further characterizes the term as “a large gathering of people, esp. of wild or fierce people; a gang, troop, crew” (“Horde”). The term almost always has a negative, warlike connotation, used to designate groups ranging from pirates to street urchins to animal packs. The Ogilvys’ use of the term bears these resonances. Instead of dignified indigenous peoples who may eye settlers askance or question their methods, the “scattered hordes” are combative. For instance, in the illustration for 1607 and the founding of Jamestown, the indigenous people lurk in the margins, crouching behind foliage, armed bows at the ready. In 1642, they erupt into violence with the “Insurrection in Maryland,” when “the aborigines alarmed at the rapid increase of the Europeans, and vexed at being over-reached by the cupidity of traders, commenced hostilities” (Columbia 9; Bancroft 253, 10th ed).40 The accompanying illustration depicts Native Americans attacking prone people with tomahawks, the outlines of these bodies fading into the horizon, suggesting large numbers. Despite the hostility represented in the image, space 9’s description ends with the brief note that after these “frontier aggressions,” “peace was re-established on the usual terms of submission and promises of friendship” (Columbia 9; Bancroft 253, 10th ed). From a postcolonial perspective, the almost offhand mention of “the usual terms” seems at best part of business as usual and at worst an insincere and calculated way to represent propitiation so that colonization can proceed apace. In Bancroft’s version, he goes on to a more extended explanation, stating that the necessary concessions required “firm humanity of the government. The preemption of the soil was reserved to Lord Baltimore, kidnapping

Gaming America 171 an Indian made a capital offence, and the sale of arms prohibited as a felony” (253, 10th ed). These legal measures suggest an acknowledgment that a review and revision of colonial practices were needed. The representation of resistance in both Bancroft’s and the Ogilvys’ texts is important from a postcolonial perspective. Said asserts that resistance depends upon “asserting an unbroken continuity leading to the first warriors who stood against the intrusive white man” (Culture and Imperialism 197). The Ogilvys document this resistance, but they only negligibly source its causes. This creates the impression that the indigenous are chimerical, sometimes marauding, but sometimes offering assistance, as in the image of “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” (Columbia 1682). Together, Penn and an indigenous chief hold a large scroll while the chief points to it. Bancroft engages in a more lengthy discussion of Native American resistance, explaining their insurrection as “one of savage ferocity; but it was suggested by their situation” (182, 10th ed). Bancroft asks readers, “Should their feebleness submit patiently to contempt, injury, and the loss of their lands? The desire of self-preservation, the necessity of selfdefence, seemed to demand an active resistance” (181, 10th ed). Since the Ogilvys’ game may have been appearing after the Indian Rebellion of 1857—what was called the “Indian Mutiny” in the popular press—it is not surprising that they do not employ rhetorical questions to imaginatively interpolate the reasons for resistance to colonial authority, nor do they trace the effects of armed resistance. Following violent clashes in 1622, relations with the indigenous people were soured, and Bancroft recounts that many colonists “advocated an entire subjection of those whom lenity could not win; and the example of Spanish cruelties was cited with applause” (184). The indigenous peoples’ “rights of property were no longer much respected; their open fields and villages were now appropriated by the colonists, who could plead the laws of war in defence of their covetousness. Treachery also was employed” (184). The Ogilvys choose not to include this description either, preserving a distinction between British imperial practices and its rivals. As well, admission of any treachery would have threatened the integrity of the structure of the gamed world and its rules. Bancroft’s history continually explains native resistance as a reaction to British and European greed. He asks, “Was it strange, then, that the natives desired to be delivered from the presence of guests by whom they feared to be supplanted? The colonists were mad with the passion for gold; and a wily savage invented, respecting the River Roanoke and its banks, extravagant tales, which nothing but cupidity could have credited” (99, 10th ed). By inventing a wild story about gold, the Native Americans sought to lure colonists inland and divide their forces. When these plans failed, “they next conceived the plan of leaving their lands unplanted; and they were willing to abandon their fields, if famine would in consequence compel the departure of their too powerful guests” (100). Bancroft preserves a record of resistance that took many forms and one

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that characterizes the colonizers as “guests” interested chiefly in plunder. Though describing the indigenous people as “mild and feeble,” Bancroft asserts that they often behave better than Europeans, in whom “the mania of the times raged among the crew; in their eyes the color of the earth argued an abundance of gold” (16). If this narrative of undiluted greed offers one way to understand colonization, British contemporary authors of geography primers proffered another. In The World at Home, Mary and Elizabeth Kirby contrast the white man’s knowledge of ships, guns, and machines with “the red man [who] does not care to learn” (52). The “red man’s” knowledge consists of enough hunting, fishing, tracking, and plant expertise to meet his basic survival needs; beyond that, “he does not want to be troubled with knowledge or improvements. So when the white man begins to clear the forest, and to build houses, and to grow corn, the red man retires from before him [. . .] So the white man gets stronger, and the red man weaker” (52). The Kirbys’ quote frames the contact zone as an ideological battleground in which attitudes toward knowledge determine the success of empires—perhaps not surprising in a geography primer for a child audience or for a board game billed as part of a catalog focused on education through entertainment. Knowledge, as they describe it here, can be “troubl[ing]” but is directly linked to imperial strength. This also offers a way to understand the image on the box for the game’s dissected puzzle pieces. The box cover image for Columbia features two Native Americans looking through a central arch, flanked on the outer side by two marble statues: Washington standing and Franklin seated with a book (Figure 4.5). The two Native Americans—one crouched low and the other standing— are dressed in the artist’s interpretation of native clothing: beads, feathers, flowing garments, and cloaks that seem more classical than frontier. The crouching figure is more shadowed and is putting aside a bow (or picking it up, depending on the interpretation). Touched with more light, the standing figure has a hand lightly placed on his or her heart and looks out of the frame in Franklin’s direction. The overall impression suggests that the figures are coming into the light, into enlightenment, where Franklin and Washington await. As William Moebius has noted in his analyses of images, “A character who looks out the window or stands in the door [. . .] is implicated in the unspoken meanings of thresholds” (146). This narrative of emergence is a striking cover image because it features Native Americans representing “Columbia, Land of the West,” rather than colonizers, colonists, or enslaved peoples, all of whom the game focuses on to a greater degree. The image of Native Americans proceeding across the arch threshold and putting aside their weapons has important implications, symbolizing acculturation and acceptance of colonial governance, moving from a state of nature into a more urbane space ritualized with marble statues of figures who are already historical.

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Figure 4.5 Ogilvy’s Columbia box cover Credit line: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The image may also connect to the account of how the American colonists attempted to propitiate Native Americans to join their revolution. The Ogilvys assert that Congress tried to “alienate the aboriginal Indians from siding with the mother country” (Columbia 13). The term “alienate” implies that the mother country has an established claim of loyalty that Congress is disrupting. The right balance in relationship to the Native Americans seems to be between the French and the Americans. Another French colony in 1613 was founded as a “Papal Colony” for which “conversion of the heathen was the motive of the settlement” (7) (Figure 4.6). While this seems to align with the British imperative to spread Christianity, note that this is the Catholic religion and is thus marked with suspicion of idolatry. The Ogilvys point out that the natives venerated the Jesuit priest Biart

Credit line: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Figure 4.6 Ogilvy’s Columbia detail: right side of the game

Gaming America 175 “as a messenger from heaven, and under a summer sky round a cross in the centre of the hamlet matins and vespers were regularly chanted” (Columbia 7; Bancroft 28, 10th ed). The conclusion to these events is that “France and the Roman religion had appropriated the soil of Maine” (7; Bancroft 28). The choice “appropriated” hearkens back to their gloss of French colonization as acquisitive in regard to New World fisheries. This is despite what Bancroft says in the paragraph above the one they plagiarized, that the Abenaki and others “listened reverently to [Fr. Biart’s] message of redemption; and, already hostile toward the English who had visited their coast, the tribes [. . .] became the allies of France, and were cherished as a barrier against English encroachments” (27). Unlike English explorers and settlers, Bancroft pointedly states that Champlain “aimed not at the profits of trade, but at the glory of creating a state” (28). In their work, the Ogilvys skip over these two bookending passages about French versus English colonization, taking only the middle quote about summer vespers, erasing Bancroft’s accusation of commercial greed and ill treatment by the English. What actually happened in the contact zone is beyond the scope of this work. The concern here is how those events were represented in Bancroft’s American history, and then how that history was appropriated, edited, and even misrepresented through omission and addition in the Ogilvys’ game to characterize their imperial rivals. The French religion with its moonlight chanting is edited to offer a clear contrast to the British baptism in 1613 of “Daughter of Powhattan.” The Ogilvys describe “the Baptism of an Indian maiden” that “took place in the little church of Jamestown, which rested on rough pine columns fresh from the forest” (7; Bancroft 147, 10th ed; Figure 4.6). In contrast with the French open-air worship, the freshly milled, neat little Jamestown church is a conversion threshold through which Pocahontas is processed and Anglicized.41 The church, like the supplicants who enter it, is “fresh from the forest” and has been recuperated from these indigenous elements of “rough pine” that have been made in the shape and style of British religion, forming an archway overhead that frames this threshold act through which Pocahontas is baptized. In the illustration, a tree that frames the outside of the image blends into the rough boards within, making the forest nearly continuous with the interior scene and recalling the archway on the game box. Pocahontas occupies the center to signify her importance, but as she kneels, she is lower on the page than the standing ministers and assembled colonists. William Moebius asserts, “A character that is on the margin, ‘distanced’ or reduced in size on the page, and near the bottom will generally be understood to possess fewer advantages than the one that is large and centred” (149). That seems to be the case here, at least in Bancroft’s more extended discussion.

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What the Ogilvys do not include from Bancroft is that Pocahontas was there because she had been kidnapped and held for ransom by the colonists, and that during her captivity, colonist John Rolfe felt called to convert this “‘unregenerated maiden;’ and, winning the favor of Pocahontas, he desired her in marriage” (146–147, 10th ed). In Bancroft’s version, the baptism is swiftly “followed by her nuptials with Rolfe” (147). The “Indian maiden” is unnamed by the Ogilvys, designated only as the daughter of “Powhatan,” and her identity in the game’s image is further elided with the label “The Indian maiden Powhatan baptised” (1613). The absence of identification other than her father underlines the point that the making of America is not the story of women, but the story of patriarchs who lay claim to the women as they do to the virgin territory. Bancroft describes her as follows: “The daughter of the wilderness possessed the mild elements of female loveliness, half concealed, as if in the bud, and rendered the more beautiful by the childlike simplicity with which her education in the savannahs of the New World had invested her. How could she fail to be caressed at court, and admired in the city? As a wife, and as a young mother, her conduct was exemplary” (147). Bancroft positions this “daughter of the wilderness” as harvested from the land itself while invitingly “in the bud,” soon “caressed at court,” not as an ambassador of her people, but as a fruitful, young mother. The Ogilvys also focus on her reproductive capacity and sexual knowledge in styling her as the “maiden” daughter of what was earlier established as the “virgin” territory named for another “maiden,” the English Virgin Queen; the implicit subtext is one of possession and even penetration. This happens again later in the game in a discussion of William Penn, who in seeking a grant for territory on the banks of the Delaware River is described as “bec[oming] a suitor” (Columbia 10; Bancroft 552, Author’s Last Revision edition).42 Through these metaphors of union, rather than conquest, the New World is wedded to the Old, a trope of patriarchal discourse explored by Anne McClintock: To be virgin is to be empty of desire and void of sexual agency, passively awaiting the thrusting, male insemination of history, language and reason. Within colonial narratives, the eroticizing of ‘virgin’ space also effects a territorial appropriation, for if the land is virgin, colonized peoples cannot claim aboriginal territorial rights, and white male patrimony is violently assured as the sexual and military insemination of an interior void. (30) Both the maiden Pocahontas and Penn’s Delaware River territory are represented through an invoked eroticized virgin space that is penetrated, known, and “inseminat[ed]” with historical meaning. The game mobilizes

Gaming America 177 the less sensational ceremony of baptism to represent this relationship. For Penn, the act of the treaty means he can baptize the land and assign it his own name. This patriarchal union leads to prosperity and peace. The Ogilvys declare that “Penn’s treaty with the native Indians has always been celebrated in history, it preserved to them their just rights, whilst it gave to them the great advantages of English civilization” (10), a phrase I do not find in Bancroft. This is the Ogilvys’ colonial justification: the “great advantages” of English culture and rights, without a whisper about what Britain stood to gain. The Ogilvys contrast the British imperial model sharply with the Dutch, in whose hands colonial Manhattan was “a dull dreary place, on which were placed three or four rude hovels. The reader may imagine the vast difference it now presents in its name of New York, of which our artist has endeavoured to give a faint idea at the top of the sheet” (Columbia 7). The early “rude hovels” of New York by the Dutch are contrasted with the English named and rendered crowded city shorelines.43 The Ogilvys’ remark seems to suggest that New York reflects the best of British colonial governance as well as artistry. In contrast, the Dutch are assigned the “infamous notoriety” in 1620 of “being the first colonists who introduced slavery into America. This event took place at Jamestown, when fifty African negroes were landed” (8; Bancroft 176–177, 10th ed; Figure 4.6). The Ogilvys have increased Bancroft’s number of “twenty negroes for sale” and erased his assertion that “the traffic would have been checked in its infancy, had its profits remained with the Dutch” (176–177). Though they gloss the Dutch with their added phrase of “infamous notoriety” and include a stipulation that the Dutch were the “first colonists” to introduce slavery, the Ogilvys exclude Bancroft’s sentence about who else profited from the slave trade, perhaps selfconscious about the Mansfield Parks built by profits from West Indian plantations.44 They also ignore a description of the slave trade several pages earlier: The unjust, wasteful and unhappy system was fastened upon the rising institutions of America, not by the consent of the corporation, nor the desires of the emigrants; but, as it was introduced by the mercantile avarice of a foreign nation, so it was subsequently riveted by the policy of England, without regard to the interests or the wishes of the colony. (Bancroft 159) Bancroft suggests that, far from being put out by having the Dutch introduce slavery to their colony, the British were active agents who “riveted” this policy for their own profit. More broadly, Bancroft assigns blame to a long European tradition of enslavement: “The traffic of Europeans in negro slaves was fully established before the colonization of the

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United States, and had existed a half century before the discovery of America” (166). Columbus imported the practice to the Americas, where he enslaved and sold 500 Native Americans in Spain (168). In choosing not to include these points about English or Columbus’ slaveholding, the Ogilvys make a strategic choice about how to represent colonial history and human rights. The accompanying image, labeled “Dutch Man of War landing Negro slaves,” features a harbor scene with a single white man bearing a gun and ordering those who are kneeling to follow the throngs of enslaved people with their hands bound as they march into a shadowy fort (Figure 4.5). The perspective is from behind the enslaved people, facing the Dutch man, so that the viewer seems to be marching into a shadowy fort with them. John Berger underscores the importance of perspective, clarifying that it “is like a beam from a lighthouse—only instead of light travelling outwards, appearances travel in [. . .] The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God” (16). This “visible”—or, to use Moebius’ term, “presented”— world (143) gives readers visual information about colonization. It efficiently creates a negative image of Dutch colonial practices and sidesteps the association of slavery with English Jamestown. In Bancroft’s original History, Maryland is settled by white indentured servants and “in part negro slaves, whose importation was favored both by English cupidity and by provincial statutes” (235, 3rd ed). The Ogilvys, however, point out that Georgia, “named after the English king, is celebrated in history as being the first to prohibit Negro slavery, which it afterwards entirely abolished” (11). Even in these glancing references, the Ogilvys distinguish between imperial rivals who enslave and the British tradition of outlawing the trade.45 Even when the Ogilvys represent Britain taking territory from imperial rivals, it is cast in a positive light, such as with the 1628 surrender of Quebec. Distinguishing this from greedy conquest, the Ogilvys explain, “The garrison had previously been reduced to great suffering and was on the verge of famine. The English, therefore, were received as deliverers, favorable terms were demanded and promised, and Quebec capitulated” (8). Received as “deliverers,” rather than conquerors, the English are characterized in wholly positive terms in this version.46 This is also consistent with the characterization of French colonialism in a mid-century geography primer: “France being a less maritime country than Great Britain, is less interested in the preservation of her colonies, and has more seldom kept those even which she has founded” (Boscawen 320). This also establishes a more long-term relationship between England and Canada over a hundred years before General James Wolfe’s—the commander of the British forces—famous victory at Quebec in 1759, characterized later as the culmination of “a long and bloody” struggle (11) that ended with British supremacy in Canada.47

Gaming America 179 In between the contact zone and the beginning of the enfranchisement of the US through the American Revolution, the Ogilvys do not say much else about colonization, other than making these distinctions between Britain and its rivals. They certainly do not include Bancroft’s characterization of Jamestown settlers as “pitiable” due to their weakness in numbers and “want of habits of industry” (126, 10th ed). Bancroft recounts that after John Smith left the colony following wounds from a gunpowder explosion, the population plummeted from 490 people to 60 only six months later due to “indolence, vice, and famine” (140). These are the terms that imperial texts use to describe indigenous peoples or rival powers, so Bancroft’s discursive reversal is startling in this context and critiques the structure of British colonization. Bancroft’s description of early colonists as pitiable, indolent, and vice-ridden is a big deal. Not only does it depart from the disinterested benevolence John Betts crafted in A Tour or the robust, healthy mercantilism of Evans’ game, but it also abrogates the idea that the Empire was engaged in spreading cultural values, not just in taking resources. Describing texts for young people as using Englishness to present “a moral and ethical baseline,” J.S. Bratton asserts, “For the imperialist writer, the extension of this Englishness overseas is a cogent reason for colonial expansion” (79). Without that “baseline,” nothing distinguishes the British from their rivals. Nor do the Ogilvys follow Bancroft’s representation of the growing dissatisfaction the colonists felt in being ruled without representation. He claimed that they were “subjected to the ordinances of a commercial corporation, of which they could not be members; to the dominion of a domestic council, in appointing which they had no voice; to the control of a superior council in England, which had no sympathies with their rights; and finally, to the arbitrary legislation of the sovereign” (122, 10th ed). Bancroft again associates British colonization with “commercial” interests and adds to that a lack of sympathetic engagement and an “arbitrary” authority. Bancroft makes these moves because his goal in his history is to trace the growth of an independent, democratic American spirit. In selecting the portions of Bancroft’s work that they wished to appropriate for their own volume, the Ogilvys must have seen these passages and then chosen to disregard them. It would not have been practical for the Ogilvys to ascribe this groundswell of resistance to anything other than an unfortunate, idiosyncratic response to a particular piece of legislation: the Stamp Act. Around the period of the Revolution, they stop appropriating Bancroft’s work. The roots of the American Revolution are established with the 1764 Stamp Act and the “obstinacy” of George III and Parliament “in attempting to make the Americans pay the same taxes as the mother country” (Columbia 11). Bancroft puts it in more deliberate terms, urging readers to pity the king because “at the moment of passing the Stamp Act, George the Third was crazed” (248, Volume V). The Ogilvys name this as the event

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that “ultimately led to a separation of that part of America known as the United States, from the English crown” (Columbia 11). The colonies are qualified as only “part of America,” diminishing the loss.48 This opposition to paying duties on tea and other goods led to a 1773 “Riot at Boston.” Though the events described here are commonly known in American history as the tongue-in-cheek “Boston Tea Party,” by designating them here as a “serious riot,” the game criminalizes the act as involving the destruction of property that was “rudely thrown into the water and destroyed” (12), rather than a strategic protest. The illustration marked “Tea destroyed at Boston” depicts all of the protestors as Native Americans; though the colonists did assume this costume, at a glance, the image does not distinguish between this and the depicted Native Americans elsewhere (Figure 4.7). This visually conflates colonists and Native Americans—unruly and wild, refusing to be governed. Departing from a reliance on Bancroft, the Ogilvys strike out on their own to plot the development of the Revolution, noting the meeting of the first Congress and the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1774. Here, the “rebels” defeated English forces, and Charlestown “was afterwards destroyed by fire” (12). By yoking the battle of Bunker Hill with the destruction of Charlestown by fire, the game underscores the dangerous and self-destructive nature of armed conflict, as opposed to the earlier peaceful acquisition of colonies. This is reinforced again with the “Conflagration of Norfolk Town” in 1776, when “The English fleet, under the command of Lord Dunmore, fired on the Americans, and afterwards destroyed Norfolk Town” (13) the same year as the Declaration of Independence. In this period of destruction and rebirth, the game acknowledges the great men (or at least great man) involved. Rather than crediting American leaders and citizens with discernment and sound judgment in electing Washington, the game casts it as “fortunate” that America had Washington “to guide the helm at this critical period” (13). Depending on how they were doing in a game that relied upon luck, players may have responded to America’s “luck” with Washington differently. In some ways, it is surprising that the guidebook spends so many pages (and so many spaces—13 out of 36) chronicling in painstaking detail a war that was ultimately lost. It notes in 1776 alone that General Burgoyne’s force was “defeated and obliged to capitulate” (Columbia 14) and that Sir Henry Clinton, though successful in taking Charlestown, “was afterwards defeated in 1781 and 1782” (14) (Figure 4.7). In the images for the 1776 spaces, “British capitulation under General Burgoyne” and “Lord Cornwallis Surrendering,” the perspective is from over Washington’s shoulder. In both cases, Burgoyne, Cornwallis, and the British troops are seen head on, centered in the image, a placement Molly Bang identifies as an image’s “point of greatest attraction” (62). Finally, Lord Cornwallis’ surrender is described in resigned language:

Credit line: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Figure 4.7 Ogilvy’s Columbia detail: left side of the game

