Blue Skies into White Space: Southern African Responses to the Trans-African Flight of the Silver Queen, 1920 (April 2018)
The first trans-African flight from London to Cape Town in 1920 was feted by white observers as a major achievement in consolidating the links between South Africa and the British Empire. Probing the comments made by black and white contemporary observers on the meaning of the flight, this article explores the cultural and political connotations of aviation in a colonial and imperial setting. It emphasizes that the celebration of the superiority of Western technology as a tool in the consolidation of white minority rule was marked by white anxieties about African disobedience. The public responses to the flight of the Silver Queen also reverberated with the debates between Afrikaners and British South Africans about the shaping of a white South African identity. Nationalist Afrikaners hesitated to welcome the flight because it was viewed as a symbol of closer connections with the Empire. Cultural differences and political conflicts, not only between whites and blacks but also within the white settler society, influenced the public discourse about technological progress.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Katherine Chandler;
(2022)
Apartheid drone: Infrastructures of militarism and the hidden genealogies of the South African Seeker
(/isis/citation/CBB611340328/)
Book
Storey, William Kelleher;
(2008)
Guns, Race, and Power in Colonial South Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB000954010/)
Book
Hughes, David McDermott;
(2006)
From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a South African Frontier
(/isis/citation/CBB000930062/)
Book
Joshua Grace;
(2021)
African Motors: Technology, Gender, and the History of Development
(/isis/citation/CBB668478842/)
Article
Malcolm Abbott;
Jill Bamforth;
(June 2021)
Government procurement policy and the establishment of manufacturing: Aircraft industry in Australia, Canada and South Africa 1918–39
(/isis/citation/CBB835459566/)
Book
William Beinart;
Saul Dubow;
(2021)
The Scientific Imagination in South Africa: 1700 to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB985054539/)
Book
Kirsten Rüther;
Martina Barker-ciganikova;
Daniela Waldburger;
Carl-philipp Bodenstein;
(2020)
The Politics of Housing in (Post-)Colonial Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB734427885/)
Book
Chandra D. Bhimull;
(2017)
Empire in the Air: airline travel and the African diaspora
(/isis/citation/CBB875010001/)
Book
McBride, David;
(2002)
Missions for Science: U. S. Technology and Medicine in America's African World
(/isis/citation/CBB000301936/)
Article
Priya Mirza;
(2022)
‘Sovereignty of the air’: The Indian princely states, the British Empire and carving out of air-space (1911–1933)
(/isis/citation/CBB391441254/)
Article
Marc J. Alsina;
(January 2022)
Aviation for the People: Class and State Aviation in Perón's "New Argentina," 1946–55
(/isis/citation/CBB676875807/)
Article
Carton, Benedict;
(2006)
“We Are Made Quiet by This Annihilation”: Historicizing Concepts of Bodily Pollution and Dangerous Sexuality in South Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001031167/)
Book
Wood, Felicity;
Lewis, Michael;
(2007)
The Extraordinary Khotso: Millionaire Medicine Man from Lusikisiki
(/isis/citation/CBB000952005/)
Thesis
Fabio Terence Palmi Zoia;
(2015)
Sanitizing South Africa: Race, Racism and Germs in the Making of the Apartheid State, 1880-1980
(/isis/citation/CBB935949008/)
Thesis
Xaba, Thokozani T.;
(2004)
Witchcraft, Sorcery or Medical Practice? The Demand, Supply and Regulation of Indigenous Medicines in Durban, South Africa (1844--2002)
(/isis/citation/CBB001561854/)
Article
Julia Tischler;
(2021)
“The Only Industry That Can Make Us Hold Our Own”: Black Agrarianism in South Africa from a Transatlantic Perspective, ca. 1910–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB829320923/)
Article
Rachel Adams;
(2021)
Can artificial intelligence be decolonized?
(/isis/citation/CBB237800539/)
Book
Gabrielle Hecht;
(2023)
Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures
(/isis/citation/CBB335124096/)
Book
Rebecca Retzlaff;
Ryan Reft;
Phillips de Lucas, Amanda K.,;
(2023)
Justice and the Interstates : The racist truth about urban highways
(/isis/citation/CBB151598469/)
Article
Jonathan Hyslop;
(December 2017)
Southampton to Durban on the Union Castle Line: An Imperial Shipping Company and the limits of globality c. 1900–39
(/isis/citation/CBB244629660/)
Be the first to comment!