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Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, by Dr. Holger Hoock
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Between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, Britain evolved from a substantial international power yet relative artistic backwater into a global superpower and a leading cultural force in Europe. In this original and wide-ranging book, Hoock illuminates the manifold ways in which the culture of power and the power of culture were interwoven in this period of dramatic change.
Britons invested artistic and imaginative effort to come to terms with the loss of the American colonies; to sustain the generation-long fight against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France; and to assert and legitimate their growing empire in India. Demonstrating how Britain fought international culture wars over prize antiquities from the Mediterranean and Near East, the book explores how Britons appropriated ancient cultures from the Mediterranean, the Near East, and India, and casts a fresh eye on iconic objects such as the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Marbles.
- Sales Rank: #810081 in Books
- Published on: 2010-08-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.90" h x 7.10" w x 9.70" l, 2.55 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 544 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Hoock, an associate professor in British history and founding director of the 18th Century Worlds Centre at the University of Liverpool, provides a thorough examination of Britain as a world power in this dense yet accessible anthology of that country's reign. From 1750 to 1850, Britain built an empire that was much more than a military achievement. It absorbed and collected the cultures of America, Egypt, the Middle East, and India. The loss of the American colonies stimulated the need for didactic art and, as England perfected culture building, they employed not only grand ceremony (such as Coronation Day), but also painting, writing, sculpture, music, and architecture to create a unique civilization. Official monuments, such as those to Trafalgar and Waterloo, raised armies by fostering patriotism and emulation. At the same time, the British began "collecting" treasures, not only to prevent their acquisition by other European powers, but to also increase national pride, preserve antiquities, and corroborate the Bible. Hoock clearly shows the culture of power and the power of that culture in this amazingly-detailed scholarly work. (Sept.)
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Review
"beautifully produced, closely argued and deeply researched...an important, weighty book. It deserves close scrutiny and a warm reception." --Professor Denis Judd, BBC History Magazine
"a learned, engrossing book. ...�For anybody interested in British painting, military history or the culture of empire, this is a sumptuous treat indeed."� --Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph
"a hefty, exceptionally learned and exhaustively ... researched book ... Hoock's feel for the creative disorderliness of the time is a pleasure".� --Simon Schama, Financial Times, March 2010
"ambitious, authoritative�survey of British visual culture in an age of imperial ascent ...�a sweeping ... grand tour of the chief sites of British cultural and imperial activity" --Maya Jasanoff, The Guardian, March 2010
"An excellent book, brimming with insights and splendid illustrations ... a sumptuous treat indeed" - Daily Telegraph
"Terrific" - Financial Times
"Chock full of vivid case studies ... beautifully done" - Spectator
"An ambitious, authoritative survey of British visual culture in an age of imperial ascent" - Guardian
About the Author
Holger Hoock (b. 1972) grew up near Heidelberg in Germany. He is the Reader (Associate Professor) in British History and Founding Director of the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Centre at the University of Liverpool. As a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, he currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
An imaginative work
By reader 451
Empires of the Imagination is about the impact of Britain's empire on its arts and culture between 1750 and 1850, the period when, according to the author, empire-building began to have a visual impact at home. The book roams widely, from reactions to the lost American empire to London's triumphant statuary, and via antiquity collection in the Near East to despoliation and conservation in India. Hoock meditates, for example, on public and private reactions to the loss of America as seen through memorials and painting in Britain, and its counterpart: the melting down of Georgian statues in the rebel states. He has a chapter on Anglo-French rivalry in Egypt and Egyptology. And another provides the grubby story of the acquisition of the Elgin marbles. Indeed, one of Hoock's arguments is that the state was far more involved in supplying for an imperial culture than is generally recognised, and he uses the Elgin marbles as illustration.
Hoock's work is easy to read and entertaining. Though it has footnotes and looks like a scholarly tome, it really sits between academic and popular history. It is a wider work for the informed reader, not a specialist's tract for the art historian. It deserves only one warning: while it promises to about 'the culture of power and the power of culture', the book really is far more about the first than the second. It is easier to show the impact of power on culture than the other way around, to show how power translates into monuments and museums rather than how culture produces that diplomatic missive, that act of parliament, that war decision or even a body of them. Empires of the Imagination is no exception in this respect, though, and this does not detract from its value as an interesting and valuable survey.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A Powerful Book about the Power of Symbolic Art
By Shelley B
What characterizes a nation? What makes citizens into patriots? What stirs in a citizen a sense of loyalty to a state so intense as to make him willing to die a violent death in battle, or to make her willing to send her son to such a fate, or to make them rally to the leaders' expansionist urges?
In this brilliant, lively, detailed, and provocative new book about Britain from the mid-18th Century to the mid-19th Century, historian Holger Hoock answers these and related questions this way: A nation is (or can be) characterized through its public art, its memorials and statues, its pomp and ceremony, and its music. The nature of representation through art is, of course, symbolic; consistent exposure to the same or similar symbols ultimately defines the shared experiences of the populace, and thus the ethos of a nation. Those who choose what to symbolize and how to do so, therefore, become powerful actors in the creation of a nation. Hoock arrives at these themes, which I have just generalized and no doubt over-simplified, as he traces how Britain solidified its image as an enlightened and superior imperial conqueror through the creation of a public memory glorifying heroism and conquest. The magic of public art is how painlessly it inculcates values.
Hoock develops his theme convincingly through well-researched examples, including the over-the-top coronation of King George III and the great Handel jubilee of 1785. One of my favorite stories, however, may be anti-thematic, except insofar as it illustrates how understating defeat can also serve to modify the public memory by inviting forgetting. It is about the memorial in Westminster Abbey (itself a new venue for public monuments during this time period) to British soldier-spy John Andre, who was Benedict Arnold's co-conspirator during the American Revolution. The British, as we all know, lost that war, and defeat did not fit very well with the theme of glorious conqueror. Still, it was important to find a representative of valiant service during that war, and Andre was a handsome young officer who heroically faced death at the gallows, an ignoble fate assigned to him by a supposedly vindictive George Washington. The monument built for Andre is an odd sarcophagus-shaped block with a carved scene depicting an upright Washington watching Andre being led to the gallows tree. Apparently the few who commented on the memorial found it ambiguous. There never was prominent British art memorializing this particular war.
Another fascinating part of the story is Britain's use of the art and artifacts plundered from vanquished countries and cultures to elevate its own status, which in turn justified the continued collection and removal of irreplaceable items. One needs only to walk through the British Museum or the National Gallery to begin to appreciate the extent of British plunder. The possession and safekeeping of so much opulence, from ancient artifacts to hand-illuminated manuscripts to entire buildings, was seen as a sign of British superiority as well as an act of paternalistic responsibility to tend to important items on behalf of less capable peoples in other parts of the world. At first, viewing of collected items and art works was limited to those citizens (peers) deemed capable of their appreciation, but, by the end of Hoock's time period, the general British public, or at least those properly dressed, were allowed to expand their knowledge and their appreciation of their country through admission to the newly created museums. In this way there grew a popular sense of British entitlement, useful in reinforcing government imperialistic urges.
Hoock, in sum, has written a compelling history, richly illustrated. No one who reads it can ever again (if he or she did before) argue for the irrelevance of art, for Hoock shows that art is integral to our values, that our values are integral to who we are, what we choose to do, and what we will allow others to do in our name.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Must read
By princeazariah
Read this before you visit the British museum
See all 3 customer reviews...
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