Making Everything Higgledy-Piggledy:
Mary Poppins and Her Critique of High Colonialism
Michael Cullinane
Associate Director, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Teaching Faculty, Department of History
This talk is aimed at demonstrating an innovative and non-theoretical way to introduce “high colonialism” to an undergraduate class—just let Mary Poppins tell the story. The talk explores the many ways that Mary and her group of professional leftists engaged in an effort to reveal the evils of capitalism while advocating for a better society, one that allows everyone to vote, sing, dance, and fly kites. Mary teaches us about how banks sponsored conquest, how colonial commodities transformed European life and led to an insatiable demand for more and more…, and demonstrates that the institutions that emerged from all this further supported a male-dominated social order. Sadly, in the end, these vanguards of revolution contradict their own message by condoning, even promoting, the frivolous use of one exceptional high colonial commodity—SUGAR!
Michael Cullinane is the Associate Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and a Teaching Faculty in the Department of History. He has extensive research and residence in the Philippines, with interests in 19th and 20th-century Philippine social, political, and demographic history. He teaches the two introductory courses on Southeast Asia.