Content area
Full Text
British Sculpture and the Company Raj: Church Monuments and Public Statuary in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay to 1858, by Barbara Groseclose; pp. 152. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1995, S47.50, 35.00.
As India and Pakistan approached the Golden Jubilee celebrations of their independence on 15 August 1997, it was apparent that there remained a fascination with "The Jewel in the Crown." Books, journal articles, television series, exhibitions, and auction sales increased dramatically. Running tandem to this has been an expanding interest in British sculpture witnessed by an expanding collection of publications, conferences, and the establishment of societies such as the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. Barbara Groseclose is one of a growing number of academics who combine an appreciation for British colonial history, imperial ideologies, and art.
British Sculpture and the Company Raj focuses on the funeral tablets as well as a select group of civic statues erected in the Presidency towns during the period of East India Company dominion. The Preface provides ample information on the nature of sculptural commissions. Chapter One surveys the evolving and often contradictory policies of the Court of Directors of the EIC as well as its expanding economic, military, and missionary colonisation of the subcontinent beginning in the latter part of the eighteenth century. A brief history of the principal churches erected in the Presidency towns is included as well as a discussion of contemporaneous funeral rites. In Chapter Two Groseclose demonstrates how changing imperial...