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

Metcalf, Thomas R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571154190 ISBN 13: 9780571154197

Publisher: Faber Inc, 1989

Synopsis

"An Imperial Vision" explores the relationship between culture and power as revealed in the architectural forms the British used in their buildings in India between 1830 and 1930. It illustrates how, in the years after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the British gradually acquired a vision of themselves as something more than conquerors. In the author's view they saw themselves as legitimate rulers linked directly to the Mughals and so to India's past. This assumed connection was the origin of the distinctive "Indo-Saracenic" architectural form as well as other imperial styles. The author contends that from the great monuments of New Delhi to obscure structures in remote towns up country what the British built in stone reflected political decisions they had made as imperial rulers. For over 50 years such architecture helped sustain a new ideology of empire. But, by the 1920s the vision and the power that had upheld the Raj begun to slip away, in spite of the massive building projects Lutyens and Baker were bringing to fruition in the plains of Delhi.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"Not a catalogue raisonné of colonial buildings but a significant step forward into the new discipline of 'political architecture'—an important advance in widening our perceptions of colonialism as expressed in one of its most enduring forms."—Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, University of London

"Metcalf's An Imperial Vision is an important and original contribution to an emergent genre of research. It builds upon a growing interest in the cultures of colonialism, and hence will be read not only by South Asian scholars, but by all who are interested in this burgeoning field. This is the work of a distinguished historian, who has the imagination and knowledge to see the social, political and cultural interrelation across time and space, and it sets a standard for all who are interested in the complex relations between Europeans and the rest of the world."—Bernard S. Cohn, University of Chicago

From the Back Cover

"Not a catalogue raisonn of colonial buildings but a significant step forward into the new discipline of 'political architecture' (an important advance in widening our perceptions of colonialism as expressed in one of its most enduring forms." (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, University of London)

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber Inc
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0571154190
• ISBN 13: 9780571154197
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1000