Overview

The imposing buildings constructed by the British in India did not spring from the fancy of the architects or from purely aesthetic concerns: rather, they embodied a vision the British had of themselves as rulers of India. This text examines the relationship between culture and power expressed in the architectural forms the British employed in India. From the great monuments of New Delhi to the most obsure structures in dusty country towns, these buildings visibly represented in stone the choices the British made in politics as imperial rulers. Viewed together they enhanced the hold of the empire over the ruler and the ruled alike. Much of this architecture drew on European classical forms, for these had long evoked a vision of empire in Europe. But the British also constructed, in the years after the uprising of 1857, 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 known as Indo-Saracenic architecture. For half a century this building sustained a new ideology of empire.

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9780195656022

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