Colonial Heroes

As cultural constructions deeply embedded in the mechanisms of power and symbolism associated with organized human groups, heroic reputations reverberate with the dominant concepts and beliefs of the polity within which they emerge. Taken in the context of nineteenth-century Europe, these reputations can be described as a site of collective memory, cementing in part the ‘imagined community’ of the nation to which they belong (Anderson, 1983). Hero-making is closely linked to dominant worldviews and therefore open to constant contestation and negotiation (Cubitt and Warren, 2001). Whereas national heroes have been a long-standing feature of organized states, colonial heroes appear as