Ear Trumpets Wanted, please!’: disability and the imperial circulation of things, c. 1880-1939.

This chapter argues that many ‘disability things’ used and made in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain, can be read in an imperial light. From the raw materials from which ‘disability things’ were fashioned, to the way in which they were used contribute to projects of cultural imperialism, from their circulation around places of empire, many can be placed in the context of wider imperial stories. The chapter argues that we must take this colonial context seriously. In this period, Britain governed a global empire and benefitted from the financial gains, social status and political power this generated. This is a past that critical colonial scholars, Black Lives Matter activists, and anti-racist critics have argued has been subsumed within a wider ‘imperial amnesia’ that must now be challenged. The chapter also urges us to note the spatial dynamics of material culture; the fact that objects (were) moved across spaces, between sites of empire, from, in this case, metropole to colony, is significant, and so is the micro-level at which these movements occurred. Whilst disability things could be highly personalised or created by an individual for their own use, they could also be transferred, adapted, repurposed, and reused. Whilst many of these transfers occurred in domestic settings, they could also occur along imperial lines, and the unequal power dynamics represented therein are significant.