This paper aims to study the relationship between colonialism, natives’ representations, and the promotion of Western products. An illustration from Agnes Newton Keith’s semi-autobiography, Land Below The Wind (1939), and an advertisement from a North Borneo newspaper, The British North Borneo Herald, are used as the corpus for this study. The illustration in Keith’s book illustrates a native woman, a Western man, and a tropical setting set in the colonial era. Meanwhile, the newspaper advertisement promotes a healthy tonic drink from a British brand, Wincarnis. The discussion on the aspect of colonialism, natives’ representations, and promotion of Western products is carried out with the semiotic analysis of the illustration and the advertisement using Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework of The Grammar of Visual Design (1996/2006). Elements such as symbolism and image positioning in the illustration and the advertisement are analysed to emphasise ‘the lure of the tropics.’ From the analysis of the corpus, it is found that Agnes Newton Keith, who is also the illustrator of the book, and the advertiser of the brand Wincarnis seem to promote the ideologies of imperialism and colonialism brought by the British Empire. However, the enticing and sexual messages in both illustration and advertisement make one questions the morality of the Empire itself.
Andaya, B. W., & Andaya, L. Y. (2001). A history of Malaysia (2nd ed.). PALGRAVE.
Baker, J. (2008). Crossroads: A popular history of Malaysia and Singapore (2nd ed.). Marshall Cavendish.
Cutajar, D. (1987). The lure of the orient: the Schranzes, the Brockdorffs, Preziosi and other artists. Hyphen, 5(3), 101-136.
Diffie, B. W., & Winius, G. D. (1977). Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415-1580. University of Minnesota Press.
Hooker, V. M. (2003). A short history of Malaysia: Linking east and west. Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Keith, A. N. (2010). Land below the wind. K. M. Wong & J. Macartney (eds.). Kota Kinabalu: Opus Publications (Original work published in 1939).
Kerr, D. (2008). Eastern figures: Orient and Empire in British writing. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Oxon: Taylor and Francis.
Leong, A. K. W., & Abdul Latif Harun. (2018). Grand strategy of the Malacca Sultanate, 1400-1511. Comparative Strategy, 37(1), 49-55.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2017.1419726
Dalle, M., & Jundi, M. (2021). Sosio-politik orang Bugis dan Islamisasi masyarakat Sulawesi Timur di zaman kolonialisasi Belanda. Heuristik: Jurnal Pendidikan Sejarah, 1 (2), 90-106. https://doi.org/10.31258/hjps.1.2.90-106
Shalina R. (2015). Bead crafts regaining lost glory. The Borneo Post. Retrieved from https://www.theborneopost.com/2015/10/10/bead-crafts-regaining-lost-glory/
Werness, H. B. (2004). The continuum encyclopedia of animal symbolism in art. New York: Continuum.
Wincarnis. (1940). You will be surprised how quickly you pick up [Advertisement]. The British Borneo Herald and Official Gazette, viii.
Wright, L. B. (1970). Gold, glory and the gospel: The adventurous lives and times of the Renaissance explorers. Atheneum.
In-Text Citation: (Pakri & Hull, 2022)
To Cite this Article: Pakri, M. R., & Hull, A. A. R. and P. (2022). The Lure of the Tropics and the Colonial Emporium: The Study of Book Illustration and Newspaper Advertisement in Colonial North Borneo. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(11), 11– 21.
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
