Scent and the Nation

Immediate and visceral, the sense of smell shapes how we experience the world—and ideas about smell are equally powerful. In this innovative study, Jessica P. Clark follows the olfactory sense to trace the entangled histories of nationalism, identity, and difference in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Exploring the cultural and ideological dimensions of scent during a period of transformation across the British world, she charts how privileged groups used smell to stake claims to a white, English identity rooted in a nostalgic rural past—often to the exclusion of the urban poor and racialized groups.

Drawing on a wide range of sources including press coverage, medical texts, public health reports, perfumery firm records, and wartime memoirs, Clark analyzes historical descriptions of smells, from raw sewage to lavender. She demonstrates how claims about naturalized 'English' scents and 'alien' odors such as environmental pollutants, cooking smells, and body odor gained traction among public health officials, politicians, and the public, and played a crucial role in the development of racial and ethnic classifications. As she charts the circulation of these ideas, she also traces their effects on people's lived experiences, from impoverished children to imprisoned suffragists to soldiers stationed on the Western Front. Connecting sensory studies with histories of nationalism, and offering new perspectives on urbanization, public health, and the Great War, this book reveals the ideas and anxieties embedded in scent.