This chapter examines specific places and modes that were central to imperial cultures.
These include clubs, hill stations and spas, as well as several other imperial sites and signs of sociability and dominance. Drawing on a variety of colonial empires, it analyses some of the myriad expressions of colonial power, themselves deeply influenced by fears of colonial vulnerability, and tied to questions of gender.
It thus explores links between colonial fragility (death rates, colonial regimens, boredom and the colonial blues, prophylaxis against disease), anxieties and assertions of imperial dominance. It probes some of the tensions between the ideals of leisure and relaxation on the one hand, and intrepid exploration and suffering on the other. It encompasses several forms of leisure, including colonial hunting, clubs and resorts. The chapter also considers the ways in which the colonial mirror was broken: in trying to reproduce Britain at Simla, Germany at Dschang, the United States at Baguio, the Netherlands at Bandung, or France at Ifrane and Dalat, colonial powers betrayed at once their desire for a hermetic form of colonialism, averred their desire for separation from indigenous peoples and created often kitsch replicas of home, but also opened a number of possibilities for subversion and resistance on the part of local populations. Chronologically, this chapter spans the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.
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