Introduction: The places of empire

Abstract

The built environment of Western Europe became entangled with overseas imperialism in the period 1860–1960, when colonial empires were at their largest. Europeans at home experienced the vast imperial spaces, formed by networks between colonies and metropoles, by encountering the local imperial ‘places’ that sustained such networks: mission houses, government buildings, factories, offices, museums. Such sites contributed to the development of an imperial culture in European societies, which legitimised colonial rule by stressing the necessity and righteousness of imperial power relations. As architecture of this kind could be found in different colonial powers, as well as in countries without colonies but with ties to the empires of others, it allows us to scrutinise the transnational, European nature of imperial culture.