Being a Biting Satire on English Colonisation
By R. B. Cunninghame Graham

1896

The Imperial Kailyard: Being a Biting Satire on English Colonisation, published in 1896 by Twentieth Century Press, was a short anti-colonial pamphlet by Scottish writer and socialist R.B. Cunninghame Graham, directly attacking the sentimental, nostalgic "Kailyard" novels (like those by Barrie, Crockett) by showing them as a false, sugary view of Scotland that ignored imperialism and social issues, instead presenting a bitter critique of English colonial exploitation through a Scottish lens. It was a key text for early Scottish socialists challenging the dominant imperial narrative.

“No one doubts that eventually the Matabele will be conquered, and that our flag will wave triumphantly over the remnant of them in the same way it waves triumphantly over the workhouse pauper and the sailors' poor whore in the east end of London. Let it wave on over an empire reaching from north to south, from east to west, wave over every island, hitherto ungrabbed, on every sterile desert and fever-haunted swamp as yet unclaimed, over the sealer amid the icebergs, stripping the fur from the live seal, on purpose to oblige a lady; over the abandoned transport camel, perishing of thirst in the Sudan: and still keep waving over Leicester Square, where music halls at night belch out crowds of stout imperialists.”

― R.B. Cunninghame Graham, The Imperial Kailyard: Being a Biting Satire on English Colonisation

130mm x 187mm x 7mm

R3,000