Worlds of the Ring

Circuses and their grand arenas shaped the entertainment industry between the wars and excited both small-town and big-city audiences. Worlds of the Ring makes an original and significant contribution to the history of popular culture by highlighting the correlation between the modern circus's evolution and modes of imperialism and nationalism. Through the cases of the German Sarrasani and the British Bertram W. Mills' circuses this study examines how these enterprises animated both the nation and its others for popular audiences. Circuses and performers constructed different worlds for their audiences and for themselves and the book looks at this cultural history of European circuses between 1918 and 1945 from a transnational perspective. The interwar era's interrelated international and national forces shaped the modern circus, which the book recovers through the lives of different people involved in this industry. Through the concept of Orientalism, it probes the mechanisms at play in depicting foreign and exotic worlds in the circus. It is based on a variety of sources including newspapers, legal documents, advertisements, economic correspondence, photographs, and performers' archives. Worlds of the Ring offers a new understanding of circus as a form of interwar popular culture, its globalisation, and anchoring in European imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century.