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“The English were again unsuccessful, and suffered a defeat under Lord Cornwallis, who was obliged to surrender” (14). Here, Cornwallis “was obliged,” a strategic use of the passive verb form to describe a judicious action, rather than the more active verb form “Cornwallis surrendered.” This careful decision is reflected in the next event, the final one of the game, which describes the 1782 treaty at Paris. The guidebook’s description of the Treaty at Paris reads “Great Britain found it no longer prudent to struggle with the United States; and therefore yielded all further interference in the management of their affairs. The treaty of independence was signed by both parties in Paris, 1782; England still retaining her northern possessions in America, including the two Canadas, and the Hudson’s Bay Territory” (Columbia 14). The sentence structure reveals that Britain made a decision that it was “no longer prudent to struggle with the United States,” privileging their maturity and judgment in keeping with the designation of the “mother country,” who may “struggle” with her charge but does not “fight” it. The Ogilvys bury the lead in the next semicolon phrase: “therefore yielded all further interference in the management of their affairs.” They do not say that Britain was beaten, conquered, or defeated (as in earlier descriptions of battles). Instead, diplomatically, Britain “yielded all further interference,” suggesting that it could more usefully occupy its time than in “interfer[ing]” to correct an unruly child. In the game book, though a treaty of peace was signed, the significance of that signing in acknowledging the creation of a new country is not what follows the semicolon. Instead, Ogilvy presents readers with a list of territories Britain still maintains in Canada. The impression is that Britain’s greatness is not diminished by declining to “interfere” further with an unruly colonial child—a lesser sibling to its territories in Canada. The unremarkable, calm depiction of the loss of the American colonies characterizes the tone of the illustration as well (Figure 4.7). The Treaty at Paris is a sideways-facing box at the end of a row, half-occluded by the decorative ivy in the border but otherwise undistinguished by size, color, or placement, though it is a pinnacle event for the United States (Columbia, 1782). In the image, a blue-coated figure is in the act of rising to proffer a paper to a red-coated figure seated at the head of the table (throughout the game, the British have been represented in red coats, the Americans in blue, and other figures, often the French, in green). The bluecoated figure’s soft lines and hunched shoulders render it non-threatening, and the angle of its head is turned deferentially toward the red-coated figure as it points with one finger to a place on the treaty. The blue-coated figure does not loom over the red-coated one. As America is earning its independence, it, too, may be in the act of “rising,” yet the attitude of the American is one of appeal to the red-coated figure at the head of the table. As told in the Ogilvys’ game, the history of America, as carefully framed out and plotted, is a story of European rivalry exported to the

Gaming America 183 New World. These rivalries introduce strife and acquisitiveness in contrast to the peaceful acquisition of territory on the part of the English, who struggle to baptize the New World and its indigenous peoples, welcoming them into the imperial family. The revolt of the rebellious Americans against the benevolent mother country ends Columbia’s story and potentially its interest to players. As soon as America leaves the imperial family, the game is over. America fares no better in Wallis’ game, which does its best to discourage emigration to this wild, unsettled land, where people cannot be protected from wild animals or the corruption that the practice of slavery contaminates the land with. In ready contrast to America, both games juxtapose the success of the British imperial project on the horizon in nearby Canada, which offers model colonies and neatly planned cities. The contrast between British Canada and the former American colonies reflects the optimism of the mid-century moment for Britain. In the 50 years following the American Revolution, historian Linda Colley explains that the governing elite regrouped, and “there would emerge in Great Britain a far more consciously and officially constructed patriotism which stressed attachment to the monarchy, the importance of empire, the value of military and naval achievement, and the desirability of strong, stable government by a virtuous, able and authentically British elite” (145). Colley’s remarks emphasize primarily discursive and imaginative loyalties, rather than legislative dictates, hard acquisition of territory (though that certainly occurred as well), or an outline of public policy. Published at mid-century, the Ogilvys’ game is part of the “officially constructed patriotism,” which was well established, according to Colley’s timeline, by the 1830s. Though they had lost the American colonies, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain had become “the world’s premier industrial and commercial power,” a position they enjoyed through the 1870s until the rest of the industrializing world could catch up (Parsons 9). Despite the European revolutions in 1848 and the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, Britain’s imperial sun was on the rise. It saw its Empire expanding to cover a quarter of the globe, increasing trade and wealth for a burgeoning middle class and disseminating its cultural values through missionary activity, education, the legal system, and domestic mores. The Great Exhibition established a ready visual showcase of its power and reach as well as its systems of production and manufacture. The Industrial Revolution and the advent of the railroad and the steamship, as well as construction of the Suez Canal, meant quicker communication and delivery of goods and closer connections between the colonies and the metropole. A steadily growing middle class felt assured of its prosperity, and nascent national institutions like the British Museum and Kew Gardens were flourishing sites to house the collections of specimens and artifacts pouring in from British scientists, explorers, amateur collectors, and civil servants stationed all over the world. Playing these games, children could participate

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in the optimism of the imperial project, learning to connect their personal interests and success to the winning imperial narrative. Mid-century Britons playing these board games could do so with a cheerful assurance of their place in the world and in the historical record.

Notes 1. The Proclamation warned the South to surrender or emancipation would take place beginning on January 1, 1863. 2. The Dodo proposes the caucus-race; since he is extinct, his strategies may be questioned. Carroll notes that the parties are staggered around a circular course, and “they began running when they liked and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over” (25). At the conclusion, the Dodo announces, when pressed, that everybody has won, and he assigns a surprised and perplexed Alice to award the prizes. 3. Around 1847, J. Passmore took over the Wallis stock. 4. Edward Wallis took his father John Wallis’ game Wallis’s Tour through England and Wales (1794) and simply incorporated a railway track “in an attempt to take commercial advantage of the ‘railway mania’ of the time” (Hill 12). He craftily reset the typeface of the rules to look more modern, but the title “‘New Railway Game’ is a misnomer, for the game is neither new nor about railways; although they appear on the map, they have no significance in the game, and the route of the race-track completely ignores them. Edward Wallis saw the commercial possibilities of the railways for his business, and saved himself time, money and trouble by adapting his father’s old copper plate rather than creating a new game” (Hill 12). 5. After losing the American colonies, the British maintained control of Canada, India, the Cape Colony in South Africa, and New South Wales in Australia (Parsons 4). 6. From a reconnaissance perspective, it is also perhaps unsurprising that Pittsburgh is dubbed “the Birmingham of America” (6), abounding in coal, and players must “Stop two turns to examine its foundries” (6). Wallis halts the players’ progress for two turns, suggesting that the lack of personal progress in the game either reflects Pittsburgh’s lack of progress or may suggest a necessary reconnaissance to spur British industry. 7. To characterize the importance of cities, Wallis employs a hierarchy. Major cities are boldfaced and in all caps (of which there are only three: New York, Boston, and Washington, DC). These are seconded by cities, appearing in boldface without caps, and then simply those minor cities that appear as a name without boldface. These distinctions appear to be awarded based on the size and character of the city. 8. New York is described as “Capital of the state of that name, situated on the Hudson. The City Hall is of white marble, as are also the Exchange, and the United States Branch Bank. This city has often been ravaged by fires: it contains nearly one hundred churches, belonging to different denominations, a college, and many fine public buildings. Whoever first arrives at exactly this number, wins the Game” (16). 9. The characterization of America as “inferior” is applied not only to the architecture but also to character in children’s geographies. In Jehosaphat Aspin’s Cosmorama, for instance, “among the wealthier classes of Americans, particularly in large cities, as much politeness and good breeding prevails [sic] as with most of the middle classes of Europe” (215). In other words, the American urban elite are on par with “most” of the European middle classes.

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Where America does excel is a dubious distinction: “The most conspicuous trait in the American character is consummate vanity, which transcends all that has been attributed to Frenchmen” (215). Knowledge loops happen in one other area of the game—snakes. When landing on space 34, players must avoid the Copper-head, a “very venomous serpent,” and “you had better get out of this way, by going back to No. 22” (7). This strategy is fruitless, however, since space 22 is also dedicated to snakes. Yet it is the space to which players who have landed on the Rattlesnake at 50 are routed too; these players are sent back to 34 (the Copper-head) and told to “stop till your next turn.” The biblical associations of snakes with the devil and temptation are intriguing here—does the United States offer a “tempting” promise to emigrants that is unfulfilled because it is coupled with a terrible knowledge of slavery and greedy animal appetites? In terms of rice production, the states where rice is cultivated in the twentyfirst century include California, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, and Mississippi (Statista). All but California and Texas are represented on Wallis’ map, but he adds Kentucky, which is where he plots the production in space 29. Either he was working with inaccurate information, and other geographic inconsistencies on the map would support this reading, or he wanted to place 29 in the center of the country for rhetorical purposes of his own to show this corruption at the heart of the country that enervates the whole. This would dovetail well with J.B. Harley’s assertion about the rhetorical construction of maps: “The steps in making a map—selection, omission, simplification, classification, the creation of hierarchies, and ‘symbolization’—are all inherently rhetorical .  .  . the map maker merely omits those features of the world that lie outside the purpose of the immediate discourse” (243). For Wallis, the priority is not locating the cultivation of rice in the correct territory, but rather in representing slavery as a central, systematic concern. Britain had its own difficulties incorporating the multiracial people who emerged in the contact zones in the wake of colonization. Ann Stoler notes that the classification and division of colonized subjects were a means of “policing the domestic recesses of imperial rule” (4). She continues, asserting that “a collective impulse of the last decade of post-colonial scholarship has been precisely to disassemble the neat divisions that could imagine a European history and its unified collectivities apart from the externalized Others on whom it was founded and which it produced” (Stoler 5). Whatever social and economic barriers a multiracial legacy presented to Britons in the colonies, this “taint” does not doom individuals to the “degraded condition” of slavery, as it does in the Americas. In the 1830s, Thomas Buxton lobbied for the humane development of Africa as a means of abolishing slavery: “Buxton and his allies therefore popularized the concept of ‘legitimate commerce,’ whereby Africans would turn their energies to the production of the tropical commodities required by industrial Britain. Hence formal British rule would not be needed to coerce Africans into taking part in this enterprise because both sides would reap the mutual benefits of increased trade” (Parsons 20). Evangelicals embraced the plan, and it cast Britain in a heroic role. Geography primers take a place-based approach to sugar cane cultivation, noting that the hot climates in which it is cultivated have encouraged the use of slave labor. Boscawen states, “The preparation of the sugar, require[s] much care and attention; the labour is performed entirely by the Negroes, for no white man can work in the fields in so hot a climate [. . .] The blackamoors are the only people able to labour beneath the burning sun, and

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15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

Chapter 4 therefore it is, that the slave trade with the coast of Africa was so long carried on” (289). Mary and Elizabeth Kirby tell readers that “[t]he sun pours down his rays so fiercely that you could not bear it a moment. But the black people do not mind the heat so much as we do. See how busy they are!” (84). Though their industriousness reflects well on these enslaved peoples, their presence and their labor indicate a lack of proper industry on the part of the white slaveholders. Kirby tells readers that these laborers lived in Africa, where “men went in ships on purpose to steal them” (87–88). Their use of the term “steal” underscores the moral wrong of this system of labor. It may also be acknowledging the Triangle Trade from Africa to the Caribbean to the United States, in which enslaved peoples were exchanged for molasses, rum, and sugar. Priscilla Wakefield’s A Traveller in Africa (1814) enjoins readers that if other nations join Britain in abolishing the slave trade, a “grand design” will be achieved in “educating her youth, civilizing her inhabitants, and instructing them in the principles of the Gospel” (345). In her 1828 geography primer Africa described in its ancient and present state, Barbara Hofland tells child readers that the selling of slaves has led to human suffering and a “spirit of tyranny apparently inherent in the very soil of Africa” (9). By mid-century, Favell Lee Mortimer’s Far-Off (1854) characterizes Africa as “the most unhappy of all the quarters of the globe. Why is this? Because it is the land, whence more slaves have come than from any other; it may be called the land of bondage” (226). The authors note that though some people thought it was wrong to enslave Africans and force them to work as slaves, “the King of England, who then was the ruler of that part of America, would not permit these laws to be enforced. Thus it was that slavery commenced there” (Stowe 133–134). Rule 10 urges players to “Observe that as each State has its own independent government and cannot be controlled by the Federal government at Washington, the CAPITAL of each is printed in black letters: and whosoever arrives at one of these has the privilege of drawing again immediately, adding the amount of both drawings to his former number” (iv). This rule is significant in its reminder that the states “cannot be controlled” by a central government but also in the way that gaining an extra turn in the capital cities privileges urban spaces over uncultivated wilderness or spaces where farm, mine, or slave labor takes place. Tubman’s activities postdate the likely publication of Wallis’ game, but I am making a general point about the perspective adopted by the games. Harriet Ritvo’s research on the representations of animals in zoos and as hunted beasts is revealing. She writes, “The menageries of nineteenth-century England offered a stately, highly structured display of some of the more exotic spoils of empire, impressive symbols of British domination both of vast tributary territories and of the natural world. The serene confidence of achieved mastery was, however, only one side of imperialism, and not the only one to stir the imagination of stay-at-home patriots. At least equally compelling was the more romantic, violent, and dangerous process of confrontation and conquest. Although the overt symbolism of zoological gardens tended to overshadow this darker reading of imperialism, it was implicitly embodied in the capture and transportation to Europe of the tigers, elephants, and antelopes that ended up sedately marshaled for the edification of the Victorian public” (Ritvo Animal Estate 243). Native Americans in Wallis’ game appear only briefly as dark figures, undifferentiated from the African Americans, except for loincloths and topknots in one interstitial area. The game has only two dedicated spaces for Native

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22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

Americans, both in the final third of the game: 104 for the “Sioux, or Dacotah Indians,” and 111 for the Huron Indians. Wallis identifies Boston as the place where “the first stand was made by the American colonists against the arms of Britain, in 1775” (Star-Spangled Banner 15). In Maine, players’ progress in the game is accelerated due to Britain’s own successful Game movement: “Draw twice more, to commemorate the settlement of the boundary of this state, so long the subject of dispute between Great Britain and the United States” (Star-Spangled Banner 14). This may be a glancing reference to the guerrilla-style combat adopted from the Native American style of fighting and employed later in the American Revolution by the colonists against the British soldiers. Francis Marion, associated with his animal nickname “Swamp Fox,” offers a ready example. Spooner makes this part of his Voyage of Discovery as well. Beyond encounters with the indigenous people to develop trade relationships, players on the True Blue scout opportunities for hunting—a shark, turtle, and a gruesome depiction of harpooning a whale who fountains blood (Voyage True 8). When catching turtles, players “Take 2,” whereas when catching a shark or harpooning a whale, players “Pay 1” each time, suggesting that these hostile creatures require sailors to expend more than they gain. A variety of fierce animals appear across the entire game, including a crocodile, elephant, buffalo, lion, tiger, shark, and whale, as well as tamer creatures, such as giraffes, horses, turtles, and ostriches. This establishes that trade and commerce could be a tricky, dangerous, and therefore glorious business that often involved the subjugation of wild beasts, as well as often besting other human rivals. These kinds of interactions characterize the commerce undertaken here as adventurous and exciting, sidelining the more dry business practices of accounting, rationing, sampling, collecting, or storing commodities for sale back home. Missourium fossils were discovered in 1840 and brought to London for exhibition, showing Wallis’ attention to events that captured the popular imagination in his time. Other spaces are not included in the story of imperial progress. Walker’s New Geographical Game Exhibiting a tour through Europe [c. 1810] begins in London and ends in Greece with 133 points. In the board’s bottom margin, a small blank piece of northern Africa is shown, marked only with Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Alexandria, the mouth of the Nile, Egypt, and Cairo. The text inscribed upon this marginal blank declares, “In Africa the human mind seems degraded below its natural state to dwell long upon the manners of this Country, a country so immers’d in rudeness and barbarity besides that it could afford little instruction, would be disgusting to every lover of mankind” (Walker’s New Geographical Game). Such a statement reveals that even though this game’s content is not avowedly imperial, the aims and spirit of Empire inflect the territory that gets represented and the territory that is cut off or marginalized in the game and in the imperial project. According to the Court Album, Mary Frances Elizabeth Boscawen, Viscountess Falmouth, Baroness Le Despencer, Baroness Boscawen Rose, married in 1845 Evelyn Boscawen, fifth Viscount Falmouth, Baron Boscawen Rose (Weigall 4). The product is fitting since Maria Edgeworth’s father and sometime writing partner, Richard Edgeworth, had recommended puzzle play for young boys, particularly those interested in naval careers. In their Practical Education, Richard and Maria Edgeworth recommended puzzles for teaching geography to boys destined for the navy: “It is surprising to see the constancy and patience, which the children show in putting them together, and the alacrity

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with which, day after day, they return to their work” (qtd in Hannas’ The Jigsaw Book 26) 30. The Edgeworths proceed to describe their observations of children’s strategies in assembling a puzzle, speculating on the educative value and the way the child’s strategies reflect maturity and/or deliberation: “The child who quickly perceives resemblances catches instantly at the first bit of the wooden map, that has a single hook or hollow that seems likely to answer his purpose; he makes perhaps twenty different trials before he hits upon the right combination; whilst the wary youth, who has been accustomed to observe differences, cautiously examines with his eye the whole outline before his hand begins to move; and, having exactly compared the two indentures, he joins them with sober confidence, more proud of never disgracing his judgement by a fruitless attempt than ambitious of rapid success. He is slow, but sure, and wins the day” (30–31). 31. Yet by tracking test cases, Hannas estimates that only 15% of advertised puzzles have survived and made their way into archives or private collections; the rest are simply gone (The English Jigsaw Puzzle 78). 32. Dating this game is a bit of a puzzle in itself. It is haunted by the political conflicts over slavery as an institution. A careful examination of the states listed on the map offers insight into the national politics involving slavery. Iowa became the 29th state in 1846, and Wisconsin became the 30th in 1848, followed by California (1850) and Minnesota (1858). California is listed on this game, but not Minnesota, so this suggests the possibility that the game (if it were up to date) may have appeared between 1850 and 1858. As well, the game does not list later states such as Oregon (1859), Kansas (1861), or others. Placing it between 1850 and 1858 would have been consistent with the publication of the “companion” game Tar of all Weathers, dated c. 1860. The challenge to this theory is that the game also does not list Iowa (1846), though it does have an entry for “New Territories” in space 35. Established as a territory in 1838, Iowa was admitted into the Union in a compromise between slaveholding and free states to maintain a balance of power. I am not sure why the game would have listed states that followed Iowa but not named this 29th state; either the publishers did not know the name or they decided not to include it for reasons of their own. Another interesting anomaly that may help with dating is a consideration of space 32. This space lists Alexandria as the capital of the state of “Columbia,” which is distinguished from Washington, listed at the center. In 1801, Alexandria became part of the District of Columbia, meaning that the citizens lost their status as Virginians and also their voting rights. Alexandria applied for “retrocession” in 1846 to rejoin Virginia, in part to continue profiting from the slave trade, which everyone suspected would soon be outlawed in the District. That the game still lists Alexandria as capital of the District means that it does not take into consideration these 1846 events or refuses to acknowledge them (just like the 1846 Iowa statehood not reflected in the game). This game cannot, however, be dated to 1846 because it names California as a state, which did not happen until 1850, accelerated by the discovery of gold in 1849. The game features “Gold diggers” on space 20, so 1850 seems to be the likely earliest possible date of publication. The next state to be inducted after California was Minnesota in 1858, and that is not included. On the other end, the game does not mention the Civil War, a conflict that began in 1860, and it seems likely that it would have done so, so I am dating it between 1850 and 1860. It does not narrow the date range to look at the period of activity for the Ogilvys or for Barfoot since both had a date range from the 1840s to 1860s, and much of their work is undated.

Gaming America 189 33. The Games Research Database is part of an effort by private collectors to consolidate information and images regarding their holdings. As the site notes, “The primary motivation in all cases is to ensure that vital historical information that is secreted in collections and game expert’s minds is not lost to posterity” (GARD “How to Participate”). Written by James Masters and Richard Ballam, the site is a valuable resource. Ballam’s extensive collection alone has been donated to the Bodleian Library at Oxford and will enrich their holdings for future research. 34. The game itself features 38 spaces, not 37, but it is possible that they are not considering Washington as a state or the separately marked District of Columbia or the “New Territories” space. 35. Beyond listing the British territories first, the order of the states does not follow a consistent pattern since it is neither geographic nor alphabetical. Though the game does list the British Canadian territories first, this system of preferment seems to end there since the states that follow are Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Texas, and so on. This quick glimpse demonstrates how the game moves quickly from New England to the Mid-Atlantic region, and then back to New England, next to the Midwest, and then to the South, and on to the Southwest. These territories are not visited by size (Texas is considerably larger than Connecticut, after all) nor by importance to Britain since Pennsylvania and New York would have appeared much earlier in the list if that were the case. Gameplay zigzags among the states, finishing with Washington in the center space. This may suggest the disordered nature of the United States or a deliberate overlooking of the relative significance of states for shipping, trade, manufacturing, or cultivation. This can be contrasted with other Ogilvy games, such as L’Orient, or the Indian Travelers [1846]. In this orderly game, a large central map shows the route from England to India. Two bands inset with panels dated by year surround the map on three sides, and at the top are portraits of monarchs from George I to Victoria. The orderly march of time frames and informs the space at the center of the game. 36. Children’s writer Mary Howitt (1799–1888) quotes Bancroft over 60 times in her A Popular History of the United States of America: From the Discovery of the American Continent, to the Present Time (1860). This is evidence of how writers for children recognized Bancroft as a historical authority, yet Howitt troubles to cite him, whereas the Ogilvys do not. 37. In one regard, at least, Bancroft would have approved of the Ogilvys’ use of his material. Bancroft speaks regretfully of European writers: “Much error had become incorporated with American history” because such work “was often written with a carelessness which seized on rumors and vague recollections as sufficient authority for an assertion which satisfied prejudice by wanton perversions, and which, where materials were not at hand, substituted the inferences of the writer for authenticated facts” (Preface vi). It is possible that he could have encountered them during his time in Britain, or that his work was prominent enough that they were aware of it and chose to use it as a source, rather than a British-authored account. 38. I will indicate the page number of the passage in Bancroft’s work as well. Sometimes there is a phrasing difference or an additional sentence in the Bancroft version, but where the same wording appears, I cite him as well. 39. Before colonization, Bancroft characterizes it as “an unproductive waste. Throughout its wide extent the arts had not erected a monument. Its only inhabitants were a few scattered tribes of feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce and of political connection” (3, 10th ed).

