Oecumenic Colonial Carnivals

Abstract

Although historians have long recognized the importance of Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees as occasions that strengthened articulations of imperial ideology, they have not always been understood as distinctively religious events. This chapter begins by tracing the growing expectation that Victoria should become the centre of national religious occasions, which ran against her wishes but proved impossible to deny. It then moves on to discuss the ways in which, with the telling exception of Irish Roman Catholics, different Christian denominations celebrated enthusiastically but distinctively during the Jubilees. It shows how Jubilee sermons constructed Victoria as a godly sovereign and called for a restoration of the British Empire’s Christian ideals. The chapter also argues, though, that the meaning of the Jubilees cannot be reduced to Christian chauvinism. The homages of Jews, Hindus, and Muslims were not merely sycophantic acts of imitation, but attempts to align Victoria with their distinctive religious positions and the hopes they held of Empire.