Empire of the Mind: Subscription Libraries, Literacy & Acculturation in the Colonies of the British Empire

In his ground-breaking Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson declared that the census, map and museum shaped the manner in which the colony imagined its dominion, the nature of the colonized, the geography of the colony and the ancestral right of the colonizer to rule. The author’s analysis not only highlighted the impact of print culture within a colonial setting but also created an opportunity to explore how other information gathering institutions may have contributed to the social and cultural development of both the metropolis and the colony. This dissertation is designed to build upon Anderson’s work through an analysis of the social and cultural roles subscription libraries played throughout the colonies of the British Empire. By analyzing British government documents, library annual reports and a variety of secondary sources, this study will assess the history, growth and development of subscription librarianship in the colonies of Jamaica, Malaysia and Nigeria as a microcosm for British-controlled areas of the Caribbean, Asia and Africa respectively. This dissertation will argue that colonial subscription library development was a key component of “Neo-Macaulayism” which advocated the cultural enfranchisement and intellectual development of the indigenous elite to maintain a fully functioning colonial government bureaucracy against the threats of disloyalty and illiteracy.