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40. The Bancroft version is similar, except that the Ogilvys insert “the cupidity of traders.” The original passage assigns cupidity to Englishmen like William Clayborne, who began as a surveyor and then headed up a trading company after serving in royal-appointed posts as secretary of state; he was involved in native skirmishes and in inciting an insurrection in 1644 against the governor that led to “disorder and misrule” (255, 10th ed). 41. Acquisitions in America are characterized as peaceful despite competition with eager rivals from the Old World. In Maryland, for example, “the French, Swedes, and Dutch were preparing to occupy the country, and a grant seemed the readiest mode of securing the soil for an English settlement” (9). This orderly, legal chartering of the territory is coupled with the naming of it after Charles I’s wife, thus consistent with the baptism metaphor in incorporating places such as New York, Georgia, Jamestown, and Capes Charles and Henry, as well as people like Pocahontas. The deployment of this baptism metaphor to explain territorial acquisition allows their rebranding in the name of English monarchs. The exception is William Penn, who gave his own name to Pennsylvania. Contrast this with the French, who establish Louisiana in 1718 but choose to name it for Louis XV, with New Orleans named after the “dissolute Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans” (10). 42. In the full passage from Bancroft’s text, Penn wins his claim on the land in part because of his father’s claim on the government for £16,000: “To Charles II., always embarrassed for money, the grant of a province was the easiest mode of cancelling the debt” (552, Author’s Last Revision edition). 43. After the island is “quietly surrendered to the English” later, its name is changed to New York “after the brother of the English king” (Ogilvy 10). 44. The English began trading in African slaves in 1560, so it may seem like splitting hairs to note that the Dutch introduced the practice to this particular region when the British had been trafficking for 60 years (Logan 4). 45. Though slavery as an institution was not abolished until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, the game may be referring to James Oglethorpe, who “used his nearly arbitrary power as the civil and military head of the state, the founder and delegated legislator of Georgia, to interdict negro slavery” (Bancroft 295, 3rd ed). Congress’ abolition of the importation of humans as slaves occurred in 1808. 46. In Bancroft’s text, the passage is quite similar: “But Richelieu sent no seasonable supplies; the garrison was reduced to extreme suffering and the verge of famine; and when, in 1629, the squadron of Kirk reappeared before the town, Quebec capitulated. That is to say, England gained possession of a few wretched hovels, tenanted by a hundred famished men, and a fortress of which the English admiral could not but admire the position” (334, 10th ed). The difference is that though the men are famished, it is only in the Ogilvys’ version that the English are greeted as deliverers. 47. What the Ogilvys do not discuss from Bancroft’s text is his origin story about how Cartier established the Canadian colony for the French through his authority to “ransack the prisons; to rescue the unfortunate and the criminal; and to make up the complement of his men from their number. Thieves or homicides, the spendthrift or the fraudulent bankrupt, the debtors to justice or its victims, prisoners rightfully or wrongfully detained, excepting only those arrested for treason or counterfeiting money, these were the people by whom the colony was, in part, to be established” (23, 10th ed).

Gaming America 191 48. Despite minimizing the loss of the American colonies, the Ogilvys later note that though there were originally only 13, the number has “been more than doubled by fresh accessions” (12). By 1850, there were 31 states, so that fits in with this “more than doubled” estimate of more than 26 states, suggesting a time period for the dating of the game. It also acknowledges that though the loss was not profound at the time, the Empire lost a future opportunity for growth and glory.

5

Conclusion The Afterlife of Imperial Gaming in the Postcolonial Era

Then France, whose fame reached its highest point, with the bloody conquests of her Emperor Napoleon,—and Great Britain, with her more peaceful and praiseworthy glories of trade, manufacture and discovery, obtain the lead in their turn,—and still westward we see mighty nations rising in the new worlds of America and Australia, destined perhaps to succeed us, as the future Great Empires. —Viscountess Falmouth Mary Frances Elizabeth Boscawen Conversations on Geography. Or, The Child’s First Introduction to Where he is, What he is, and what else there is besides (1854) 479

While discussing Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) with students in my survey course at the University of Florida, I pointed out Kipling’s use of the “Great Game” metaphor to explain the march of imperial progress and the play of its agents across the map of India. This led to a conversation about how contemporary board games promote ideologies of power. Students readily pointed out how games popular during the Cold War, such as Battleship, Stratego, and Risk, offered a militaristic framework for organizing, knowing, and interacting with the world. Students built consensus around the idea that games expose trends of money, power, and authority at work in the US today and offer a framework for organizing, knowing, and interacting with the world. In subsequent class conversations since then, students have also considered Monopoly, The Game of Life and other examples of games that teach players how to cultivate capitalist and social values. They characterized Monopoly as a game encouraging the hoarding and consolidation of wealth and property (as does Hungry, Hungry Hippos, one eager student pointed out) and noted that Life measures success not only through financial security but also through the establishment of a heteronormative nuclear family. These discussions demonstrate that games still have political implications and can be used as tools to promote both peace and war. I reference these classroom conversations in consideration of Suleri’s remark that “to tell the history of another is to be pressed against the

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limits of one’s own” (2). Considering the limits of one’s own history and struggling to recognize the patterns and trends in one’s own historical moment mean thinking about how board games matter now with a consciousness of their genealogy. Their uses for recreation, re-creation of historical conflicts, and educational ends are significant and have ideological and methodological roots in the nineteenth-century board games discussed in this study. In the foregoing chapters, I have analyzed how games promoted imperial ideologies and visions of British nationalism. Chapters focus on how game makers represented the imperial project through the lens of commerce, the politics of display, and the practice of historiography. In Chapter 2, William Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery showed the darker, more violent underside of the imperial project; the desire for profit, especially gold, promoted inequitable impositions of power in the contact zone that resulted in imbalanced trade but also loss of indigenous peoples’ life and property. On the other hand, John Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies normalized the practices of imperial dominion through practices of peaceful trade and commerce. His game traces how these practices transformed colonial spaces from wildernesses into productive agrarian and urban sites featuring British cultural institutions. The view of these neatly ordered, welcoming (though fortified!) harbors in Betts’ game indicates the importance of display in promoting an ocular rhetoric of British imperial power. Chapter 3 revealed how the politics of exhibition and display reinforced that power and authority, as modeled on the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Henry Smith Evans’ The Crystal Palace Game translated these complex ideas to a children’s game, whereas Spooner’s Comic Game satirized assumptions about progress, technology, and Britain’s place amid imperial rivals. The problem of how and where to place Britain in relation to imperial rivals is an important one in Chapter 4. These game makers told the imperial story of British colonization in America, contrasting it with rival European powers and the United States itself. In both games, indigenous peoples’ narratives are marginalized as they are folded into a larger story of imperial rivalry. The treatment of enslaved peoples, however, is a central focus in Edward Wallis’ Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, and Wallis demonstrates how this system disqualifies the United States as a potential imperial rival. He discourages players from emigrating to a place where it is practiced, a place also overrun with wild animals, whose ferocity may be coded for the resistance of indigenous peoples. The roots of both slavery and the appropriation of territory from indigenous peoples are sourced to the colonization practices of European rivals in the New World in E. and M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia. The Ogilvys themselves appropriate American historian George Bancroft’s work, editing and adding to it to promote a benign vision of English colonization in contrast with those rivals.

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The chapters work together to offer a glimpse into the broadly defined mid-century moment (from 1836 to the 1860s), a hinge point for Britain between the Napoleonic Wars at the start of the century and the high imperial period at the end of the century. Emerging as a preeminent power on the world stage, the Britons had defeated a rival whose imperial goals were a foil for their own enterprise. Galvanized by the Industrial Revolution, the newly consolidated British middle class was growing in power and influence, requiring an education for their children that would ensure the transmission of their wealth and increase their status. Both in the metropole and abroad, “such schooling helped underwrite the conquest—literally, but also cognitively and epistemologically—of most parts of our world in the centuries of European imperial expansion” (Ramaswamy xvi). That conquest was also made manifest to British visitors to the Great Exhibition, who could look with pride on their Empire’s reach, symbolized by a range of commodities and raw materials, neatly and strategically ordered to make imperial power visible. Games published and played mid-century exhibit specific imperial strategies, such as developing trade and commerce, and demonstrate a preoccupation with more abstract ideological work regarding the way display could reflect complex imperial relationships between colonizer and colonized and between imperial rivals vying for their place in history. Taking these games and the ideological work they do seriously, I have read them through a postcolonial lens, looking for moments where marginalized or silenced agencies can be recovered or imagined. As YenikaAgbaw has written, “Postcolonial theory thus provides a framework through which scholars can identify and resist subtle and blatant social injustices. [.  .  .] It becomes easier to uncover signs of domination that perpetuate unequal power distribution among nations” (4). Looking for these “signs of domination” and interpreting them in the games has meant an attention to framing, masthead displays, strategies of movement, and styles of illustration and image placement, as well as attention to the system that distributes rewards and forfeits to align the child player’s interests with the imperial enterprise. As Robin Bernstein’s work on material culture has demonstrated, “The method of reading material things as scripts aims to discover not what any individual actually did but rather what a thing invited its users to do” (11). The games “invited” players to put their pieces on the board and rehearse participation in the imperial enterprise. The significance of the smallest moment in which the child’s hand moves a piece across a map on a game board has global implications, and I have tried to offer examples of late-century events and literary acts that could have been shaped by these small moments. What has subsequently become clearer to me in the course of my research into nineteenth-century games is that games are still relevant to conversations about nation-building and social awareness of political problems on a global scale. They continue to be deployed as teaching tools beyond the traditional classroom setting in ways that are both

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encouraging and problematic. As a result, the “afterlife” of the imperial games discussed in this conclusion chapter refers to the persistence of the ideas expressed in these games as well as the methods game makers employed to present them. As Morton Davis dryly observes, “There is little doubt that players often fail to see all there is to see in a game” (153). Though imperial nostalgia is a real trend, a less visible legacy of the games is how they mobilize a space of play to become an ideological training ground to help players understand nuances of power, especially at the end of the Victorian period and the beginning of the twentieth century, when games became increasingly militarized. To explore these features in the afterlife of these imperial games, I have divided this chapter into four parts, two of them focused on close readings of board games and two on how contemporary games mobilize the term “empire” itself and its methods. The first section looks at how the British at this mid-century moment saw their own place in history in “Finding the ‘Right’ Side of History: The View from the Pinnacle in William Sallis’ Pyramid of History [post 1851).” In Sallis’ Pyramid, imperial and national triumph is demonstrated by placing the British Empire, helmed by Queen Victoria, at the top of a pyramid, at the climactic pinnacle of history, capping thousands of years of human struggle and advancement. This effectively establishes a visual hierarchy and imperial certitude for young players before a single teetotum is spun or a piece placed on the board. Though Pyramid focused on the path from the past to the present, where Britain sat with assurance at the almost-peak, other games turned purposefully toward the future, laying plans in the present for how to reach it, as I discuss in the next section, “From the Ranks to Commander in Chief: Turn-of-the-century roots of war-based games.” In this section, I analyze From the Ranks to Commander-in-Chief [c. 1901–1904], an early artifact showing the shift from games like Pyramid, which offered a topic-based look back at historical battles of the past, to games that lay a foundation for aspirational vocational training in a military career. This sets up the following section, “Collaborative and Competitive: the new life of contemporary games,” which applies game theory insights to collaborative, educational games as well as competitive militaristic games, such as Call of Duty and Fortnite. The final section, “Empire’s afterlife: from nation to corporation,” identifies how the afterlife of the term “empire” has been uncoupled from nations and mobilized increasingly in games to identify multinational corporations with far-reaching brands. In many ways, consumerism and capitalism are the new imperialism.

Finding the “Right” Side of History: The View from the Pinnacle in William Sallis’ Pyramid of History [post 1851] William Sallis (1782–1865) was a publisher of board and card games, such as Dioramic game of the overland route to India [c. 1852], as well as puzzles and curiosities. With lithographer Thomas (T.H.) Jones, Sallis

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published the New Tee-To-Tum Game: The Pyramid of History [post 1851]1 and other games. Pyramid was about 18 inches long, printed on paper, divided, and mounted on linen for easy folding and storage. Game histories by Ernst Strouhal and F.R.B. Whitehouse mention the game, but very few copies have survived (Figure 5.1).2 In the game, Sallis uses a pyramid shape to record all world history in just 34 spaces.3 At its wide base is the biblical creation narrative, and players proceed upward through blocks depicting the flood, the conquest of Babylon, the birth of Christ, the discovery of America, and revolutions in Europe. At the peak of the pyramid, and presumably the end of history, are Queen Victoria and the Royal Family.4 Sallis selects the specific architectural form of the pyramid to contain history instead of the alternatives: a natural form like a mountain, a data heuristic like a table, or a recognizably English architectural form like Nelson’s Column, St. Paul’s dome, or even the Crystal Palace.5 These recognizable reference points would have been suitable containers of the historical record. The pyramid is not a British architectural form, nor was it adopted and reproduced on a mass scale, unlike (in another context) the culinary appropriation of curry dishes from India, for example. The pyramid belongs most recognizably to the Egyptian empire (though Central American peoples such as the Maya also built in a similar form), with which Britain did not have a straightforward colonial relationship, unlike the ones established over Ireland, India, Canada, South Africa, or the West Indies.6 Part of the Victorian fascination with Egypt and its artifacts7 was driven by the exoticism of this faraway country of palm-studdded deserts, whose ruins offered an Ozymandian lure. Sallis invites this parallel through his chosen shape and his parsing of time and territory on either side of it. On either side of the pyramid, labels guide the player to read from left to right across its peak, from “The Past” on the left side to “The Present” on the right. This temporal-spatial map reflects the flow of reading text in the West, and it also locates the eastern world, represented by Egypt, in the past, in contrast to the London scene that embodies the present. The quick visual comparison between “Past” and “Present” occurs through a display of cityscapes, architecture, and transportation networks, overseen by a military presence. “The Past” features a walled circular city surrounded by camps, overshadowed by the grand architecture of the pyramids and featuring the transportation networks of camel caravans and oared ships approaching the shore. There are agrarian scenes, overseen by Roman soldiers (another empire of the past). By contrast, “The Present” is a more developed urban space bordered by cultivated fields, featuring neatly arranged streets, green squares, and homes, summited by recognizable architecture, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Nelson’s Column,8 and the Crystal Palace. These landmarks set up a visual correspondence with the pyramid architecture of the “Past” Egyptian Empire, and they are presented within a bustling infrastructure. On the streets and waterways

Figure 5.1 William Sallis’ The New Game of Tee-to-Tum; or, Pyramid of History, wide shot Credit line: Collection City of Rambouillet, Pierre Dietsch background.

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Figure 5.2 Sallis’ Pyramid detail: top half of the game Credit line: Collection City of Rambouillet, Pierre Dietsch background

around these landmarks, a busy transportation network buzzes with coaches, wagons, ships, and trains, proceeding over and under bridges. Compared to the active Romans, only a single British soldier reviews the scene, evidence perhaps that the British do not require quite as much forceful intervention, and that economic prosperity, as well as its other qualitative exports, such as Christianity, education, and the legal system, ensures their security. The shape of history plotted here creates a privileged position for the British, not only at the top of the pyramid itself but also in the flanking move with the “Past” and “Present.” The left- and right-sided placement of these headings suggests that the “Past” has been read and its day is finished, whereas the “Present” moves toward the future (in a book, this would be the opening page, the threshold).9 Sallis’ pyramid bears out the way “Past” and “Present” inform, imply, and co-exist with one another on the space of the game board. The story of the past is necessary for Sallis to present his claim of British greatness, yet it also acknowledges that the Empire is not unprecedented and that British children are looking to a past empire for a shape to contain their own historical narrative. The pyramid in the middle both separates and binds the “Past” and “Present,” offering the possibility that the British imperium may be the present version of this past empire. Sallis’ self-reflexivity about the passage of empires is consistent with authors of children’s geography books on Egypt, who also note the parallels between empires of the past and present, evoking the ruins of ancient empires as sources of fascination and humbling reminders of mortality.10

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From the vantage point at the top of Sallis’ pyramid, the dominant narratives that emerge are scenes from the Bible (15 of them at the broad base, from Creation to the departure from Egypt), military conquest or combat (ten scenes), shipping and commerce or colonization (four scenes), and discovery (two scenes featuring America and the South Seas). The rest of Europe figures in only five scenes: Peter the Great issues orders in the only scene of European prosperity (Pyramid 27); for France, only the destruction of the Bastille and the Battle of Waterloo (30–31) are included; and the conquest (?) or unrest (?) of Ireland (22) is balanced by “Europe 1848,” the year of revolutions, featuring soldiers and civilians in conflict (33). Sallis’ game layout and design make it clear that history is a British story, following the nation through eight rows in its conquest, colonization, discovery, and commerce, finally crowning its success, as represented by its Royal Family, at the top of the pyramid. The first row of seven panels offers a broad biblical base, with scenes from Genesis through Exodus, to provide the foundation for all of world history (even though the pyramid that contains them may have been seen as evidence of pagan beliefs).11 It was not unusual for a children’s text to ground world history or geography in a deliberately Christian context.12 What is more striking is that a secular Royal Family occupies the apex, instead of an event like Christ’s resurrection. The next four rows continue to mark religious events, such as Christ’s birth and death and the rise of the prophet Mahomet, and scenes of battle and conflict. The fifth and sixth rows focus on colonization and discovery in the Americas and South Seas. Imperial discovery and colonization are the theme of the fifth row. The first panel features the discovery of America from the perspective of a large ship at sail, with figures pointing at a faint smudge of land (Pyramid 25). Players view America through a colonialist frame; if it were reversed, it could show the view of the ships sailing into a forested harbor, with indigenous peoples looking outward. Recognizing the game’s deliberate framing reveals its perspective; why the choice may have been made is important in understanding the shape that history takes and the particular narratives that shape endorses. Following an inset image of a ship in peril (26), the row finishes with a panel featuring Peter the Great issuing orders from horseback in a busy port town (27). Known for helping Russia industrialize and build a strong navy, Peter’s own foundation for these activities was established in childhood play with a model fortress. Like Peter, players of Sallis’ game could also learn from gameplay. The panel, set beside the discovery of America and another sailing ship, reinforces the importance of naval might across the period from Columbus’ 1492 voyage to America to Peter’s eighteenth-century navy. Continuing the theme of discovery, colonization, and commerce, the sixth row features two panels with an inset ship.13 The row features Captain Cook’s “South Sea Discoveries” in an image featuring a longboat of British soldiers about to land on an unspecified shore (Pyramid 28).

