The commemorative tradition in early American art is given sustained consideration for the first time in Sally Webster's study of public monuments and the construction of an American patronymic tradition. Until now, no attempt has been made to create a coherent early history of the carved symbolic language of American liberty and independence. Establishing as the basis of her discussion the fledgling nation's first monument, Jean-Jacques Caffi?'s Monument to General Richard Montgomery (commissioned in January of 1776), Webster builds on the themes of commemoration and national patrimony, ultimately positing that like its instruments of government, America drew from the Enlightenment and its reverence for the classical past. Webster's study is grounded in the political and social worlds of New York City, moving chronologically from the 1760s to the 1790s, with a concluding chapter considering the monument, which lies just east of Ground Zero, against the backdrop of 9/11. It is an original contribution to historical scholarship in fields ranging from early American art, sculpture, New York history, and the Revolutionary era. A chapter is devoted to the exceptional role of Benjamin Franklin in the commissioning and design of the monument. Webster's study provides a new focus on New York City as the 18th-century city in which the European tradition of public commemoration was reconstituted as monuments to liberty's heroes.

"The British Raj (a Sanskrit-based word meaning dominion or empire), which has taken on a wholly Victorian flavor as a result of popular films and books, actually began in piecemeal fashion when the East India Company developed settlements in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay during the seventeenth century. As these small enclaves grew into cities, the British tried hard to give them the look and feel of the country they had left behind." "Barbara Groseclose examines British public statuary and church monuments in India from the standpoint of its function in regard to the British themselves. Arguing that doubts and anxieties, as well as assumptions about their own place in Indian life, bear strongly on the roles and achievements for which the British sought or received commemoration, she analyzes the British self-characterizations of victor, administrator, scholar, and benefactor in sculptural imagery. Her close scrutiny of these largely forgotten works of art reveals the crucial part they played in helping the British to explain and justify empire to themselves. But the author's sense of the inherently ambivalent nature of the colonizer/colonized relationship prevents this book from becoming simply a platform for the indictment of imperialists or for an insistence on the wholesale victimization of their subjects. Rather, Groseclose discerns in this art some of the complicated emotional undertones simultaneously shaping and destabilizing the attempted economic and intellectual domination of India."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Poignant monuments to sacrifice, and often significant works of art, war memorials have never been a more valued part of our townscapes. This is the first proper introduction to this fascinating subject.

This collection of thirteen specially commissioned essays by international scholars takes a fresh look at the profound impact of the Peninsular War on Romantic British literature and culture. The expertly authored chapters explore the valorization of Spain by nineteenth-century poets such as Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, S.T. Coleridge, the Shelleys, and Felicia Hemans in contrast to the Enlightenment-era view of Spain as a backwards nation in decline. Topics discussed include the vision of Spain in Gothic fiction, Spanish experiences of exile as exemplified by the conflict between Valentin de Llanos and Joseph Blanco White, and British women writers' approach to peninsular fiction. Spain in British Romanticism: 1800-1840 is essential reading for scholars and enthusiasts of Romantic literature and Spanish history.

By investigating the sites of historical battlefields, this book shows that an insight can be developed into the minds of those who fought, and into some of our own expectations about war. It reveals differences in landscape type between battlefields from the tenth to nineteenth century in Britain, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal.

The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society publish an annual collection of major articles representing some of the best historical research by some of the world's most distinguished historians.