National University of Singapore Press
Southeast Asia in Ruins
Art and Empire in the Early 19th Century
9789971698492
Distributed for National University of Singapore Press
Southeast Asia in Ruins
Art and Empire in the Early 19th Century
British artists and commentators in the late 18th and early 19th century encoded the twin aspirations of progress and power in images and descriptions of Southeast Asia’s ruined Hindu and Buddhist candis, pagodas, wats and monuments. To the British eye, images of the remains of past civilisations allowed, indeed stimulated, philosophical meditations on the rise and decline of entire empires. Ruins were witnesses to the fall, humbling and disturbingly prophetic, (and so revealing more about British attitudes than they do about Southeast Asia’s cultural remains). This important study of a highly appealing but relatively neglected body of work adds multiple dimensions to the history of art and image production in Britain of the period, showing how the anxieties of empire were encoded in the genre of landscape paintings and prints.
340 pages | 82 color plates | 7 1/4 x 9 1/4 | © 2016
Art: British Art, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Art
Asian Studies: Southeast Asia and Australia
History: Asian History
Reviews
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction – Subjects of Novelty and Interest
I Raffles’ The History of Java, its Precursors and its Peers
II The Candi of Java and the Picturesque Ideal
III The Barometer of Civilisation
IV The Nature of Decline
V The Politics of Decline
VI Dissipating the Gloom of Ignorance
Conclusion – The Landscape of Regret
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Introduction – Subjects of Novelty and Interest
I Raffles’ The History of Java, its Precursors and its Peers
II The Candi of Java and the Picturesque Ideal
III The Barometer of Civilisation
IV The Nature of Decline
V The Politics of Decline
VI Dissipating the Gloom of Ignorance
Conclusion – The Landscape of Regret
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index