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Unlike the “America discovered” panel in the previous row, here the perspective is reversed—from the land looking out to sea at the incoming longboat and the larger ship.14 Sallis’ reversal is remarkable given Cook’s death at the hands of indigenous people. This row locates us deliberately in time with specific eighteenth-century events. Captain Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific, resulting in the exploration of Australia and New Zealand, occurred between 1768 and 1779. The Bastille fell in July 1789. This means that time is getting compressed in the sixth row, proceeding more slowly than in earlier rows. For instance, in the first row, there is over a 100-year gap between most of the panels, from Creation to the Ark of the Covenant, in contrast to the sixth row, which has only a ten-year break between panels. This compression continues in the seventh row, which has only two panels and an inset image. Players move in space and time from 1815 to 1848 across only 33 years, implying that the events closest to the present have more weight and are the most important. The seventh row juxtaposes a British triumph on the world stage with a Europe torn by internal strife. The first panel in this row depicts “Waterloo” with a man on horseback leading British soldiers (Pyramid 31), and the other is “Europe 1848,” a year that revolutions in Sicily and France sparked similar movements through Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, and the Austrian Empire. The panel features soldiers in red attacking those in blue coats, and also soldiers attacking what look like civilians (33). In Britain, these conflicts amounted to a Chartist demonstration and agitation in Ireland, but they never fomented to the degree that the rest of Europe did. Since it was often the case in these games that particular spaces required players to go backward, for reasons keyed to a specific historical event that set back the Empire, the same principle may be operating here. Which spaces could have kicked players back to the past? Depending on how Sallis read the European revolutions, they could either be seen as turning points pushing the player back to the past to correct the excesses (either of the revolutionaries or the monarchists) or more positively as propelling players forward through needed reforms to align Europe with Britain. It depends on what role Sallis saw the revolutions playing in the historical narrative of progress his game mapped. Even without the rulebook, it is clear that the British monarchy is curiously exempt from any question of critique, thanks to its triumphant placement at the almost-apex of the game. The eighth and final row features only a single panel depicting Queen Victoria surrounded by five of her children, with Albert at her side (Figure 5.2).15 As a wife, mother, and sovereign, her (re)productive capacity fills the top of the pyramid. The smallest tip of the pyramid is cut off beyond the edge of the game board, suggesting that history may have a fraction of space-time left before proceeding straight up. As this shape of history indicates, players consumed a vision of their empire positioned at a triumphant place in the historical record. History is a singular route to

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the present, starred by biblical events and often managed by great men who must use force to proceed. The present is built on top of that past and informed by it. Through the gameplay, young Britons are rewarded for learning this story, for recalling it, and for moving through it quickly to arrive at the present moment, where they receive their rewards. From that present moment, their view of the past, with its vanished empires and Christian milestones, affords them a wide perspective over all history, establishing Britain’s place in this story. When real travelers ascended a pyramid, helped in no small measure by their local guides, they could enjoy a similar commanding view, surveying and laying claim with those “imperial eyes” of Pratt’s designation. John MacKenzie refers to this impulse as “the textbook vision of the Victorian age as the great moral climax of human history, in which British imperial power constituted ‘the end of history,’ a grand plateau to be defended against the new aggressors (rival European empires) toiling dangerously up the foothills” (181–182). From the top of Sallis’ pyramid, players would have presumably taken a pool of rewards, looking down on their rivals’ progress and glancing at “The Past” and “The Present” from this vantage point. For real travelers to Egypt, this may have led to a formal means of laying claim, like the traveler in Priscilla Wakefield’s geography narrative who “engrav[ed] my name on the pinnacle of the pyramid” (Traveller in Africa 82). In Sallis’ game, the pyramid’s pinnacle is already inscribed with the image of the Royal Family, who lay claim to this vantage point. Their inscribed image claims the past for the present and for the future beyond the edge of the board. Sallis’ appropriation of the pyramid to contain history provides a rich symbol as well as an evocative form.16 For the ancient Egyptians who built them, pyramids did contain history in the painted reliefs and cartouches on the inner walls that told the stories of the pharaoh’s life. As well, in containing the royal body, the pyramids were designed both as tombs and as gateways to the afterlife. Just as Sallis has positioned his pyramid between “Past” and “Present,” real pyramids contain the past (the pharaoh’s worldly goods, including amulets, statues, and jewels) and push toward the future (his afterlife). Since they were filled with the pharaoh’s earthly treasures, pyramids were designed to thwart tomb robbers. These structures are non-linear mazes, incorporating false doors that lead nowhere, secret chambers, and booby traps like deep pits, all designed to keep the tombs undefiled.17 Sallis’ choice to appropriate this model as a gamed space offers players a dubious position either as tomb robbers raiding the past or as disinterested archeologists reclaiming the past, ordering and organizing it as a way to claim it. The line between raider and trained professional was blurry at best, as represented by Giovanni Belzoni, an early pyramid explorer. While some praised his efforts,18 others like Priscilla Wakefield characterized it more harshly: “This sanctuary has been violated: curiosity, or the

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hope of finding treasure, seems the only motive for attempting such a laborious and expensive undertaking” (Traveller in Africa 82). Imputing curiosity or greed for treasure as the “only motive” for penetrating the pyramids, Wakefield lumps tomb robbers and archeologists together as “violat[ers]” of this sanctuary. In Sallis’ Pyramid, where history is the treasure inside, rather than material goods, players approach the past as both tomb and treasure hoard, learning from it, ordering it, and understanding it, so it makes sense that they are climbing upward, rather than inward, looking for a secret chamber to plunder. Their goal is to scale the pyramid, rather than plumb its depths. Players get a 34-space gloss of world history along a predetermined, linear, deliberate route. Unlike a real pyramid, their path is not labyrinthine with many possible paths. It simply winds around and proceeds steadily upward. This shows that though history is contained in the form of a pyramid, the inside takes on a specifically determined British ordering. Furthermore, unlike the actual pyramids, the treasure is not deep within a secret chamber, but at the top of the pyramid, where players can enjoy the achievement of their position, standing on the past. When gaming history across and up the pyramid, players follow in the footsteps of travelers, rather than tomb robbers, since the goal is not to penetrate the pyramid at its center (for this, Sallis could have used a spiral track) but to ascend to the top and gain this grand vantage point. Though the imperial glory of this vanished empire cannot be restored to Egypt in the present, its ruins may signal to Victorians that the idea of empire can be restored to the world. They, who could contemplate the treasures of Egypt and Assyria in the galleries of the British Museum or in the obelisk on the Embankment, are the inheritors of this tradition.19 Sallis’ invocation of the pyramid unites the Egyptian empire with the pinnacle featuring the Victorian Royal Family. That this era saw itself at any kind of a pinnacle is quite telling. The alternative would be to see the present moment as a rocky escarpment from which travelers would continue to rise, fall, or plateau, or to depict the peak upon which one stands as part of a range including other peaks representative of the Greek, Mayan, Roman, and Egyptian empires. To depict history within one pyramid means that it is a singular narrative culminating in the present. All of history must have seemed a long climb toward the present moment. The responsibility at that moment would have been to avoid lapsing, to keep toiling upward toward the goal, just in sight but tantalizingly out of reach. With the very edge of the pyramid tantalizingly out of sight, this may indicate, to borrow McDonald’s description of history appropriated by imperialism, that “the last chapter of the nation’s story was now world dominion” (51). The unfinished pyramid reflects the flawed artist’s philosophy in Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” (ll. 97–98). To reach beyond one’s grasp is to push toward greatness, up the sides of mountains, toward the

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Northwest Passage or the South Pole, and to struggle to perfect a system of imperial governance that is just and equitable.

From the Ranks to Commander in Chief: Turn-of-theCentury Roots of War-Based Games Games have always reflected their cultural moment—the movements of ships across the face of the map for commerce or conflict—and from mid-century onward, games include increasingly militaristic games based on particular military campaigns or engagements, such as France and Austria a new game [c. 1840]; Russia vs Turkey [c. 1850]; The Siege of Delhi (Dean & Son, after 1857); and Siege of Sebastopol [c. 1870]. As the century wears on, the topics shift from a historical representation of battles long finished to gaming out a potential vocational path through combat. This happens in games tracing the careers of specific officers, such as New Game of Wellington’s Victories [post 1855], or in following a prospective career path for aspiring young officers, as seen in From the Ranks to Commander in Chief [c. 1901–1904] and The Young Riflemen [n.d.]. While Wellington’s Victories looks back to the past Napoleonic Wars, From the Ranks and The Young Riflemen, in contrast, offer players a vocational look at military life, showing both its dangers and rewards. The Young Riflemen is a dissected puzzle featuring scenes of military drilling and parading, depicting young children in the character of soldiers. From the Ranks essentially takes the same approach, but it tracks a step-by-step course through which a player enlists, serves, and climbs the ranks to a lofty, glorious role in the British military. From the Ranks to Commander in Chief a handsome board together with 51 figures correct representations of the different ranks in each branch of the military service, comprising quite a diminutive British army [c. 1901–1904] offers a pathway from civilian life to the top of the military command (Figure 5.3). Enshrined at the center of the game is a banner bearing the title From the Ranks to Commander-in-Chief, with gilded portraits of the most recent commanders—Duke of Cambridge (1887–1895), Earl Roberts (1901–1904), and Viscount Garnet Wolseley (1895–1901)—flanked by flags and cannons, with swords and sharp points of bayonets bristling out behind the title above. Roberts was probably in the center because he was the current or last commander when the game was published.20 Under these commanders, one can see the reach of imperial power across the world. The various places where they served read like a catalogue of imperial interests: from India to Africa, China, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Canada, and also the colonial outposts where they were born (Wolseley in Ireland and Roberts in India). From 1887 to 1904, they moved the armed forces across the Empire and oversaw the advancement of officers within their forces.21

Figure 5.3 From the Ranks to Commander-in-Chief, wide shot Credit line: Published with permission of Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library

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To obtain the lofty position of commander in chief, players must traverse 101 spaces, arranged in three columns, with partial rows at the top and bottom where the track winds around. The number of spaces here (in contrast to the 34 Pyramid spaces for all of world history) indicates that rising to commander is a long, ambitious path with many steps. These include spaces offering opportunities for promotion (14 spaces) and commendation (five spaces) as well as enforced stasis through missed turns (four spaces) and forced retrograde motion backward (five spaces). The player who achieves commander rank first wins the game, but that win is not always certain. The end of the game offers different end possibilities, ranging from retirement (97) to the commander rank (100) and death (101). With 63 blank spaces distributed across the board, but no more than five in a row, each roll would take players forward, probably with a new promotion or missed turn on every roll or at least every other roll. Promotions and commendations together occupy almost five times as many spaces as either missed turns or backward motion, suggesting that the game is predicated on steady, swift movement up the ranks. Players must also demonstrate commitment to the military life. At the start, the player must throw a three before he or she can embark on the game. This would probably have taken more than one roll, giving players a chance to strengthen their commitment to their course, much as the soldier in the accompanying image had to do when parting from his family. The image features a soldier taking leave of a woman (possibly his mother or his wife) at an English cottage. On this space, players also elect to be a Sapper with the Engineers, a Gunner with the Artillery, a Trooper with the Cavalry, or a Private with the Infantry. Since the ranks and the track on the board are unaffected by this choice, its purpose is to encourage players to research and imagine themselves in these various roles. This finely parsed choice about military life suggests that this gameplay is no idle recreation, but a carefully mapped career route along which players must thoughtfully select their preferences and play out their hopes. The game follows a typical military career for a commander. Wolseley, for example, was wounded in the second Burmese War in 1853, was mentioned in dispatches, and received a medal and promotion. In the 1870s, after his service in Canada, he received the KCB honor. These are all spaces represented on the game board, interspersed with a series of ranked promotions.22 To achieve promotions, players are encouraged to take risks in battle. In the sequence of the game, players are rewarded first for training (From the Ranks 12, 16), then in the middle section for action (25, 38, 48), and then in mid to late career for a long tradition of service (57). Since there are three spaces for action distributed in the first quarter of the game, players would probably not have risen through the ranks, and certainly not swiftly, without combat. Promotions are awarded for “Smartness

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in Drills & Exceptional Conduct” (12), “Proficiency in Shooting” (16), being “Mentioned in Despatches [sic]” (25), “Conspicuous Bravery in Action” (25), and “Long and Efficient Service” (57), more than halfway through the game. Steady, efficient service does not permit a player to rise as quickly as when he “Leads his men, assaulting and taking an almost impregnable position at the point of the bayonet. Promoted 2 Ranks” (38). Players who perform “A Gallant Act. Saves Colonel’s life at very great risk” receive the Victoria Cross and a promotion (48), thus preserving the chain of command and a respect for rank. When considered in a real-time context, this combat focus is sobering. Many of the turn-of-the-century child players of this game who eagerly moved their pieces along this game board would come of age, and ten years later would serve in the trenches of World War I, where they would wager their lives, rather than counters. While the game hints at some of the brutal realities of war by reserving spaces for being wounded or taken prisoner, it in no way prepares players for trench warfare. Though cheerfully brisk in its pace of promotion and the glory promised to the jeunesse dorée, the game is now an artifact haunted by the real future in store for these child players.23 As represented in From the Ranks, military life introduces other physical risks as well. Players endure forced stasis for illness and wounds as well as being taken prisoner. These very real risks for a mid-career combat soldier are distributed across the board from spaces 33 to 55. Wounded players must “Retire to Hospital (From the Ranks 33) and miss 2 turns” (46). The seriousness of wounds means missing two turns; the added emphasis here beyond a single missed turn suggests that a bad wound forces a player onto the sidelines, creating anxiety as others pass him by. Being wounded removes a player’s agency, though there is an endpoint in sight, knowing that only two turns are missed. Imprisoned players, on the other hand, lose their agency to a greater degree (perhaps a penalty for allowing oneself to be taken prisoner, rather than being wounded while trying to escape). When taken prisoner, players “Remain here until a comrade occupies same square or until player shakes 6, when he is liberated and goes forward next turn” (55). Other players cannot rescue or redeem fellow players from prison with a forfeit (only take their places, and not by their own choice). This means that prison is essentially the imprisoned soldier’s problem. Backward motion in three out of five spaces focuses on conduct (disorderly conduct, incompetence, and misconduct), with only one space for those wavering about enlisting and one space to acknowledge the trials of losing a mount in battle. These spaces of required retrograde motion are distributed across the board at spaces 7, 25, 80, 85, and 92, giving the impression that military life is prone to at least one setback in the course of the game, particularly in the final stage of advancement.

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Forced retrograde or backward motion is a risk early in the game when friends question the player’s career choice. On space 7, players may be “Bought out by friends. Go back HOME and Enlist again when throw, 3” (From the Ranks). Not only do players go backward, but they are also forced to roll correctly in order to advance again. This models for players how to display discipline and precision as well as steadfast commitment when choosing a military life. Missteps in a soldier’s life, such as disorderly conflict, also lead to backward movement: “Next 2 throws move Backward towards 1, taking no notice of promotions—only penalties” (25, also 85). Late in career, players may still risk facing a court martial for “Incompetence,” where, depending on the roll of the dice, they may be reduced four ranks (80). The dice offer an illusion of agency, but the player’s fate depends on luck. Beyond incompetence and misconduct, a player also moves back if his charger is killed and he must go back for another (92). This dramatic setback of 30 spaces shows that even in an advanced career stage, a player’s progress can still be affected by what happens on the battlefield. The rewards in the game are varied and not necessarily all based on promotion, though late-career promotions often accompany the honor of “an Audience with His Majesty” (From the Ranks 87). Players welcomed home from active service may receive “Freedom of City of London. Have another Turn” (77) or may advance and be “Made a Peer [. . .] Go to 98” (96). Promotions are thus associated with forward movement in the ranks as well as in the game and are sometimes linked to public recognition, medals, royal honors, and monetary compensation on one space (limiting it to one space suggests that glory overshadows lucre). Victory in the game requires rolling an exact number to arrive at space 100, “COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF” (From the Ranks). Yet sometimes players land on retirement with a pension or death. In these cases, if no other player gets to commander in chief, the one with the highest rank wins the game, thus alerting players that “winning” is not necessarily predicated on achieving the commander rank. High rank, acquired through risk in battle and steadfast commitment to the military life, can still lead to honors, victory, and financial security as well as concrete victory in the game. The endpoint is less important than the journey; military service is rewarding in both retirement and at the commander rank, and even in death, players may still win the game. Winning the game in death had real-life analogues: in Westminster Abbey’s map of burials, for example, there are four pages listing soldiers and sailors buried in that hallowed ground, including Field Marshals Sir George Pollock and Edmund Allenby (“Famous people”). Their victory is their place in the historical record, becoming part of the long, unfolding narrative of British imperial advancement, a tradition dating back to Sallis’ Pyramid in the 1850s.

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Collaborative and Competitive: The New Life of Contemporary Games In the twenty-first century, games are no longer used exclusively to look backward to historic events or forward to plot a military future, but instead they increasingly offer ways to explore situations and problemsolve in the present moment. Research into the meaning and purpose of games and how they achieve their ends is ongoing. A quick scan of Academic Search Premier reveals that game-based research covers topics as wide ranging as using games to prevent dementia, teach math, and establish gender roles. On the open web, the search reveals a trend among nonprofit social agencies using games to promote peaceful solutions to conflict resolution, to educate players about diplomacy, and to raise awareness about climate change. Though predicated on future outcomes, they are present-focused, like the United Nations’ game The Road to Peace, developed to help Afghani children understand the peace and reconstruction processes. Created for 10- to 14-year-olds, it has been distributed “to war-affected children, former child soldiers, underprivileged children, and refugee families,” encompassing the signing of the Bonn Agreement, the Emergency and Constitutional Loya Jirgas, and the elections, as well as social issues, such as health, education, and the environment (press briefing). According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the Office of Communications and Public Information (OCPI) has published and distributed over 10,000 copies of the board game in the Dari and Pashto languages (press briefing). Games have also become an accessible way to explain complex ideas like climate change. Developed by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Keep Cool game shows the impact of local choices on the rise of global temperatures. The player who “most effectively reconciles climate protection with special interests” wins the game (“Success”). In pursuit of this goal, players need to play cooperatively and collaboratively. The instructions caution “If some players are too ruthless, everybody loses” (“Success”). Developed by a physicist and a mathematician, the German-English game sold out in four months and went into a second edition. The Potsdam Institute notes in a press release that “Keep Cool has been used at schools, universities and environmental groups, and by families and the general public new to thinking about climate change. [.  .  .] A simulation and gaming version is now part of teaching material available from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU)” (“Success”). This game is an example of how recreational channels continue to be appropriated for educational purposes. The current trend of “gamification” in educational circles seems new, but it is really the spoonful-of-sugar didacticism of the early games.

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Likewise, Marin County’s Game of Floods uses a gaming format to alert the public to the problems of sea level rise. Yale’s Climate Connections newsletter describes the game’s premise: “Imagine it’s the year 2050, and you’re the city planner of an island that’s threatened by sealevel rise and storms. That’s the scenario in ‘Game of Floods,’ a board game in which students and community members confront these real climate change risks” (Ward, Bud). Crafted by Alex Westhoff with the Marin County Community Development Agency, the game offers the more than 1000 people who have played it an opportunity to “decide how to protect the island from random floods and ever-rising sea levels” using strategies like relocating roads out of wetlands or protecting shorelines with seawalls. “For every choice, there are costs—some financial, some social, and some environmental” (Ward). Westhoff explains that it was “intended to teach people about what the different strategies are, in a way that’s engaging and fun,” and he is “particularly excited about bringing it to schools as we feel that it’s critical that the youth of today understand this challenge that they’re faced with” (Ward). Since many of the world’s most vulnerable populations are threatened by rising seas on small island chains outside the industrialized world, by placing the child player in the role of an islander, the game reverses the subject position of earlier Victorian games that positioned players as imperial agents. Players from industrialized, English-speaking nations are asked to assume the role of an islander to solve problems that their own nations have created. In doing so, they may think carefully about the postcolonial flow of power, influence, and resources. The politicization of an issue like climate change shows the need for international diplomacy, a skill promoted in Churchill (GMT, 2015 and 2017, winner of the “Golden Geek” Award). Revisiting past wars, the game lets players game-out different strategies to win armed conflicts and to inform them in navigating the current political climate. In his review of the game, defense writer Michael Peck observes, “The ultimate lesson of Churchill is that diplomacy matters. [. . .] To defeat the Axis, the Allies must work together. America, Russia, and Britain will win some issues at the conference table, and lose others” (“Winning”). He then draws a connection with real-time politics on the global stage by noting, “Under the Trump administration, the U.S. State Department is losing seasoned diplomats. In fact, diplomacy and alliance-building seem to have lost ground to belligerent tweets and unilateral actions. But as Churchill the man and Churchill the game would agree, this is no strategy for victory” (Peck). As with the imperial games, understanding this one requires knowledge of its contemporary social and political context as well as how it represents the march of history, its conflicts, and its leaders to understand the part it plays in telling the national story. The recuperation of Churchill’s legacy is meaningful for the way the past is made to matter in the present.

