Entertaining the Empire

The stage entertainments known as music hall emerged in mid-Victorian London just as the British began colonising large parts of the world.Settlers recreated this metropolitan popular culture throughout the empire and in places under foreign control. They erected music halls resembling those at home, imported songs and sketches, performed inamateur shows and watched touring professionals. London originals were rewritten as commentaries on local conditions. This activity transformed music hall into a marker of an exclusionary British identity overseas and made colonies look and sound more like Britain. The result was that settlers separated by vast distances were linked by a shared popular culture. The touring circuits and cultural affinities the Victorians created endure to this day.