An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj.

• Author: Kopf, David

We have long needed a history of British architecture in India that combined an aesthetic sensitivity with sociological analysis, and sympathy for Indian nationalist sentiment with an appreciation for the good which the West brought to India. Such a history ought to combine a study of how the British viewed themselves through their imperial architecture abroad with how architects were compelled to modify both European prototypes and the monumental self-image of the Raj to suit Indian concerns and conditions.

The first thing the reader is struck by in the Metcalfe work is the superb quality of the publication. The book is adorned with seventeen beautifully lavish and expensive color plates, as well as some fifty-three impressive illustrations in black and white. In no other work, perhaps, has so much effort been expended to present an imperial legacy in art and architecture in such a favorable light.

For the student of modern Indian history and historiography, Metcalfe is known for his meticulous scholarship in two excellent monographs also dealing with India during the British period.(1) His current work on what he has subtitled "Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj" was carefully researched in England, Australia, South Africa, and India. His project began with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.

If the Metcalfe book could be read primarily as narrative history, An Imperial Vision would certainly rank as a major undertaking. Years of dedicated archival research have brought forth a wealth of biographical information about the people behind the edifices that Indian city dwellers have admired but about which they have known preciously little. For the first time, a historian of Metcalfe's stature has taken us behind the art galleries and colleges, the libraries and museums, the churches, municipal office buildings, secretariats, palaces, and memorials to the men who conceived them. On one level, the author offers himself as an immensely qualified guide conducting his readers on a tour of the British architectural heritage in one of its most important colonies. The tour begins roughly with Robert Chisholm, who is credited with the earliest attempts at creating an "Indo-Saracenic" style of architecture with the arch and dome as its principal features. The tour approaches its end with Sir William Emerson's masterpiece of "Classical Revival" in India, which perfectly epitomized the virtues of British rule, known in Calcutta as the Victoria Memorial...