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Despite the continuity of the gaming tradition in our own postcolonial era, much like children’s literature, games have traditionally been seen as trivial pursuits unworthy of critical analysis. While there have been historical glosses and psychological studies, especially of games such as chess and Parcheesi, little scholarship has analyzed games from an ideological standpoint.24 Since the 1970s, however, fields of study for both children’s literature and games have erupted, and the importance of games as objects of critical interest has grown along with a parallel interest in children’s material culture studies. The heady study of game theory emerged from the disciplines of mathematics and computer science but has been increasingly applied to social and political sciences. Game theory is not just about games, but the “strategies we use every day in our interactions with other people” (Fisher 1). Applications for game theory have been used to study patterns of investments and finances, the electoral college, the incentive to gamble, and the use of military force. The stakes for this research are high: all five Nobel Prize–winning game theorists have been Pentagon advisors at some point (Fisher 2). This establishes a clear link between the play of games and the pursuit of international politics. A classic precedent of the idea that games offer insight into players’ priorities and biases, and that these findings can affect our larger social order, occurs in the “Tragedy of the Commons” example used by California ecologist and game theorist Garrett Hardin in 1968. Hardin uses the commons—historically, the shared lands for grazing small herds—as a gaming model by suggesting a scenario in which one herder adds an extra animal. How do other players respond? The addition of one animal does not affect the overall grazing capacity too much, but the real problem— what Len Fisher calls the “destructive power”—occurs when all the other herders start thinking the same way and all add multiple extra animals. The result is that overgrazing destroys the commons (3). Fisher explains that the decisions the herders make depend on how they see themselves: if they view themselves as members of a cooperative group, they will make choices to reflect this. However, if they perceive themselves as individual competitors, “each trying to do the best for themselves even if it is at the expense of others” (Fisher 59), they will each seek to gain the advantage of adding an extra animal, and in the end, the whole community is worse off when the commons are overgrazed. The Tragedy of the Commons shows that when players act for individual gain without considering the common good, everyone’s game suffers. Game theory provides models like this to discover what we can learn about human behavior and attitude toward risk and reward in the real game of life. Research has also suggested that the success people have in a game influences their attitude toward risk in the next iteration of gameplay (Davis 71). In other words, game interactions are cumulative: the more they play, the more players fine-tune their strategy. For the cooperative games, this may mean that they take what they learn and use it to

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communicate and collaborate more effectively with their fellow players, gaining knowledge, building consensus, and prioritizing. For the competitive games, this may mean that players learn how to merrily bankrupt one another or to remove emotional responses from their pursuit of ambition. Little research has been done to extrapolate how gameplay of particular games influences the cultivation of players’ risk-and-reward strategies and the play of competitive and collaborative impulses beyond the board. For example, do enthusiastic Monopoly players grow up to become ardent capitalists? To some degree, that has been the active speculation of this project in considering the role that nineteenth-century games played in fostering imperial ideologies. It has not been possible to reconstruct a roster of the purchasers of a game like Betts’ A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions to gauge which child players went on to become civil servants, East India agents, merchants, or ship captains. Yet because of the games’ price point and the smallness of the British mid-century middle class, it is clear that they must have sold briskly to justify the number being produced (suggested in the Appendix chart). Knowing that the games sold well to this small class, who exerted a powerful influence on the British imperial story across the century, does offer a sense of the “afterlife” of these games. Considering the “afterlife” of imperial board games and the ideologies they fostered means taking a hard look at popular games today to investigate what political or capitalist messages they endorse, as my students did in the example that opens this chapter. Beyond the peaceful function of these games, they also play a role as recruitment tools or testing grounds for strategic operations. They have entered the cultural imagination to proffer methodologies for experiencing war and conflict in an increasingly realistic way. Desert Storm, Edward Said recalls, looked like “a painless Nintendo exercise, and the image of Americans as virtuous, clean warriors” (Culture and Imperialism 301). When war itself looks like a game, it hints that games are doing an effective job preparing players for these scenarios. A recent example is when Sam Machkovech reported in Ars Technica that at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in 2017, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) revealed “one of its weirdest training exercises: a series of globe-trotting, espionage-filled board games” (Machkovech). A series of Freedom of Information requests led to the release of documentation, design, and rules for the CIA’s Collection Deck and Kingpin: The Hunt for El Chapo. Machkovech likens Collection Deck to the popular Pandemic, in which players collaborate to take action on a growing crisis; Kingpin, on the other hand, “divides players into two teams: one runs El Chapo’s cartel, and the other hunts for him” (Machkovech). The two games, taken together, offer both collaborative and competitive modes of play and interaction. Machkovech contends that “these documents include enough rules and materials to help budding CIA officers print and play their own versions” (Machkovech). By

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introducing these military spy games at a recreational gaming conference, the CIA may have been positioning the game as a recruitment tool or using the venue as an opportunity to gain user feedback by learning what strategies players employed to win. In either case, the game itself is explicitly an apparatus of the state designed to further political and military ends. Though none of the board games in this study were official instruments of the Crown or Parliament, the games nonetheless unofficially explore the possibilities for child subjects to participate in imperial work. Though the games studied here have a mid-century focus, they are not limited to a mid-century influence. Long after they were folded, packed away, and donated to special collections, the industry these games created continued to flourish and evolve in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries into its contemporary digital and video form. Contemporary games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite have raised concerns about violence and the degree to which they train children as soldiers in digital combat. The Call of Duty franchise is a first-person shooter game putting the player into combat in scenarios as varied as shooting zombies or becoming a soldier in the Roman Wars, World War II, Vietnam or contemporary combat scenarios. It has been enormously successful, enjoying its seventh year as the top franchise in North America in 2015, and its parent company, Activision Blizzard, which also handles the World of Warcraft and Candy Crush franchises, announced GAAP net revenues of $1.35 billion in 2015. Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick projects that with recent acquisitions, “we will have the largest game network in the world, with over 500 million users playing our games every month” (“Activision”). This is a scale far beyond the reach of nineteenth-century printers in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and it should give scholars pause to consider the farreaching implications of the kinds of narratives produced by the games and absorbed by the players. One such controversial narrative undergirds Epic Games’ Fortnite: Battle Royale. The game takes its title and inspiration from the Japanese dystopian novel Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami, later adapted into a violent film by the same name. The premise of the game is a decree mandating that a group of schoolchildren be sent to an island, where they will be forced to kill one another until the final survivor is declared the Victor Royale. Fortnite players can team up in real time, and as critic Will Gompertz declares, “The combination of Super Mario’s friendly visual language, together with the excitement of a competitive multi-player winnertakes-all eSport, is a compelling proposition” (Gompertz). Its appeal rests in its bright, cheery cartoon graphics, absurd costume possibilities (dinosaur suit, anyone?), and dance breaks, as well as the capability to form teams with friends; plus, it is free to download on a variety of platforms, with built-in tiers that players can pay to access. Of notable interest for game theory, in its original release, Fortnite: Save the World (July 2017)

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began as a cooperative survival game set in a zombie apocalypse. Players collaborated to build shelters and defend themselves against the zombie onslaught. In his review for The Guardian, Keith Stuart contends that Fortnite was revised following the success of another game, Player Unknown’s Battleground, later that year. Player Unknown featured a scenario in which 100 players battled to the death, thereby inspiring Epic’s revised Fortnite: Battle Royale, which Stuart dubs “Call of Duty for kids” (Stuart). The phenomenal success of this version, played by 40 million people worldwide, indicates that extreme competition, rather than collaboration, has proven to be a more attractive model of engagement. As Morton Davis details in his game theory research, players’ strategies result in rewards or punishments, the game’s payoff. He conjectures, “Because everyone’s strategy affects the outcome, a player must worry about what everyone else does and knows that everyone else is worrying about him or her” (Davis 6). The form this “worry” takes in Fortnite is not just how to anticipate and outwit one’s fellow players, but how to anticipate and then eliminate one’s fellow players. In this model, players are no longer playing against the game through the spin of the teetotum or enforced retrograde motion, but they are playing against one another. Though it has been compared to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series, Fortnite’s scenario lacks the novels’ central narrative voice, which offers a steady moral compass critiquing the Games, and even readers’ engagement with these staged events through a clever indictment of characters who view the Games. After surviving the Games, Katniss meets with her prep team and silently notices how they rave about the excitement in the game, which means something very different to her and has resulted in a scarring emotional trauma that continues to unfold over the series. In the novel, participation in the Games—and then later resistance to them—leads to actual war. As Collins herself has said, “I don’t write about adolescents. I write about war for adolescents” (Armistead). Her series begins with an indictment of systems of oppression, and by the third novel, this comes to include the manipulation of mass communication as well as the instruments of war deployed by the military-industrial complex. Readers see these machinations through the clear-eyed vision of the protagonist, who struggles with her role. Is she a pawn or an agent in these larger games? The question suggested to readers of the novels as well as viewers of the film franchise is whether they are similarly aware of the larger structures that create oppressive or liberating frameworks around their experience. What is the afterlife of such gameplay? How might the expendability of rivals through cartoonish violence influence players’ perceptions of others and their capacity for empathy, collaboration, and cooperation? The view that childhood gaming hobbies may either expose systems of oppression and liberation or simply lead to the hardening of ideologies does not arise with the digital gaming industry or with Collins’ novel,

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but has its roots in much earlier precedents in the mid-century games examined in this study. In the intervening time period, as the engines of war warmed for World War I, an increasingly militaristic, present-focused approach to the Great Game of Empire emerged, moving deliberately away from a historical, abstract, or philosophical perspective on past events. Players shift from the view at the top of the pyramid to the perspective of trench warfare, seen through barbed wire, to a cityscape seen through night vision goggles in first-person shooter games. The apparatus focusing their vision has changed in these games, but they are methodologically and theoretically linked as part of the same unfolding story, and they are marketed to the same middle-class audience with an expendable income. The quick look I have offered here at From the Ranks as an artifact of increasing militarism in games published in the early twentieth century reveals an ongoing concern over how to prepare children for the strategies of war. Just as Baden-Powell’s turn-of-the-century Boy Scouts organization prepared young Scouts for the physical stresses of camping out, marching, and surviving in the wilderness, so, too, did these games play their part in intellectually and emotionally preparing child players to plot their path against rivals, whoever they were.

Empire’s Afterlife: From Nation to Corporation As the foregoing discussion about the origins and afterlife of imperial games indicates, gameplay is serious business with real-world implications, and no one was more aware of this than nineteenth-century game makers, from John and Edward Wallis to John Betts, Henry Smith Evans, William Spooner, E. and M.A. Ogilvy, and William Sallis. The games they produced through mid-century laid the foundations for the high imperial period and games such as From the Ranks by cultivating an imperial mindset in players. These games normalized the work of empire, representing it in positive terms and positioning it at the top of a great historical pyramid. Players who joined this enterprise would enjoy the view too, having learned the practices of the Great Game through their experiences on game boards with discovery, trade, appropriation, display, and domination. For Betts, this placed the British Empire at the center of the world; for Sallis, it meant the Empire was at the top of a pyramid of ancient empires stretching back to biblical times. Edward Wallis showed the moral leadership necessary to be there when he presented a negative characterization of the United States and its relationship with slavery. To a great extent, the way history is represented and projected in these games is as important as the events described. Ann Stoler describes the emphasis in Michel Foucault’s lectures on “an appreciation of historiography as a political force, of history writing as a political act, of historical narrative as a tool of the state and as a subversive weapon against it” (62). In the context of this study, we have seen how historical narratives appear in the

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unlikely, overlooked space of nineteenth-century, middle-class children’s game boards. Part of their history is the way they self-reflexively framed the imperial narrative in their own time as it was developing. Evans and Spooner mobilized the paradigm of the Great Exhibition to showcase the products of Empire, to demonstrate its global reach, and to critique its excesses, its notions of progress through technology and industrialization, and its imperial practices and labor politics. Their games offered players a visual representation of the story the Exhibition told about international collaboration and competition, the future of manufacture and trade, and imperial administration. Part of the “afterlife” of imperial games is knowing that they can do this cultural work: to distill, to codify, to represent power in order to tell a particular ideological story about a large, complex system of interactions between different cultures, fought out across a game board and then through the century and across the globe. The insights of game theory about risk and strategy offer the tentative impression that these games could have shaped players’ own strategies in approaching their lives and work. Morton Davis’ research on contemporary gameplay shows that players’ history, “the success they’ve had in the game so far—influences their attitude toward risk” (71). Davis cites the research of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1982), who discovered that “the general rule was this: people who feel they have won something generally try to conserve their winnings by avoiding risks. In an identical situation, the same people who perceive that they have just lost something will take risks they considered unacceptable before, to make themselves whole” (71). In other words, playing the game in multiple iterations changes the way players approach it. In many nineteenth-century games, of course, agency and strategy are limited. That is either an artifact of the comparatively primitive nature of this developing genre or a deliberate choice on the part of the game makers to limit players’ gamed agency to present a more straightforward narrative, aligned with the imperial enterprise, whose goals players were encouraged neither to question nor to diverge from. Yet the way players think about their game and its subject has implications beyond the bounds of the game board. Research by Morgenstern and others shows that “social events can best be described by models taken from suitable games of strategy” (x). John McDonald has applied the insights of game theory to study airline competition, coalition forming, plant location, product diversification, optimal pricing, competitive bidding strategies and investment decisions, picking jurors, measuring senators’ power, and evaluating voting power in the electoral college. Further research in this interdisciplinary area could yield some surprising and engaging results with real stakes for postcolonial study as well as globalization and capitalism. Though the sun has set on empires ruled by nations and we have seen the rise of postcolonial studies and greater moves toward inclusion and acknowledging the dignity of all peoples, the realities and practices of

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empire are not entirely gone. If the “Star Wars” franchise has taught us anything, it is that the galactic Empire, even after its defeat, can go underground and then reemerge in a new form, such as the First Order. Previous board games did their job so well that some contemporary board games actually display a totally un–self-reflexive imperial nostalgia. For instance, there are a flurry of games cultivating pause-worthy nostalgia for the days of empire (but only if the player is on the side of the colonizer). This supports Said’s contention that “the extraordinary global reach of classical nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European imperialism still casts a considerable shadow over our own times” (Culture and Imperialism 5). The description of War! Age of Imperialism (Eagle Games) promises such a startling, unapologetic recapitulation of the imperial narrative that I am compelled to quote it here at length: An unknown land unfurls before you. In this strategy game, to become one of Europe’s great powers, you’ll have to parlay this discovery into conquest. You’ll be called upon to exploit the New World’s exotic resources [. . .] An anchor in the New World means this: the riches and resources to dominate Europe once and for all. [. . .] Build a formidable military, because you can get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. And don’t forget, the object is to unite Europe under one flag—yours! (Eagle) By encouraging players to travel to “unknown land[s]” to “exploit” and plunder the “exotic resources” so well that they will “dominate Europe” (and presumably the people in these lands), this game effectively recapitulates the imperial project, giving players a chance to repeat history. Though not as well known as games like Risk, it did win the Bronze Readers’ Choice on Wargamer.com, a parent’s review on Amazon cites it as a child’s favorite game, and it was developed into a video game version, all evidence that the game is generating interest. What these more modern games may misunderstand is that though imperialism manifested itself through colonial acts in the contact zone that may have been culturally and physically aggressive and violent, the discourse of the period (of which these games are an important part) represented it as a peaceful project. With the exception of Spooner’s Voyage of Discovery, players do not engage in hostile conflict with indigenous peoples. Though Spooner’s game does acknowledge the violence of the contact zone in burning huts and insisting on inequitable trading relationships, the majority of the games present the British imperial project as a benign enterprise. The games acknowledge conflicts, often safely removed in the past, as in the Ogilvys’ Columbia and its representation of conflicts with Native Americans, or perpetuated by imperial rivals, such as the racial violence in Wallis’ Star-Spangled Banner. The focus,

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however, is on the benevolent face of the imperial project: establishing trade relationships, displaying treasures of art and manufacturing, and following the imperative to abolish the slave trade and set an example of moral leadership to advance human progress. The representations of violent clashes with indigenous peoples are located on nameless islands, in the distant past, or at the hands of imperial rivals. Strife with animals and weather is represented as part of the “White Man’s Burden,” an obstacle to be overcome in the project of colonization and the disinterested delivery of benefits of British rule of law, culture, and commerce. This is not surprising given that the games were marketed to middle- and upper-class children who would grow up to fill many of the roles needed to make the imperial project successful. Nor is War! Age of Imperialism unique in featuring empire in its title. Two recent ones worth mentioning are Game of Life Empire and Monopoly Empire. “Empire” has uncoupled itself from the limitations of national borders to identify how corporations build vast conglomerates whose interests affect economics, development, and public policy on a global scale, whose loyalties are to shareholders, rather than citizens, and for whom profit, rather than patriotism, is the avowed bottom line. Game of Life Empire is described with the tagline “Build up your empire as you advance through life!” (Game of Life). This is ultimately the latest American appropriation of what began as a British game: John Wallis’ Game of Life (1790).25 While historian Jill Lepore laments the lack of strategy and the “dutiful to-ing and fro-ing in abject obedience” in the original game, I would argue that duty and obedience, rather than strategic thinking, are the aims of the game. It offers a way to rehearse their participation in the normative Anglo-Christian social system in which mistakes led to certain dissolution and ruin or, in the case of From the Ranks, death, prison, or dishonor. As Michelle Beissel Heath writes, “Without doubt, play was pivotal to the Victorians and their approaches to it are revealing not only of the past but of the legacy we experience still” (8). Game of Life Empire [c. 2015] and Monopoly Empire [c. 2013] use the moniker “empire” in a transatlantic twist because it now refers to corporations and brands, rather than colonial governance and the spread of systems of education, government, religion, or cultural values. Indeed, the new cultural values of the games are unabashed consumerism and capitalist acquisitiveness, achieved through ruthless competition. Unlike the “Star Wars” franchise, which taught viewers that “empire” was to be regarded as a negative, totalitarian, Force-choking venture, these games use the term to describe global capitalist domination, to promote commodity fetishism, and to praise greed. Game of Life Empire’s description invites players to “choose the world’s hottest brands in The Game of Life Empire game! In this exciting game, players pick an awesome career and a branded vehicle, and then get going to collect their favorite brands. [. . .] Players can use Empire

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cards to swap and steal the brands they want. The game features famous names including Puma, Yahoo, Universal Parks and Resorts, Xbox, and more. Collect 6 brands to win!” Players are advised to be careful since “other players can steal your brands!” They also have the chance to collect “‘Followers’” who “make you more money on payday!” Thanks perhaps to social media culture, having followers is not only lucrative but also seems to replace the nuclear family. The pink and blue people pegs that older players may remember are superseded by a variety of colors (one may hope this recognizes the possibility of more fluid gender identification and an easing of normative strictures). This rainbow of people travels in appropriately branded vehicles, from a CAT earthmover to a Nickelodeon blimp to a Virgin airplane. All of this is in line with Morton Davis’ research in game theory: “If you look at the problems that the players must solve in these games—how to win the most votes, how to get the most schools, how to sell the most dresses—you see that the primary concern is with power: the power of a player or a coalition of players to affect the final outcome of the game” (173). Here, power is negotiated and branded through corporate sponsorship, reflecting a capitalist map of interaction. Hasbro’s other Milton Bradley acquisition, Monopoly Empire Edition, offers those age eight and up the chance to “Splash your Monopoly cash to build your Empire tower as high as it can go. You’ll need to make tough decisions and smart moves to take down the competition and be the first to reach the top.” This is, of course, richly ironic considering that Monopoly was originally invented by a Quaker woman to teach the evils of greed. The ironies continue in the way that users interact with the game. Google reviews seem mainly to celebrate the game for being over quickly on family game nights, but one 2015 review discussed how they purchased the game “as a Christmas gift for a lucky underprivileged child” (Artdaug). Why “lucky”? Is the child’s luck in getting this game? Will it offer a script, however unlikely, for escaping an “unlucky” social class status, much as Alger’s Ragged Dick positioned itself as a prescriptive text for young, aspirational bootblacks? Is it, too, providing gameplay for life? By positioning social class as a matter of “luck,” the review also ignores the operation of overarching capitalist structures that exert oppressive gravitational forces on the working classes. What these brief examples show is that the term “empire” is still in circulation. While postcolonial scholars and historians have used it to track the extension and consolidation of national power into territories and peoples outside their own borders in order to promote trade and the spread of their cultural values, Hasbro employs the term to celebrate capitalist dominance and consumerist behavior. Players are urged to join in this project with the same unabashed enthusiasm that nineteenth-century games welcomed players to join the imperial project. The games also underscore this transition from an empire based on

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land and governmental and military rule to one that operates outside of a nationalist paradigm based on corporations and brands that may be rooted in nations but are not necessarily responsible for (or responsive to) the welfare of those like the “lucky underprivileged child” mentioned earlier. What we can conclude from this investigation of the “afterlife” of empire is that though the term itself has been co-opted to cloak the pursuit of capitalism and consumerism on the one hand, on the other, it is still invoked with nostalgia in War! Age of Imperialism to describe domination and the exercise of raw power and brute force. These practices continue in gaming circles in Call of Duty and Fortnite; though “empire” is not explicitly invoked, its more brutal practices are appropriated and applied idiosyncratically at players’ discretion, without the nominal oversight of a nationalized chain of command. As games produced by organizations ranging from the CIA to the United Nations demonstrate, the afterlife of gaming is indeed vivid and active, organized around the premise that games offer a chance to rehearse survival scenarios, whether combating a drug cartel or battling climate change. In any case, the games that are published, publicized, and purchased continue to showcase social values, normalize notions of success, and present various ways to win. The insights and models offered by game theory are useful in this regard. In 1970, Cambridge mathematician John Horton Conway created “The Game of Life,” focused on cellular automation: a collection of cells that can either live or die or multiply according to a set of mathematical principles. In short, the game’s start determines its finish, and a cell’s survival depends on its surrounding “community” and the rules about underpopulation or overpopulation. A key interest for Conway’s game was to determine whether the cells could replicate themselves through several generations, and he and his colleagues crowd-sourced the gameplay, challenging others to beat the game. In essence, this is what eighteenth-century game manufacturers, parents, and educators had been aiming for since John Wallis and E. Newbery’s The New Game of Human Life (1790): to replicate themselves, their social system, and their values across the generations. In this sense, the work of empire in the games examined here was a crowd-sourced effort that began with the game publishers; continued with the parents, educators, and relatives who purchased the games; and went on with the children, governesses, tutors, and others who played the games. Yet the play is never confined or limited to the extent of the board game itself. Its power is in its lingering effects. How did the strategies of risk and reward and collaborative or competitive play stay with players and affect their choice of occupation or their attitudes and feelings toward empire? Furthermore, how does the practice of gaming itself affect an individual player’s success beyond the gamed space, or is there no “beyond” because it is continuous?26

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Though the idea of being pulled into a narrative, breaking the fourth wall, is as old as Alice tumbling down her rabbit hole into a nonsense world, the idea of games as texts fostering that same immersion is comparatively new. Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji picture book (1981) and the subsequent film adaptations (1995, 2017) encourage players to envision the stakes of transdiegetic metalepsis—being pulled bodily into a favorite game. Though in the picture book, elements of the game are drawn out into the real world, in the 2017 film, the players are pulled in to the world of the game—perhaps a truer vision of immersive play and total engagement.27 It acknowledges that games present alluring narratives of power, rivalry, and reward. In the newer adaptation, the lead character must use his knowledge of gameplay, its conventions, tropes, and rules, to win the game. The young people transported into the game operate as a team, leaning on their various skill sets to survive antagonists ranging from predatory animals such as snakes, rhinos, and even mosquitoes to human enemies motivated by greed for power. Their guide represents to them that the fate of the land (and the game itself) depends upon their success. They are set up as saviors, as heroes, as the last, best hope of the land. The narrative is both effective and seductive. What “Jumanji” shows us is that the effects of the game are real: after winning the game, the nervous guy gets a girlfriend, the young woman obsessed with her cell phone and Instagramming every moment of her life becomes someone who unplugs and goes hiking to enjoy nature, and another character’s life is saved. While not all characters have such a dramatic arc, the film’s thesis suggests that immersive gameplay can change a player’s life and even redeem it in key ways. Interestingly enough, however, the players end by destroying the game because it is too powerful and too dangerous. The lesson, it seems, is not scalable. While no such dramatic destruction happened to the games discussed in this study, their removal from the historical record is just as complete. They have been largely forgotten, though the groundwork they laid needs investigation and serious study to understand the trends they set in motion for the transmission of ideologies through the structure of play. John Berger puts it in the strongest terms: “A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history” (33). This work has sought to restore these games to the critical conversation about the way imperial ideologies were transmitted in the mid-century period before high imperialism and to investigate the specific messages the games sent about power, history, and moral leadership. The goal of this conclusion chapter has been to open the archive into the future to address the postcolonial ramifications of gameplay and explore the afterlife of empire in a globalized world. The stakes are important not only for the way we represent the history of the colonial era but also for how we move forward self-reflexively and purposefully into the future. Your move.

