Burma image, WA0041. Crowd listening to gramophone. Background clear. P.R. Photograph taken by James Henry Green in Kachin Land, Burma (Myanmar). It was taken in the 1920s. Nung people listening to gramophone. It was common for British officers throughout the Empire to travel with gramophone records. These and other mechanical devices were taken deliberately to help smooth the way into new, potentially hostile villages. It was believed that a demonstration of such a mechanical device would create curiosity amongst the villagers which might displace their hostility. It was also believed that villagers might be impressed by what the officers assumed would be considered as evidence of their 'technical superiority'. It also seems to have been the case that such occasions also provided British officers with opportunities for assessing the response of the villagers to these items which they believed could enable them to gauge the 'ethos' of the group, and thence whether or not the young men might make suitable recruits. Wherever Green went on his tours in what is today Kachin State, he always put on a demonstration of the gramophone as soon as he could and he tells how it always drew large crowds. In this way, a large audience would be generated for his recruitment campaign.
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