Architecture and Empire: the case of the ‘Battle of the Styles’, 1855-61

Abstract

Architecture is the most public of the arts, at least in the sense of being the most difficult to avoid. If ‘imperialism’ or empire in any shape or form was a big thing in British public perception in the nineteenth century, therefore, as is very often claimed, you might expect to find it reflected here. Yet almost none of the now considerable range of work linking imperialism with British domestic society in this period has very much at all to say about architecture. Buildings do not feature at all in Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism, for example, and only very marginally in John Mackenzie’s books, or the series he edits