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Notes 1. Though this game is undated, it does contain an image of the Crystal Palace in the upper right corner; this indicates that the game appeared during a tenyear period, after 1851 but before 1863, the last year Sallis operated at Cross Key Square. Since the game mentions that it is produced by the publisher of Why, what, and because, it is likely the game was published somewhere around 1855. 2. It is part of the collection of the Ville de Rambouillet in the town of Rambouillet, France, which has agreed to allow the image to be featured on Luigi Ciompi and Adrian Seville’s Giochi dell’Oca site (the Italian translates to “Game of the Goose” for the popular Continental game, played in English taverns since the sixteenth century). I mention these archival notes as a case in point to register how dispersed these games are across the world; this dispersal indicates the cosmopolitan audience for the international content. 3. In contrast, John Marshall’s Chronological Star of the World used 109 spaces for world history. 4. Sallis played with the table form and the idea of Victoria as the end of the game in his Amusement in English History: a game exhibiting the most remarkable events from the time of the Britons [c. 1840]. Another handcolored lithograph mounted on linen, it is intricately illustrated in its move from pre-Roman times to Queen Victoria. It moves ahead in a linear manner, mapped out on the board like a chart. The game is organized by 40 British kings and queens and the main events during their rule, covering 80 playing spaces. For the young queen, her main event is her marriage (she married Albert in 1840). See it at www.giochidelloca.it/scheda.php?id=1556. 5. This was not Sallis’ first game showcasing a pyramid. Linda Hannas notes that Sallis “devised a puzzle entitled The Child’ Picture History of England which was triangular, the young Queen taking pride of place at the apex” (The Jigsaw Book 28). This is similar to the placement of Queen Victoria and her family in the apex here. Inset within the pyramid, numbered spaces direct the player on a winding path up seven rows to the pinnacle. 6. Though Egypt was not a formally recognized British settlement colony, its influence and interests ran deep. Elleke Boehmer characterizes the geopolitical makeup of the empire as “uneven and higgledy-piggledy,” noting that it was composed of white self-governing colonies, crown colonies, chartered territories like Rhodesia, and “protectorates and protected states as in Egypt, Uganda, or Malaya, where indigenous rulers were made to co-operate with the Foreign Office or British Residents” (xv). The systems of administration varied widely. A consul general oversaw Egypt, whereas Nigeria was ruled by a commercial company, Ascension Island by a captain in the Royal Navy, Australia and Sierra Leone by a prime minister and governor, Sarawak by a hereditary British rajah, and Somaliland by a commissioner responsible to Indian government (Parsons 29). 7. The collection grew through organized excavations of the Egypt Exploration Fund in the 1880s and collector Ernest Wallis Budge’s efforts, which tripled the size of the Egyptian collections. Excavations, occasional purchases, and donations from private collections swelled the collection to over 100,000 objects, and, as its website asserts, “The time has not yet come to draw a line beneath the total of the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum.” 8. Given the significance of Nelson’s Column and its completion in the years before Sallis published this game, I am very surprised that he chose a pyramid instead of this resonant English symbol, situated in a culturally important new city space. Trafalgar Square had been used for stabling for Whitehall through

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Chapter 5 the seventeenth century, but in 1812, architect John Nash was charged with developing a cultural space open to the public (“Trafalgar Square”). In the 1830s, the open space got its famous cultural anchors: construction began on the National Gallery in 1832. Designed by William Railton and completed by 1843, the 46-meter column commemorates Admiral Horatio Nelson’s death at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. Watching over the city and looking south toward Portsmouth, the 5-meter statue of Nelson stands on a bronze platform, joined in 1867 by Sir Edwin Landseer’s bronze lions. William Moebius notes, “A character shown on the left page is likely to be in a more secure, albeit potentially confined space than one shown on the right, who is likely to be moving into a situation of risk or adventure” (149). In The Traveller in Africa (1814) primer, Priscilla Wakefield mused that the Pyramids at Giza were “monuments of the greatness and the frailty of man. On the one hand, they display his power and ingenuity, in raising such vast masses,” while on the other hand, the “monuments remain, the men are forgotten” (80). The “monuments” in this game are the deeds that echo through history, though individual actors are forgotten. This sobering lesson teaches players that they are part of a larger story, and, like the builders of the real pyramids, they contribute their “power and ingenuity,” labor, and toil to build it higher. In the end, it remains after they are gone. Lucy Wilson also likens Thebes to “a city of giants” who left only “the remains of various temples” (34), showing “that all human greatness is transitory and fleeting” (80). Nonetheless, the monument remains. In Sallis’ game, that monument is history itself, in the form of a pyramid, topped by British greatness, symbolic of human progress. It is interesting that the Tower of Babel is included here since in that narrative, God punished those building a tall tower to climb to heaven to escape future punishing floods. Yet Sallis shows a pyramid, perhaps an equally ambitious enterprise, without self-reflexivity, along with St. Paul’s, Nelson’s Column, and the Crystal Palace. Mary F.E. Boscawen’s mid-century primer characterizes maps as representing “the very same earth which God created in the beginning, the account of the creation of which we read in the first chapter of the Bible” (2–3). This grounds the humanist history and scientific geography in a Christian narrative. Similarly, Mary and Elizabeth Kirby’s The World at Home (1869) also chronicles world history beginning with the Tower of Babel and the assertion that “the happiest part of the world is where the Bible is read, and where the people are Christians” (14). In this row, the numbers begin at the left side with 30, then inset 29, and then 28. This means that players would have gone all the way to the right on the prior row to learn about Peter the Great, and then instead of picking up and going all the way to the left (as in the other rows), they would simply have gone directly up, wrapping around. Why this change in motion at this moment? Was it a mistake in design? Is there some significance to moving from “Peter the Great” straight up to “South Sea Discoveries” (28)? Does Britain’s work in the South Seas in some way answer Peter’s preparations in the bustling port and gesture to the imperial rivalry between the two empires? If the rulebook survived, it would be interesting to see if there were any difference in motion (forward, backward, or enforced stasis) or in rewards or penalties based on the shift in perspective, looking out at incoming British colonial agents versus being on deck with them, sailing toward terra incognita in the American space. Since the Crystal Palace dates the game after 1851, Victoria had had seven of her nine children (Victoria, 1840; Edward VII, 1841; Alice, 1843; Alfred,

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1844; Helena, 1846; Louise, 1848; and Arthur, 1850), followed by Leopold (1853) and Beatrice (1857). Why the image shows five children instead of seven is a matter for speculation. The pyramid as motif captivated British artists. Inspired by Adam Smith’s ideas, George Cruikshank’s “British Bee Hive” etching features the social strata of Britain industriously laboring at each level, from soldiers and hard manual laborers up through specialized craftspeople, merchants, farmers, teachers, lawyers, and, at last, Queen Victoria and the Royal Family at the top. Ford Madox Brown’s Work (1852–1865) is also a painting that arranges labor in a street scene in a pyramid structure, from the manual laborers toiling in the street to a gentleman at the top passing by and pausing to view their work. Indeed, among the papyri collected in the British Museum’s holdings is the Abbott Papyrus, which “contained the official record of a royal commission to investigate tomb robberies in Thebes in about 1125 BC” (James). A case in point is Belzoni, a traveler and explorer who practiced archeology before regulation and oversight of its methodologies. If Belzoni had difficulty opening pyramids or tombs in ancient Egypt, he simply resorted to dynamite as an expeditious method. Lucy Wilson offers an account of Belzoni contemplating the Great Pyramid, “which is nearly the height of St Paul’s Cathedral in London,” suggesting that he “fixed his eyes on that enormous mass, which for so many ages has baffled the conjectures of ancient and modern writers” (119). Wilson explains the result of his contemplative gaze: “This review encouraged him in the attempt, and he applied without loss of time to the Bey for men to assist him in penetrating one of the great pyramids of Egypt—one of the wonders of the world!” (120). Characterizing Belzoni’s penetration of the pyramid as the result of a contemplative gaze, she tries to distinguish between discovery and tomb robbery. Wilson does not include the story of Belzoni, over six feet tall, becoming so tightly wedged in a passage inside the Great Pyramid in 1815 that he had to be forcibly pried out by his guides. It is no accident that this was the era in which Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho! (1855) became “the most widely read and influential historical romance of the early Victorian period” (69), according to Robert McDonald. In dedicating the book to Rajah Sir James Brooke of Sarawak and Bishop George Selwyn of New Zealand, “Kingsley quite self-consciously directed his readers to the continuities of the heroic past and the heroic present, reverencing, as he said, these new Empire Builders, and comparing them to Elizabeth’s ‘worthies’” (McDonald 69). Like Kingsley, Sallis looked to the past for evidence to support the multiple, simultaneous, competing narratives in their games. The Cotsen Collection at Princeton includes the bibliographic note to help date the game: “Earl Roberts, pictured on the board, was appointed commander in chief in 1901. The office of commander in chief was abolished in 1904. Therefore, this game was probably published between those years.” The only son of King George III’s youngest son, Queen Victoria’s cousin George William Frederick Charles, second Duke of Cambridge, was a conservative field marshal and commander of the forces for 39 years, rising swiftly through the ranks despite undistinguished Crimean War service. He opposed reforms, advocated promotion by social standing rather than military achievement, and was forced to resign in 1895. His successor, Garnet Wolseley, served on four continents in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, Crimean War, and Sepoy Rebellion. A reformer positively regarded by the public, Wolseley came to power following the Boer War (1899–1902), a costly conflict for expense and human life, and he faced challenges in modernizing the

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24. 25.

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Chapter 5 forces (Cook 229). Finally, 1st Earl Frederick Sleigh Roberts served notably in the Second Afghan War and the South African War (in which he took Pretoria and other cities), and was the last commander in chief of the British Army, an office abolished after 1904. Players ascend the ranks from enlistment (space 3) to Corporal (9), Sergeant (18), and Lieutenant (27); in the second column along the top of the game, players become Captain (34) and Major (42). In the third column, players can be promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel (51), Colonel (60), Brigadier-General (69), or Major-General (74). After one more rank, Lieutenant-General (82) on the tight pivot from the game’s right side, players enter the final stretch. The middle final column includes General (90), Field-Marshal (94), and ultimately Commander-in-Chief (100). For contemporary players of a game such as Fortnite, the future seems to hold a different expectation. By contrast, Keith Stuart remarks, “On the bright side, if your kids are really good at Fortnite, there’s a growing professional eSports scene around the game, complete with cash prizes. You never know which childhood hobby might turn into a living” (Stuart). Though Stuart’s glib remark has an optimistic, occupational outlook, it can also be read as a cause for concern, drawing a line from childhood games to adult occupations. Work by Fernand Gobet, Jean Retschitzki, and Alex de Voogt establishes this research in Moves in Mind: The Psychology of Board Games. Wallis’ 1790 game follows a man through the stages of human development. John Wallis and E. Newbery’s The [New] Game of Human Life (1790) presented an opportunity to engage in an accelerated version of “life” in which players travel the life of a man from Infancy through the Prime of Life and into Decrepitude and Dotage at age 84. The game invites parents to help their children contrast “the happiness of a virtuous and well spent life with the fatal consequences arising from vicious and immoral pursuits” (Human Life). In the 50th anniversary version of the Game of Life (2010), on the other hand, the successful life is measured in monetary value. The player with the “greatest value” wins the game and retires to Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres. The acquisition and practice of moral virtue have been replaced by the acquisition of money and capital. International agencies have weighed in on the importance and the dangers of play. Heath contends, “Play is consistently considered an essential component of childhood and widely understood as necessary for child development—so much so that article 31 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) specifically recognizes ‘that every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child.’ The entire world—194 countries—has ratified the Convention treaty or, really, all countries but two: Somalia and, notably, the U.S.” (6). Recently, however, the kind of play children engage in has come under scrutiny. The World Health Organization issued an alert about a new public health concern called “gaming disorder.” WHO identifies it as “a pattern of gaming behavior (‘digital-gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences” (“Gaming Disorder”). The organization counsels that players should be aware of the time they spend gaming, especially when it is “to the exclusion of other daily activities, as well as to any changes in their physical or psychological health and social functioning that could be attributed to their pattern of gaming behaviour” (“Gaming

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Disorder”). Though the WHO’s designation has drawn critiques that this runs the risk of “pathologising a hobby” (Therrien), it is nonetheless important as a marker of concern over the absorption of the player into the world of the game. 27. In a digital age when games are available on mobile devices, the addictive quality of Tetris, Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, and Candy Crush can draw players into the games and away from their realities and responsibilities, perhaps risking their lives in another way because they risk their social relationships and vocational engagement.

Board Games Cited

Betts, John. Betts’s Voyage Round the World, an Amusing and Instructive Game for Children. London: John Betts, [c. 1874]. ———. The Royal Game of the Gathering of the Nations. London: John Betts, 1851. ———. A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions. London: John Betts, [c. 1855]. Darton, William T. Walker’s Tour through England and Wales, A New Pastime. W. & T. Darton, 1809. Darton, William. The Noble Game of the Elephant and Castle: Or, Travelling in Asia. London: William Darton, 1822. Eagle Games. War! Age of Imperialism, [c. 2001]. Evans, [Henry] S[mith]. The Crystal Palace Game: A Voyage Round the World an Entertaining Excursion in Search of Knowledge Whereby Geography Is Made Easy. London: Alfred Davis & Co., [c. 1855]. Marshall, John. The Chronological Star of the World. London: J. Marshall, 1818. Rule book from the Museum of Western Australia. . Ogilvy, David. L’Orient, or, the Indian Travellers: A Geographical and Historical Game. London: David Ogilvy, [1846]. Ogilvy, E., and M.A. Ogilvy. Columbia: Land of the West. London: E. and M.A. Ogilvy with S. Straker [for the guidebook], [1850–1860]. ———. The Fancy Bazaar or Aristocratic Traders. London: E. and M.A. Ogilvy, [c. 1865]. ———. The New Game of Wellington’s Victories. London: E. and M.A. Ogilvy, [post 1815]. ———. Outward Bound: Or Ships and Their Cargoes. London: E. and M.A. Ogilvy, [c. 1865]. ———. The Silver Bell: Or the Crystal Palace. London: E & MA Ogilvy, [c. 1854]. ———. The Tar of All Weathers: Or, the British Colonies: A Geographical Game. London: E. and M.A. Ogilvy, Samuel Straker (printer and lithographer). Lithographer J.R. Barfoot, [1857]. Roxbrough, W. To the Great Exhibition of all Nations and the Funny People Going There. London, 1851. Sallis, William. A New Dioramic Game of the Overland Route to India. London: William Sallis, [185–?].

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———. Picturesque Round Game of the Geography, Topography, Produce Manufactures & Natural History of Various Countries of the World, [c. 1840]. ———. Tee-to-Tum Game: The Pyramid of History. London: William Sallis, [post 1851]. Spooner, William. Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851. London: W. Spooner, 1851. ———. The Pirate and Traders of the West Indies. London: William Spooner, 1847. ———. The Travellers: Or, a Tour through Europe, in its fourth edition by 1849. ———. A Voyage of Discovery: Or the Five Navigators. [Also advertised as A new Christmas Game]. London: William Spooner, 1836. Wallis, Edward. Game of the Star-Spangled Banner, or Game of Emigrants to the United States. London: E. Wallis, [c. 1844]. ———. Locomotive Game of Railroad Adventures. London: E. Wallis, [c. 1838]. ———. New Game of Wanderers in the Wilderness. London: E. Wallis, [c. 1844]. ———. NewRailway Game, or Tour through England and Wales. London: E. Wallis, Passmore printer, [1830]. Wallis, J[ohn]. The New and Fashionable Game of the Jew. London: John Wallis, 1807. ———. The New Game of Human Life. London: John Wallis and Elizabeth Newbery, 1790. ———. Wallis’s Complete Voyages Round the World: Wallis’s New Geographical Game, [1796]. ———. Wallis’s Tour through the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a New Geographical Game, Comprehending all the Cities, Principal Towns, Rivers, &c., in the British Empire, [c. 1811]. The Young Riflemen. n.p., [n.d.].

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Appendix Games with a Focus on Empire and Commerce

NOTE: This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of games. New titles are coming online every year as collectors make bequests to major archives and special collections or sell their treasured games at auction houses. I recommend consulting the Games Research Database (GARD) for a dynamic, ongoing list of games on various topics. The ones I have listed here offer a good context for these specific publishers and for gaming empire. I have decided to arrange the list by publisher because this gives a sense of the publisher’s greater focus and because so many of the games are undated.

Chad Valley Co.

John Betts

John Betts

Across Africa with Livingstone

Portable Globe

The Royal Game of the Gathering of Nations The Royal Game of Contemporary Sovereigns A Tour through the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions Very Superior Dissected Maps

Voyage Round the World John Betts

John Betts

John Betts

John Betts

Publisher

Game Title

1874

[c. 1855]

1851

1852

[c. 1900]

Date

5s

7s

6s

12s, 6d

Price

(Continued)

These include England, Scotland, Ireland, Europe, Asia, Palestine, Africa, North America, South America, United States, Australasia, New South Wales, Western Australia, and “The WORLD” in two sizes. Betts did not lose any opportunities for self-promotion: “The size of this map not showing Europe on a scale sufficiently large for the purposes of a Tour Game, it may be mentioned that there is already published a very interesting game on the same plan, and by the same publisher, called “A Tour through Europe;” comprising a very excellent map of Europe, &c., price 4 s. 6 d.”

The guidebook shows details about Livingstone’s travels on the front and direction for play on the following pages. It shows how missionary work and exploration are challenged by the depredations of snakes and jungle animals in this area. Portable could be collapsed or expanded “in a similar manner to an umbrella” using drawstrings (Catalogue 179). The game was also available on washable patent leather cloth for 15s. Betts’ game celebrating the Crystal Palace, featuring ornate illustrations of golden urns and railroad engines.

Notes

1822 [1820]

1821

William Darton

William Darton

William Darton

[c. 1856]

1880 1809

[W.H. Bradley] W. and T. Darton

Darton & Co. with lithography by James Richard Barfoot

1780

Carrington Bowles

Bowles’s British Geographical Amusement, or Game of Geography, In a Most Compleat and Elegant Tour thro England, Wales, and the adjoining Parts of Scotland & Ireland Japanese Scenes Walker’s Tour through England and Wales, a New Pastime The noble game of Elephant and Castle, or Travelling in Asia A survey of London, by a party of tarry-at-home travelers, A new game to amuse and instruct a company of friends Walker’s Geographical Pastime; exhibiting a complete voyage round the world

Gold Fields of Australia

Date

Publisher

Game Title

(Continued) Price

An example of games that are almost indistinguishable from traditional cartography, Darton’s game features England and its territories outlined in red, and Africa is labeled “Regions Unexplored.” On the cover, a white, wigged man points out to an African his place on the globe. See also Race to the Gold Diggings of Australia.

Part of a series of games using the shape of an animal to enclose the inset panels. Darton also used a swan and a dolphin.

A contemporary of the earliest game publishers, John Wallis and William Darton, Bowles also produced a Geographical Game of the World in 1790.

Notes

Panorama of London Road to the Temple of Honour and Fame

Panorama of London Dissected Maps [of Africa, America, Asia, England, as well as England, Ireland, Scotland and France] Geographical recreation, or A voyage round the habitable globe 1809 1810

1809

John Harris

John Harris John Harris

1809 [c. 1831]

John Harris John Harris

Siege of Delhi Dean & Son France and Austria a new F.C. Dean game [c. 1840]

1855

Siege of Sebastopol

Dean & Son

[c. 1857– 1865]

The Road to wealth, or, Dean & Son How to know London

Prices range from 3s, 6d to 12 s

(Continued)

This round game features a map of a different part of the world at each corner. At the center is a visual map with figures of Britannia, Africa, India, and the islands; wonderfully rich visual text. The catalogue at the back lists atlases and books available in prices ranging from 2s to 18s.

This game is a complex round game featuring a series of two nested circles with colored spaces and then a central circle featuring a city scene and an explosion, then three empty colored squares. It is not highly embellished like the Spooner or Wallis games. A spiral game featuring scenes with London landmarks. These puzzles and their prices are listed in the 1831 John Harris catalogue of “Instructive Cards and Games” at the back of Lucy Wilson’s [Sarah Atkins] Juvenile Rambler [1831].

The game featured opportunities for wealth at home in the metropolitan center; contrast with gold diggings games in Australia. Players travel across 85 spaces to win the game, passing by Queen Victoria at 1, as well as Russian Militia, English sailors, Malakoff Tower, and Miss Nightingale. Rules at the top, in lieu of a guidebook, explain the forfeits and movements associated with each space.

