New Book | Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930
From Manchester UP:
Stephanie Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 230 pages, ISBN: 978-0719096228, £75.
Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Stephanie Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.
Stephanie Barczewski is Professor of Modern British History at Clemson University.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction: British Country Houses and Empire, 1700–1930
1 Colonial Merchants
2 Indian Nabobs
3 West Indian Planters
4 Military and Naval Officers and Other Categories of Imperial Estate Purchasers
5 The Impact of Imperial Wealth on British Landed Estates
6 The Cultural Display of Empire in Country Houses
7 The Discourse of Commodities
8 The Discourse of Cosmopolitanism
9 The Discourse of Conquest
10 The Discourse of Collecting
Conclusion
Appendices
Select bibliography
Index
Workshop | On Site: Western Travellers Sketching in the Ottoman Empire
From H-ArtHist:
On Site: Western Travellers Sketching Topographies in the Ottoman Empire
Freie Universität Berlin, 19 February 2015
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the relations between the European countries and the Ottoman Empire were characterised by an increase in economic and diplomatic relations, but at the same time by military conflicts and aspirations. Europeans travelling to the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries were thus motivated by a variety of reasons and interests, which could be of a diplomatic, military, economic, religious, antiquarian or scholarly nature. Drawings and sketches were produced in these contexts both by travelling artists and by amateur draughtsmen.
The workshop investigates the activity of topographical sketching of landscapes or cityscapes during these travels with a particular focus on the implications of on-site sketching. The central question is how this artistic practice of sketching in a transcultural setup can be understood and conceptualised in art historical terms. We invite papers that deal with aspects of the following three fields.
Iconography
How did travelling draughtsmen choose their subjects and viewpoints? Which landscapes and cityscapes were considered significant and for what reasons (military, religious, antiquarian, aesthetic)? Did the permanent presence of conflict, both military and religious, between the Ottoman Empire and various European states, have an impact on the production and interpretation of these drawings?
Authenticity
Did these pictorial renderings aim at authenticity, and if so, how? How did travelogues testify to the authenticity of images? How did the knowledge, the preconceptions, the expectations and the fantasies of alterity that the travellers brought with them inform their practice of sketching on site; Or rather: In which way were such notions visually negotiated and thereby transformed?
Practices, Techniques, and Modes of Representation
How was the practice of drawing on site (i.e. outside, in a foreign country, as a stranger) conceived of and dealt with? Which practices, techniques and modes of representation were applied under these conditions? What effects did sketching bans and a fear of pictures and their producers have on travelling draughtsmen? How were these situations described and reflected in travellers’ writings?
Concept: Ulrike Boskamp, Annette Kranen
Venue: Freie Universität Berlin, Koserstraße 20, 14195 Berlin, Room A 163
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P R O G R A M
13.15 Ulrike Boskamp (Berlin), Welcome and Introduction
13.30 Palmira Brummett (Providence), Mapping the Ottomans: Moving from Narrative to Image at the ‘Limits’ of Empire
14.30 Irini Apostolou (Athens), The Representation of the Levant by French Travellers in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 William Kynan-Wilson (Berlin/Cambridge), Mediating Images in Jacques Carrey’s View of Athens (1674)
17.00 Annette Kranen (Berlin), Presenting Travel: Movement, Space and Places in Seventeenth-Century Western Images of the Ottoman Territories
18.00 Final Discussion
Enfilade 
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