Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850

Between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, Britain evolved from a substantial international power yet relative artistic backwater into a global superpower and a leading cultural force in Europe. In this original and wide-ranging book, Hoock illuminates the manifold ways in which the culture of power and the power of culture were interwoven in this period of dramatic change.

Britons invested artistic and imaginative effort to come to terms with the loss of the American colonies; to sustain...