Publisher

1846

[1837– c. 1844]

David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy with lithography by J.R. Barfoot

[c. 1865]

A.N. Myers

The new game of the ascent of Mont Blanc Crowned Heads; or Contemporary Sovereigns, an Instructive Game

L’Orient or the Indian Travellers

1818

Chronological Star of the John Marshall World

Shows how animals can even make the distribution of the mail challenging in a colonial setting. Featuring a map of Europe with inset spaces, the game offers nontraditional sights, such as a duel in Dublin or a man overboard in the Atlantic, as well as a bullfight in Spain, the Colossus at Rhodes, and a railway at Moscow. The player had a “passport” for his/her chosen metal painted figures and spun a teetotum. Chronological Star distributed historical events across the branches of a 16-pointed star and related emblems, placing Britannia in a place of honor at the center. This round game in Toronto’s Osborne Collection has the ivory teetotum intact, along with playing pieces. The game features a central map of Europe, ringed by scenes from the lives of monarchs from 1608 to 1844. Portraits of European monarchs are ranged along the top, identified by country, with the exception of Victoria, who is named and arranged in an elaborate display in the middle. The game features a traditional central map ringed by scenes of British colonization and topped by a row of six monarchs from George I to Victoria. It features images at the top of British institutions in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. With Barfoot’s lithography, it is visually similar to E. & M.A. Ogilvy’s Columbia.

[c. 1900] 1861

See also Spooner’s Perspective View of the Great Exhibition.

1851

Notes The oldest surviving English geography game was designed by writing master and king’s geographer.

Price

1759

Date

The European Tourist; or Joseph, Myers & a New Game of Travel, Co. [also Roderick or a Journey through Roveabout] Europe

A journey through John Jefferys and Europe, or the play of published by geography Carrington Bowles Telescopic View of the C.A. Lane Great Exhibition Adventures of a Mailman Lion Series of Games

Game Title

(Continued)

[c. 1865] [c. 1854] 1857

E. & M.A. Ogilvy

E. and M.A. Ogilvy [with J.R. Barfoot?]

The Silver Bell; or the Crystal Palace The Tar of All Weathers; or, The British Colonies. A geographical game

[1845]

Outward bound, or ships [E & MA Ogilvy] and their cargoes

E. and M.A. Ogilvy

[E. & M.A. Ogilvy]

La Belle France, or the Panorama of Paris, a Game New Game of Wellington’s Victories

Fancy Bazaar, or Aristocratic Traders

E. & M.A. Ogilvy with [1850– lithography by J.R. 1860] Barfoot [E. & M.A. Ogilvy] 1865

Columbia, Land of the West

(Continued)

The board features an elaborate masthead featuring Victoria at the center, flanked by jubilant Jack Tars. A central map is surrounded by a crowd of ringed images from throughout the Empire. In the bottom corners, indigenous peoples look on, surrounded by tradable goods. The Bodleian notes that the game is signed by J.R. Barfoot (the copy I had was not high resolution), and Samuel Straker is credited as printer and lithographer.

Players race across a series of boxes arranged in table fashion, bordered by smoke reminiscent of battle, through Wellington’s victories from Seringapatam in 1795 to Waterloo in 1815. Players of this card game chose a nation and had to assemble the “cargo” designated for that nation, along with a captain and a pilot. A card game based on the Great Exhibition.

In this card game, players could sell their wares in the character of greengrocers and toy dealers to interested consumers to raise money for the ambitious schemes of paying the national debt and a bridge from Dover to Calais.

William Sallis

Game of the Lion Hunt William Sallis The geographical and [William Sallis?] historical travelers through England and Wales: an amusing and instructive game The New Game of William Sallis with the Overland Route lithography by W. to India; a New Dickes Panoramic Game

Amusement in English History

[c. 185–?]

[c. 1860]

c. 1840

[1851]

[c. 1845]

1853

J.A. Reeves

The Overland Mail from J.A. Reeves England to India To the Great Exhibition W. Roxbrough of all Nations and the Funny People Going There

[c. 1840s]

J. Passmore

Circle of Knowledge, Wonders of Science and Nature A New Game of Russia vs Turkey

Date

Publisher

Game Title

(Continued)

Mentioned in Children’s Books (44).

Inspired by the Crimean War, the game is part of a growing trend from mid-century onward focusing on military engagements of the present moment. This continues in From the Ranks and is evident in similar titles by William Sallis.

Passmore took over the Wallis stock and reprinted many of their games.

Notes

3s, 6d

The masthead at the top with the embellished title shows Indian travel by palanquin on elephant and by foot juxtaposed with British travel by boat. This juxtaposition continues in each band with the contrast between the small open boats of the local people and the huge British three-masted ships that loom over them. The winding track proceeds upward. It was also available dissected for 7s.

These cards feature seven nations going to the Great Exhibition, including the United States and Canada. The illustrations range from gentle puns (someone from the polar regions carries the “North Pole”) to satirical commentary (the American leads a chained group of slaves with a sign proclaiming “Land of the Free”). The game features an ordered table with 40 cells filled with portraits of British kings and queens; the organized tabulation conveys a tidy, infinite succession. Compare with John Marshall’s Chronological Star. 3s, 6d Also available “Dissected in a Tonbridge Box” for 7s. 5s in large Also titled Geographical and Historical Travellers through folio England and Wales. John Passmore, who succeeded Edward case Wallis, printed this game and others of Sallis’.

1s, 6d

Price

New Tee-To-Tum Game: The Pyramid of History Paul Herbert’s Visit to London; describing some of the principal Buildings in the Metropolis; with Views Picturesque Round Game of the Geography, Topography, Produce, Manufactures & Natural History of Various Countries of the World Turkey and Russia Why, what, and because, or The road to the temple of knowledge A New Royal Geographical Pastime for England and Wales; whereas the distance of each town Laid Down from London in Measure Miles The lion and the eagle or the days of ’76 The Cottage of Content, or Right Roads and Wrong Roads [c. 1883] 1848

William Spooner

[c. 1855]

[1845]

[post 1851]

C.H. Snow

Robert Sayer

William Sallis William Sallis

William Sallis with lithography by Thomas Henry Jones

William Sallis

William Sallis

5s 3s, 6d

3s, 6d

(Continued)

The Cottage features a series of overlapping and twisted paths like “Laughing Stock Lane,” where a bather’s clothes are stolen, or “Ruination Row,” with an upset donkey cart and goods strewn in the road; the illustrations, comical situations, and language create a lively, amusing game.

This game features a track along 169 towns and sites. Sayer’s shop also sold dissected maps for 7s, 6d without the sea and with it for 10s, 6d.

See also Reeves’ A new game of Russia vs Turkey (1853). Also available “Dissected in a Tonbridge Box” for 7s.

This highly embellished game features scenes of hunting and harvest, from whales in the polar regions to cultivations in Australia (from John Spear’s collection).

Also available “Dissected in a Tonbridge Box” for 7s.

[between 1831 and 1837]

William Spooner

1847

Funnyshire Fox Chase William Spooner Game of English History William Spooner

Geographical and Zoological Game of the World The Journey, or Cross Roads to Conqueror’s Castle; a new and interesting game

1846

William Spooner

Fortunio and his seven gifted servants

[c. 1852]

1843

William Spooner

An Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire

Date

Publisher

Game Title

(Continued) Price

Similar to Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire, it features caricatures and is not connected to real geography. Players follow snaking paths toward Conqueror’s Castle at the top, ascending Breakneck Hill and avoiding the dangers of being robbed; in the Black Forest, there’s a coven of witches; there’s also Giant Grumbo’s Ground and Mad Bull’s Lane (where you’re chased by a bull).

English history begins with the invasion of Julius Caesar and ends with Waterloo and a coat of arms. It includes Boadicea, Hastings, the Battle at Agincourt, the murder of the two Princes in the Tower, and others labeled along the winding track. (mentioned in Children’s Books 45).

This is one of Spooner’s stranger games, featuring crisscrossing paths and scenes that have a loose relationship to geographic regions. There is the land of “Sour Krout” (Germany) and “Frog Island” and a depiction of “Turkey in Asia” in which figures wearing fezzes sit down to a turkey dinner, and in the center is “Happy Land,” where a lion scatters a crowd of tiny Africans with bows and arrows as well as two fez-wearing figures. The game uses dialect that contemporary readers will find offensive (along with the “n” word). There seems also to be a system of forfeits. This fairy-tale game features an embedded track with orange stopping bubbles varied with directional bubbles saying things like “Pay 3 for introduction at Court” or “Take 4 for a good deed.”

Notes

1832 1836 c. 1837– 1846

1797

William Spooner

William Spooner [with W. Kohler’s lithography]

Vernor & Hood

Voyage of Discovery; or, the Five Navigators The Wonders of the World chiefly in reference to the architectural works of the ancients The Bulwark of Britannia, or, Neptune and England united

1844

William Spooner

William Spooner

1851

William Spooner

Spooner’s Perspective view of the Great Exhibition Spooner’s pictorial map of England and Wales

The Travellers of Europe

1847

The Pirate and Traders of William Spooner the West Indies

(Continued)

A spiral game featuring a series of ships and then a large semi-center battle of ships. Bulwark’s instruction booklet proclaims, “Whether our youth may be intended for the more domestic situations of life, or to range the ocean in a commercial or military capacity, an acquaintance with the terms used, and the different situations of ships at sea, must be of equal utility. In this game, the battles of our country may be fought without danger, and like my UNCLE TOBY and CORPORAL TRIM, we may in idea contemplate those memorable days, which have added so much luster to the name of ENGLISHMEN!!!” [1].

The game features a crowded field of arts and architecture from around the world.

Also known as Spooner’s Tour of England and Wales, this game featured 104 spots, beginning in Berwick and moving to London. Scotland is depicted as a blank, colorless region labeled “Part of Scotland.” On the side are enlarged views, such as View of Pembroke Castle or Queen Victoria going to Scotland. Players could get a closer look at imperial rivals in one of Spooner’s early, more restrained games. The game is sometimes listed as “A New Christmas Game.”

This was a miniature “peep show” like a theater, which offered views of the Exhibition.

The game’s focus was to defeat those whose outlaw commerce threatened orderly trade.

Publisher

New Dissected Map of America; engraved from the latest authorities, for the use of young students in geography The New Game of Human Life Wallis’ New Game of Universal History and Chronology 1790

John Wallis and E. Newbery John Wallis 1814

[1812– 1818]

1807

1811

1796

Date

John Wallis

John Wallis Wallis’ Complete Voyage Round the World: Wallis’ New Geographical Game [or “A Geographical Pastime”] John Wallis Mirror of Truth; exhibiting a variety of biographical anecdotes and moral essays, calculated to inspire a love of virtue and an abhorrence of vice New and Fashionable John Wallis Game of the Jew

Game Title

(Continued)

[6s]

Price

In the style of the Game of Goose, this spiral game features 143 scenes from history, including the death of Christ, the founding of London, the use of paper in England, and the Napoleonic Wars. Compare with John Marshall’s Chronological Star.

Child players could outwit sellers in this game while also absorbing stereotypes of Jewish peoples that were still in circulation when Dickens wrote Oliver Twist (1839) with the character of Fagin. Wallis’ foray into dissected maps features North, Central, and South America dissected in a traditional, unembellished cartographic style.

This is an example of the early cartographic games, featuring a professional map with a numbered track laid over it and detailed explanations for movement appearing below. The game also advertises Wallis’ other “tours” available for “6s each for the Pocket, on Cloth & Case, or upon a Pasteboard with Box, Totum & Counters.” Players must avoid passion, cruelty, idleness, and other vices to arrive at the center of the game, where an angel validates their win. Lydia Child recommended the game in her 1832 book. Wallis’ New Game of Human Life is similar, as is William Darton’s The new game of virtue rewarded and vice punished (1810).

Notes

John Wallis

European Travellers, an Instructive Game

Edward Wallis

Wallis’ Tour through the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a new Geographical Game, Comprehending all the cities, Principal Towns, Rivers, &c., in the British Empire The British Tourist, [Edward Wallis] Exhibiting 65 Select Views of the British Empire

Wallis’ Science in Sport or the Pleasures of Natural Philosophy

[c. 1845]

[c. 1830– 1850]

1811

1805

(Continued)

A rigid spiral game in a series of numbered boxes around the central title. The scenery is pastoral, focused on country houses, harbors, cathedrals, and bridges, and the scenes are not distinctly associated with particular regions. The optics suggest making the world England. This game follows Wallis’ pictographic style, also used in Wanderers, Star-Spangled, and Manufactures games. It’s a map of Europe, vividly colored. England is filled with three or four cities, verdant woods in the south, and mountains in the north. To the far north are shipwrecks, whales, icebergs, and a rainbow sunset. Asia seems to encroach on the far east of Russia because there’s a scene with huts and palm trees, and the Mediterranean is filled with ships, suggesting that though the topic is Europe, it is a Europe inset into a larger world.

Wallis also did Science in Sport or the Pleasures of Astronomy, an Entertaining Game. The central space features Niagara Falls flanked by four portraits: Boyle (31), Franklin (33), Descartes (32), and Bacon (34). Numbered spaces surround the outer frame, with scenes illustrating the sciences Wallis highlights: mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, acoustics, electricity and galvanism, optics, and astronomy. The theme is similar to John Wallis’ The Hill of Science, an Allegory (1807).

Publisher

Wallis’ Elegant and Instructive Game Exhibiting the Wonders of Nature in each Quarter of the World

Edward Wallis

The Game of Victoria, Edward Wallis the Queen of the Seas; Descriptive of Great Britain and her Colonial Possessions. Game of the StarEdward Wallis Spangled Banner; or Emigrants to the United States Historical Pastime, a new Edward Wallis game of the history of England

Every Man to his Station Edward Wallis

Game Title

(Continued)

1818

A spiral game featuring 133 events in English history, beginning with the Battle of Hastings and ending with the crowning of George IV and the death of Queen Caroline. It is very similar to John Harris and J. Wallis’ Historical Pastime; or a New Game of the History of England from the Conquest to the Accession of George the Third (1803). The game features 26 images of natural wonders, from mountains and waterfalls to ice caves and sandstorms in the polar north, Europe, and America.

[c. 1838]

Within a framework of country living, Wallis presents different vocations for the young gentlemen in the central image, represented playing a game like his. These include soldier, sailor, engineer, farmers, and men recuperating from injuries, which may suggest the intervention of medical professionals. There are 32 spaces, suggesting perhaps the limited scope of professions available to the young gentlemen in the center image. “The severely educational nature of this question and answer game contrasts sadly with the gaiety of its picture cards” (Children’s Books 44).

Notes

See also Wanderers in the Wilderness for a similar pictographic style

Price

[c. 1844]

[after 1837]

Date

Wanderers in the Wilderness

Wallis’ Locomotive Game of Railroad Adventures Wallis’ new game of genius, or Compendium of inventions connected with the arts, sciences, and manufactures Wallis’ New Railway Game, or Tour through England and Wales Wallis’ Picturesque Round Game of the Manufactures of England and Wales 1830 [1844]

Edward Wallis

Edward Wallis

[1844]

[c. 1832– 1835]

Edward Wallis

Edward Wallis

[c. 1818– 1847]

Edward Wallis

(Continued)

Edward Wallis published a version called Picturesque Round Game of the Produce & Manufactures, of the Counties of England & Wales Edward Wallis [c. 1826–1837]. The game was republished by J. Passmore in 1844, featuring a pictographic manufacturing map of England filled in with trees, mountains, cities, and laboring figures (similar to Star-Spangled Banner and Wanderers in the Wilderness). London and other important port cities are represented as the destinations of the ships that ring the island, busily coming and going with raw materials to import and goods to export. In many ways, shipping was the important lifeblood of the metropolitan center. Like Star-Spangled, Wanderers adopts a pictographic style for exploration of the South American continent, with special emphasis on animals.

See also Wallis’ locomotive game of railroad adventures [between 1818 and 1847]. J. Passmore printed this game.

The inventions highlighted in this game include everything from siege apparatus and explosives to time pieces, door hinges, and games like chess. As well, sciences such as astronomy are celebrated, along with the use of the microscope, hot air balloons, and advances in navigation, mining, and shipping.

See also earlier Wallis’ New Railway Game, or Tour through England and Wales.

Game of the Klondike, or Trip to the Gold Fields of Alaska Race to the Gold Diggings of Australia

All the World and his Wife at the Great Exhibition Chicago and World’s Columbian Exposition The Game of the British Empire or Trading with the Colonies

Game Title

(Continued)

Publisher

[c. 185–?]

1897

WWI

Part of the collection of the National Library of Australia, which is digitizing a number of its holdings, the round game has spaces overlaid on the ocean, with a central scene of digging gold. The box cover features an English fort, where a soldier points out to an English lady the coming of ships while indigenous peoples in brightly colored turbans and garments look through telescopes and hail the ship.

The American answer to the Great Exhibition, but a very spare board game without much embellishment. The box cover features Britannia resplendently looking over a port with cargo being loaded onto a steamer. “Each Player starts with a cargo from LONDON & has to deliver same and take up from the COLONIES what they export.” Probably around WWI given the construction and the emphasis on British manufacture (parents were urged to be patriotic about purchasing British toys, rather than German ones). See also games on the gold rush in Australia.

1892

Notes A series of couples ranging in size from the giant British pair visit the Exhibition in this dissected puzzle.

Price

[c. 1860]

Date

Index

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table. Page numbers followed by n indicate an endnote. adventure fiction 4, 10, 16, 21–22, 39, 50, 55, 57, 68–69, 75, 81, 82–83, 106–107, 108, 115–116, 123, 124, 126, 131, 133, 148, 155, 161, 168 Africa 7, 15, 24–25, 27, 29, 49n, 64, 65, 67, 74, 75, 76, 78, 85, 88–90, 95–96n, 103, 139n, 150–151, 154, 155, 177, 184n, 185–187n, 190n, 196, 201–202, 203, 222n, 224 A journey through Europe, or the play of geography (Jefferys) 4, 244 Akerman, James 55, 113 Alderson, Brian 161 America 1, 11, 20, 30–33, 46n, 65, 68, 77, 85, 88–90, 93–96n, 107–109, 115, 121, 123, 124, 126, 135, 140n, 141–191, 184–185n, 186–187n, 189n, 190n, 191n, 192, 193, 196, 199, 200, 209, 211, 212, 216, 217, 222n American games 46n American Revolution 7, 144, 179, 183, 187n Amusement in English History 4, 44n, 221n, 246 Anderson, Benedict 11, 70 animals 7, 19, 27, 30–31, 59, 60, 61, 74, 76, 77, 98, 102–103, 105, 112, 116, 130–131, 138n, 142, 145, 147, 155–158, 159–160, 161, 183, 186n, 187n, 193, 210, 217, 220, 241, 244, 253; see also hunting archives 11, 13, 17, 23, 42, 101, 136, 144, 188n, 220, 221n Armistead, Claire 213

Arnold, Dana 18–19 Asia 5, 37, 45n, 46n, 92, 107, 124, 126, 131, 132, 133, 170, 241, 242, 243, 248, 251 Aspin, Jehoshaphat 81–82, 83, 142, 152, 184n Assyrian Empire 29, 134 Athletic games 1, 36, 38–39, 48–49n Auerbach, Jeffrey 98, 119, 124, 131, 133, 134, 138n Austen, Jane 14–15, 41, 43 Australia 7, 11, 25, 27, 28, 53–54, 63, 67–68, 71, 74, 75, 78–82, 85, 89, 95n, 103, 107, 110–111, 112, 117, 124, 126, 131, 133–134, 139n, 184n, 192, 200, 221n Ballantyne, R.M. 39, 50, 69, 82–83, 83n Bancroft, George 32, 93–94n, 142, 166, 168–180, 189n, 190n, 193 Bang, Molly 180 barter 21, 24, 52–70; see also trade Bell, Robert 47n Belzoni, Giovanni 201–202, 223n Berger, John 10, 18, 114–115, 178, 220 Bernstein, Robin 12, 23, 43, 194 Betts, John 2, 10, 14, 19, 21, 23, 24–26, 48n, 51–52, 70–93, 94n, 95n, 96n, 97, 99, 117, 121, 122–123, 156, 157–158, 164, 179, 193, 211, 214, 241 Bhabha, Homi 27, 92, 106, 114 blank spaces 28, 57, 62, 63, 70, 107, 110, 168–169, 187n, 205, 249

256

Index

Boehmer, Elleke 116, 221n Boscawen, Mary F.E. 65, 104, 148, 153, 161, 178, 185–186n, 187n, 192, 222n [Bowdich], Sarah Lee 40 Boy Scouts 39, 214 Brantlinger, Patrick 15, 73 Bratton, J.S. 50, 68, 179 Britannia 73–74, 78, 92, 143, 148, 151, 243, 244, 249, 254 Brontë children’s juvenilia 40–41, 43 Brooke, James (Rajah of Sarawak) 82–84, 223n Brown, Ford Madox 140n, 223n Browning, Robert 140n, 202 Burnett, John 9–10, 47n, 68, 79, 130 Burrows, Mrs. E. 152–153 Burton, Antoinette 14, 140n Caillois, Roger 13, 47n, 47–48n, 48–49n Calvert, Karin 12, 41, 43, 44n Canada 27, 30, 41, 74, 75, 85, 88, 107, 139n, 142, 145, 147, 154, 157, 160–161, 166, 170, 178, 182, 183, 184n, 196, 203, 205 Cannadine, David 136 cannibalism, accusations of 113 card games 2, 32, 71, 98, 123, 142, 162, 195 Carpenter, Humphrey 1, 43 Carroll, Lewis 124–126, 144, 184n cartography 4, 6, 7, 19, 24–25, 27, 30, 52, 55, 56, 69–70, 71; globes 73, 74, 77, 80, 92, 93n, 98, 99, 101, 105, 106, 111, 116, 118, 137, 144–145, 169; see also blank spaces Catholicism, representations of 31–32, 142, 173–175 checks to forward motion 20–22, 25, 85–86, 143, 150, 151, 154, 160, 205, 206, 222n; see also retrograde motion Cheng, Chu-chueh 73, 94n Child, Lydia Marie 3, 250 children as soldiers 206, 208, 212; child development 2, 43, 45n, 46n, 88, 117, 161, 166, 188n, 206, 224n; child labor and the market 8, 9, 68, 92–93, 152, 154, 161; child player: 1–2, 11, 26–27, 36, 56, 59, 95n, 103–106, 117, 154, 159, 162, 166, 194, 206, 209; imperial child 10–11,

