An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj - Hardcover

Metcalf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520062353 ISBN 13: 9780520062351

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

The magnificent buildings constructed by the British in India, many of which may still be seen by the traveller, did not spring simply from the fancy of the architects or from purely aesthetic or administrative concerns: Rather they embodied a vision the British had of themselves as rulers of India. An Imperial Vision examines the relationship between culture and power as expressed in the architectural forms the British employed in India. From the great monuments of New Delhi to the most obscure structures in dusty country towns these buildings visibly represented in stone the choices the British made in politics as imperial rulers. The author illustrates how, in the years after the uprising of 1857, the British constructed a vision of themselves not as mere foreign conquerors, but as legitimate, almost indigenous rulers, linked directly to the Mughals and hence to India's own past. In so doing they created the distinctive forms of so-called Indo-Saracenic architecture. For a half a century this building sustained a new ideology of empire. Yet this self-confidence could not endure forever. By the 1920s, despite the massive building projects underway on the plains of Delhi, the knowledge, and the power, that upheld the Raj had alike begun to slip away. An Imperial Vision, by its focus upon the relationships of culture and power that underlay the colonial order, throws light on the distinctive nature of late nineteenth-century imperialism, and more generally, on the way political authority takes shape in monumental architecture.

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Land, Landlords and the British Raj (California, 1979), among other books.

Synopsis:

Analyzes British architecture in India, discusses its political implications, and looks at the Indo-Saracenic style the British developed.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0520062353
• ISBN 13: 9780520062351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 316