17, 23–24, 26–27, 32, 40, 43, 45n, 51, 67, 82, 88, 92–93, 98–99, 102, 103–106, 117, 132, 136–137, 152, 166, 186n, 194, 206, 211–212, 214; literary children 38, 50, 51, 63, 65, 69, 94n, 124, 126, 161, 168, 172, 186n; marketing demographic 5–6, 12–13, 23–24, 51, 117, 124, 126, 172; middle-class child 43, 117, 161, 168; the United States as a child country 142 China 52, 71, 84, 108, 123–124, 126, 131, 138n, 139n, 203; see also An Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire Christianity 51, 71, 74, 81, 89–90, 95–96n, 103, 105, 140n, 170, 173, 198, 199, 201, 217 Chronological Star of the World (Marshall) 4, 5, 23, 143, 221n, 244, 246, 250 CIA’s games 34–35, 211–212, 219 Clark, Beverly Lyon 11 Clemm, Sabine 98, 102, 105, 106, 108, 118–119, 130–131 climate change games 35, 208–209, 219 Colley, Linda 7, 24, 27, 30, 36, 53, 57, 67, 76–77, 92, 103, 183 colonial administration 77, 81–82, 92, 110, 142, 143, 152–153, 158, 168, 169, 175, 179, 185n, 193, 199 colonization 4, 13, 18, 22–23, 27, 28, 30, 32, 36, 40, 55, 80–81, 95–96n, 103, 104–105, 107, 113, 117, 167, 168–169, 170–172, 178, 189n, 193, 199–200 Columbia: Land of the West (Ogilvy) 9, 20, 23, 30–33, 141, 142, 162–184, 193, 216, 244, 245 Comic Game of the Great Exhibition (Spooner) 6, 20, 23, 26–27, 28–30, 52, 53, 99, 118–137, 141, 193 commerce see trade convict labor 25–26, 85–86, 87 Cook, Captain James 27, 30, 53, 57–58, 61–62, 66, 80–81, 93n, 112–115, 136, 139n, 150, 199–200 Cook, Chris 223–224n Cornwallis, Charles 180–182 cost of games 8–9, 47n, 71, 162–163, 240–254 cost of living 8–9, 46n, 47n, 110, 162–163

Index The Cottage of Content, or Right Roads and Wrong Roads (Spooner) 45n, 53, 247 Cruikshank, George 20, 28, 99, 119–121, 128–130, 134–137, 140n, 223n Crystal Palace see Great Exhibition The Crystal Palace Game (Evans) 23, 26–27, 30, 98, 99–118, 119, 139n, 140n, 141, 193 Cupples, Anne 148 Darton, Lawrence 2 Darton, William 2, 4, 5, 44n, 45n, 46n, 95n, 163, 242, 250 Davis, Morton 14, 48n, 195, 210, 213, 215, 218 Defoe, Daniel see Robinson Crusoe Dekker, Elly 70, 94n Denisoff, Dennis 10, 47n, 131, 132 Dillon, Diane 119, 137n Domini, Donatino 18, 43 Doonan, Jane 74, 112–113, 114, 136, 155 Dove, Jane Frances 1, 39 Driver, Felix 51 Dutch, as colonial rivals 32, 55, 65, 108, 131, 142–143, 168–169, 177–178, 181, 190n E.R. 47n14 East India Company 65, 85, 92, 108, 211 An Eccentric Excursion to the Chinese Empire (Spooner) 45n, 52, 248 Edgeworth, Maria 3, 40, 50, 144, 162, 187–188n, 188n Edney, Matthew 93n, 106–107, 108 education 1–3, 6, 10, 23, 25, 35, 43, 46n, 49n, 70–72, 77, 78, 92, 98, 119, 122, 126, 131, 139n, 162, 172, 176, 183, 187n, 193, 194, 195, 198, 208, 217 Egypt 64, 93n, 102, 124, 126, 135, 187n, 196–199, 201–203, 221n, 223n emigration 17, 19, 21, 23, 25–28, 30, 71, 78–79, 82, 86, 90, 99–101, 109–111, 113, 114, 117–118, 128, 133–134, 137, 139n, 141–142, 143, 145, 158–159, 160, 161, 177, 183, 185n 193, 252 Empire 1–2, 7–8, 34–36, 73, 195; capitalism and empires 35–36,

257

89–92, 95n, 195, 214–225; child’s place in 10–11; empire and daily life 14–15, 16, 37, 40–42, 49n, 67–68, 71–72, 73, 92–93, 108, 117; empire and decline 29, 134, 198; empire and games ethic 39; expansion 23–24, 57, 60, 105, 183; as humanitarian 21, 88–89, 94n, 104, 141–142, 153–154; linking players’ success to the Empire on the boards 20–21, 31, 55, 57, 59, 69, 85, 86–88, 141–143, 151, 200; at mid-century 16; representing Empire on boards 17, 19–20, 37–38, 43–44, 51–52, 73–77, 94n, 101–103, 105–106, 108, 136–137, 143, 195–198, 200–201; scenes from the Empire 32–33, 102–103, 104, 111, 186n; see also adventure fiction; Assyrian Empire; children as soldiers, imperial child; emigration; European rivals; Roman Empire; trade European rivals 48n, 75, 77, 90–92, 93n, 126, 152–153, 167–168, 170–172, 177–178, 182–183, 184, 189, 193–194, 201, 216 Evans, Henry Smith 19, 23, 26–30, 98–99, 99–118, 119, 122, 126, 128, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138n, 139n, 140n, 179, 193, 214, 215 Fabian, Johannes 105, 137, 137n, 168–169 Fisher, Len 14, 48n, 210 Forman-Brunell, Miriam 11 Foucault, Michel 48–49n, 214 French, as colonial rivals 31–32, 55, 129, 132, 142, 143, 168, 169–170, 173–175, 178, 182, 185n, 190n From the Ranks to Commander-inChief 34, 195, 203–207, 214, 217, 246 Fortnite (game) 35, 195, 212–213, 219, 224n Fortunio and his seven gifted servants (Spooner) 52–53, 248 Funnyshire Fox Chase (Spooner) 52–53, 119, 248 Game of Life (Milton Bradley) 3, 192, 224n; see also The New Game of Human Life (Wallis and Newbery)

258

Index

“Game of Life” (von Neumann’s computer game) 13–14, 219 Game of Life: Empire 35, 217–218 Game of the Goose 20, 21, 46n, 114, 119, 221n Game of the Star-Spangled Banner (Wallis) 19, 21, 23, 30–31, 85, 141–142, 144–162, 193 games see card games; cost of games; game theory; mass market for children’s games arose; material culture analysis; middle class, rise of; parlor games; pictographic maps; publishing; video games; women, girls and gameplay Games Research Database (GARD) 11, 163, 189n, 240 game theory 13–14, 16, 34, 35, 48n, 195, 210–213, 215, 218, 219 gaming disorder 224n Gaskell, Elizabeth 49n Geertz, Clifford 15, 55, 136 geographers 4, 6, 97, 109, 162 geography (as educational subject) 3–10, 13, 17, 20, 40, 42, 43, 46, 51, 52, 53, 57–58, 63, 65, 70, 81, 82, 89, 92, 99, 104, 108–109, 115–116, 142, 148, 152–154, 161, 162, 172, 178, 184–185n, 186n, 187–188n, 192, 198, 199, 201, 222; see also cartography; geographers; Royal Geographic Society Gill, Helene 97, 108, 116, 131, 138n Giochi dell’Oca e di Percorso 11, 221n girls and women and game play 11–12, 39, 40, 49n globes see cartography Gobet, Fernand 38 gold 7, 21, 24, 25, 32, 51, 56, 64–65, 67, 73, 76, 78–81, 85, 94n, 95n, 107, 108, 109, 110, 117, 142, 151, 153, 154, 169, 171–172, 188n, 193, 241, 242, 243, 254 Golden Age 42, 124 Golding, William 39 Gompertz, Will 212 Gosden, Chris 79, 116–118 Goswami, Supriya 37 Great Exhibition (also known as the Crystal Palace) 4, 6–9, 17–18, 20, 22–24, 26–29, 30, 51, 53, 73, 92, 97–140, 141, 183, 193, 194, 196, 197, 215, 221n, 222n, 241, 244, 245, 246, 249, 254

Great Game 7, 13, 22, 24, 36–38, 43, 48n, 57, 62, 69, 118, 161, 192, 214 Green, Martin 50 Greenaway, Kate 95n Grenby, M.O. 48n, 121–122 Grewal, Inderpal 18 Gubar, Marah 42 Hall, Catherine 14, 51, 92, 147 Handlin, Lillian 168 Hannas, Linda 6, 46n, 144, 162–163, 187–188n, 188, 221 Harley, J.B. 7, 58, 69–70, 105, 118, 147, 185n Hartwell, R.M. 9, 46n Hayward, Arthur 9, 97, 105 Heath, Michelle Beissel 2, 142, 217, 224n Higonnet, Margaret 11 Hill, Gillian 6, 46n, 52, 71, 74, 98, 102, 110, 138n, 162, 184n Hobsbawm, E.J. 8, 46n Hofland, Barbara 40, 51, 90, 186n Hopkins, Chris 135 Howitt, Mary 189n Huizinga, Johan 12, 47n, 47–48n, 48–49n Hunger Games (Collins) 35, 213–214 Hunt, Peter 16, 18, 62, 158–159 hunting 56, 58, 76, 79, 85, 103, 122, 138n, 172, 187n, 246, 247 Hutcheon, Linda 126, 135 imperialism see Empire India 22, 27, 37–38, 41–42, 47n, 49n, 65, 71, 74, 75, 77–78, 85, 89, 92, 93n, 94n, 95n, 102–103, 107–108, 115, 116, 118, 122, 123, 126, 132–133, 139n, 140n, 151, 155, 160, 162, 171, 184n, 189n, 192, 195, 196, 203, 221n, 244 Indians (in America) see Native Americans indigenous peoples Maori 57; Aboriginal Australians 79–80; America 93–94, 121, 186–187n, 158–159; Australia 62–63; Erromango 58, 59, 61–62; Niger Delta region 67; Sarawak 82–84; South Africa 64; in Spooner’s game 58, 60–63, 65; Sudan 63 islands 24–25, 50, 51, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 62, 68, 72, 75, 80–81, 84, 92, 93n, 94n, 95n, 107, 111, 112–115, 138n, 139n, 217, 243

Index James, T.G.H. 223n Jamestown 169–170, 175, 177, 178, 179, 190n Jenkins, Henry 43 Johnson, Jane, nursery library 45–46n Johnstone, Christian Isabel 96n Jumanji and “Jumanji” 220 Karrow, Robert W. 106, 109, 139n Keep Cool (game) (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) 35, 208 Kipling, Rudyard Kim 22, 37–39, 50, 94n, 118, 192; “Lispeth” 41–42; Stalky 38–39, 48n, 49n Kirby, Mary and Elizabeth 58, 141, 148, 153, 154, 155, 172, 185–186n, 222n Knapman, Gareth 84 Knowles, Chantal 79, 116–118 Kutzer, M. Daphne 16, 50 Lefebvre, Henri 44, 114–115 Locke, John 6, 46n Logan, Mawuena Kossi 88–89, 95n, 116, 154, 190n London 19, 25, 27, 45n, 50, 51, 70, 71, 73, 75, 77, 89–92, 94n, 95–96n, 96n, 97, 113, 119, 121, 123, 134, 137n, 139n, 151, 160, 162, 187n, 196, 207, 223n, 242, 243, 247, 249, 250, 253, 254 Machkovech, Sam 211–212 MacKenzie, John M. 14, 98, 108, 201 Mangan, J.A. 39, 114, 121 mapping see cartography mass market for children’s games arose 1–2, 99 material culture analysis 1, 11–13, 16, 23, 41, 79, 122, 194, 210 McClintock, Anne 55, 70, 176 McDonald, Robert 71–72, 141, 202, 223n McDougall, Henriette 82 McGillis, Roderick 154 Meyer, Susan 41 Michals, Teresa 10 middle class, rise of 1–2, 4–11, 16, 24, 35–36, 37, 43–44, 49n, 70–71, 73, 92, 140n, 163, 168, 175, 183, 184n, 194, 211, 214–215, 217 missing turns see checks to forward motion missionaries 7–8, 10, 13, 27–28, 39, 41–42, 64, 71, 80–81, 82, 94n, 98,

259

111, 113, 140n, 143, 145, 168, 183, 241 Mitchell, Sally 49n Moebius, Walter 18, 102, 103, 112, 113, 128, 129, 172, 175, 178, 222n Mogridge, George 91 Monopoly 1, 35, 192, 211, 217–218 Montefiore, Arthur 94n Moretti, Franco 21–22, 55 Morgenstern, Oskar 215 Mortimer, Favell Lee 40, 51, 63, 81–83, 186n Murray, H.J.R. 13, 37–38, 47n, 47–48n museums 9, 11, 25, 28, 71, 97–98, 101, 117, 118, 134, 137, 183, 202, 221n, 223n Native Americans 30–32, 143, 154, 158–160, 170–176, 180, 186–187n, 216 Neale, Hannah 49n Nelson, Admiral Horatio 53, 60, 93n, 102, 138n, 196, 221–222n, 222n Nelson, Claudia 40 Newbery, Elizabeth 3, 44n, 144, 219, 224n, 250 Newbolt, Henry 38 The New Game of Human Life (Wallis and Newbery) 3, 217, 219, 224n, 250 New York City 30, 33, 147, 161, 166–167, 177, 184n, 190n Nodelman, Perry 18, 67, 73, 74, 121, 145, 155 Norfolk Island 25–26, 85–86; see also convict labor Ogilvy, David 44n, 163, 244 Ogilvy, E. and M.A. 2, 4, 5, 9, 19–20, 23, 30–34, 46n, 53, 55, 93n, 123, 140n, 141–144, 162–184, 188n, 189n, 190n, 191n, 193, 214, 216, 245 O’Malley, Andrew 2, 4, 43, 70 Onwhyn, Thomas 119, 135, 140n Oyens, Felix 161 Parlett, David 37–38, 47n, 161 parlor games 22, 39–41, 95n Parsons, Timothy 50, 64, 67, 68, 75–77, 117, 139n, 183, 184n, 185n, 221n Pearson, Richard 121 Peck, Michael 209

260

Index

penal colony see convict labor; Norfolk Island Philips, Deborah 102, 132 Phillips, Richard 107, 138n, 168 pictographic maps 52, 145, 147, 251, 252, 253 piracy 36, 56, 60, 61, 77, 82–83, 170 The Pirate and Traders of the West Indies (Spooner) 22, 82–83, 95n Plumb, J.H. 1, 43 Pocahontas 175–177, 190n Porter, Bernard 14–16, 36, 69 postcolonial studies/approach 6, 13, 14–18, 30, 34, 36, 61, 70, 92–93, 109, 116, 118, 170–171, 194, 209–210, 215–216, 218, 220 Potsdam Climate Institute’s game 35, 208 Pratt, Mary Louise 201 publishing 1–2, 6, 10, 17–20, 23–24, 27, 30, 32–33, 51–52, 71–72, 78, 98, 99, 115, 144–145, 161, 163, 166, 188n, 195–196, 219, 221n, 240; publishing process, copperplate and lithography 7, 53, 93n, 184n Pyramid of History (also known as New Tee-To-Tum Game: The Pyramid of History) (Sallis) 20, 22, 34, 195–203, 247 Queen Victoria 6, 17, 33, 34, 81–82, 101–102, 123, 129–130, 139n, 151, 162, 195, 196, 197–198, 200–201, 221n, 223n, 243, 247 Ramaswamy, Sumathi 71, 94n, 194 Ransome, Arthur 38–39 Rappaport, Erika 91 retrograde motion see checks to forward motion Richards, Eric 110, 117, 145 Richards, Jeffrey 14, 50 Ritvo, Harriet 103, 138n, 157, 186n rivals see European Rivals The Road to Peace (United Nations) 208 Robinson Crusoe 69, 93n, 115–118 Roman Empire 73, 134; see also Assyrian Empire; Empire Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 134, 140n Rossetti, William 134 The Royal Game of British Sovereigns 44n, 144, 161

Royal Game of the Gathering of Nations (Betts) 73, 122, 241 The Royal Geographic Pastime (Jefferys, Thomas) 46n, 247 Royal Geographic Society 27, 51, 99 Rushdie, Salmon 139n Said, Edward 6, 8, 14–15, 34, 37, 48n, 69, 70, 83, 92–93, 94n, 118, 158, 171, 211, 216 Sallis, William 4, 5, 20, 22, 34, 44n, 45n, 93n, 195–203, 207, 214, 221n, 222n, 223n, 246–247 Sarawak 36, 57, 82–84, 221n, 223n Schulten, Susan 27 Seeley, J.R. 14 Seton, Rosemary 71 Seville, Adrian 21, 40, 46n, 119, 140n, 221n Shefrin, Jill 7, 13, 20, 48n, 119, 163 Sherwood, Mary Martha 57, 81–83 slavery and enslavement 17, 19, 20–21, 23, 26, 27, 30–32, 34, 77, 86–90, 101, 103–105, 112, 115, 116, 117, 123, 126, 133, 142–144, 147, 148–155, 160, 161, 170, 172, 177–178, 183, 185n, 185–186n, 188n, 190n, 193, 214, 217, 246; see also slave trade slave trade 21, 103–104, 142–144, 151, 177–178, 185–186n, 186n, 188, 217 Smith, Johanna 16, 51 South America 65–66, 75, 107–108, 115, 124, 126, 145, 241, 250, 253 Spooner, William 2, 6, 9, 20, 21–22, 23, 24–30, 36, 45n, 48n, 50–70, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80–82, 83, 84, 89, 92, 93n, 94n, 95n, 97, 98, 99, 111, 118–137, 138n, 154, 187n, 193, 214–215, 216, 243, 244, 247–249 stasis see checks to forward motion Stevenson, Robert Louis and Treasure Island 38, 48n, 50, 82–83, 93n, 95n, 139n Stoler, Ann Laura 185n, 214 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 88, 151–152, 186n Stringam, Jean 155, 157 Strouhal, Ernst 196 Stuart, Keith 213, 224n sugar, cultivation, consumption, and display of, 15, 27, 46n, 56n, 65,

Index 78, 108, 110, 139n, 150, 151, 153, 185n, 186n, 208 Suleri, Sara 192–193 Sutton’s Geography Cards 94n Swift, Jonathan 97 take-or-pay economics 24–25, 52, 56, 63–70, 79, 84, 89–90, 92, 93n, 135; see also trade Tar of all Weathers: A game of the British colonies (Ogilvy) 32–34, 162, 163, 188n, 245 Taylor, Arthur 8, 9 Therrien, Alex 225n A Tour through the British colonies and foreign possessions (Betts) 10, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25–26, 50, 51, 70–93, 94n, 95n, 97, 99, 117, 121, 122, 141, 156, 157, 179, 193, 211, 241 trade 8, 14, 17, 19, 24–26, 28, 50–96, 97, 108, 114–115, 118, 131, 135, 139, 147, 154, 162, 166, 167, 170, 175, 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 214–215, 217, 218, 245, 249, 247; see also barter; piracy; slave trade; take-or-pay economics United Nations’ game 35, 208, 219 United States see America Vallone, Lynne 40 Victoria, Queen see Queen Victoria video games 36, 212, 216, 224n Vincent, David 3 A Visit to Uncle William 91–92 Voyage of Discovery, or the Five Navigators (Spooner) 9, 20, 21–25,

261

26, 36, 50, 51, 52–70, 92, 94n, 97, 99, 111, 119, 135–136, 141, 154, 187, 193, 216, 249 Voyage Round the World (Betts) 241 Wakefield, Priscilla 40, 51, 65–66, 68, 89–90, 108–109, 186n, 201–202, 222n Wallis, Edward 5, 19, 21, 23, 30–31, 32, 33, 44n, 45n, 85, 99, 141–162, 163, 166–167, 183, 184n, 185n, 186–187n, 193, 214, 216, 246, 251, 252–253 Wallis, John 2, 3, 4, 30, 32, 44n, 45n, 99, 144–145, 163, 184n, 214, 217, 219, 224n, 242, 246, 250, 251 Wallis’s Complete Voyage Round the World 144, 150–151, 250 Ward, Bud 209 Ward, Mrs. R. [Fanny Umphelby] 153 Washington, DC (city) 30, 33, 147, 166, 184n, 186n, 188n, 189n Washington, George 172, 180–182 Weigall, H. 187n Whitehouse, F.R.B. 13, 43, 47n, 49n, 53, 57, 93n, 139n, 196 Williams, John Rev. 27, 30, 113–115, 136 Wilson, Lucy [Sarah Atkins] 222n, 223n, 243 women, girls and gameplay 11–12, 39–41, 49n The Wonders of the World (Spooner) 45n, 52, 249 Yenika-Agbaw, Vivian 194 Zipes, Jack 42