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Inner empire

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This book presents for the first time a coherent analysis of the British Isles as an imperial setting understood through its buildings, spaces, and infrastructure. It considers ‘internal’ colonisat...
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  • 20 January 2026
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Inner Empire explores the impact of imperial cultures on the landscapes and urban environments of the British Isles from the sixteenth century through to the twentieth century. It asserts that Britain’s four-hundred year entanglement with global empire left its mark upon the British Isles as much as it did the wider world. Buildings stood as one of the most conspicuous manifestations of the myriad relationships that Britain maintained with the theory and practice of colonialism in its modern history. Divided into two main sections, the volume’s content considers ‘internal’ colonisation and its infrastructures of control, order, and suppression, alongside wider relationships between architecture, the imperial economy, and cultural identity. Taken together, the essays in this volume present for the first time a coherent analysis of the British Isles as an imperial setting understood through its buildings, spaces, and infrastructure.
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Price: £35.00
Pages: 360
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Studies in Imperialism
Publication Date: 20 January 2026
ISBN: 9781526194831
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

ARCHITECTURE / History / General, Social and cultural history, ARCHITECTURE / Regional, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, History of architecture, Architectural structure and design, City and town planning: architectural aspects, Colonialism and imperialism
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‘Inner Empire is a very welcome addition to the field of (post-)colonial and imperial studies, area studies, and subaltern studies and critique. Within its transdisciplinary correspondence, it expands on aspects of architectural and urban planning histories which constitutes a meaningful contribution to the current state of study.’
—Liora Bigon, Ariel University

‘Critical and fresh, [this] collection offers a window into the future of the architectural history of the British Isles … It will quickly become required reading for all scholars interested in the intersection of architecture and empire.’
—Louis Nelson, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Introduction: The Architectural Historiography of ‘Inner Empire’

Part I: The Inner Empire
1. Cultivation, Constructed Environments, and Cultural Conflict: Plantations and the Inner Empire
J. P. Montaño
2.Making North Britain: Infrastructure Projects and the Forcible Integration of the Scottish Highlands
Daniel Maudlin
3. ‘Housing the Poorest Poor’: the Irish Other in Nineteenth-Century Liverpool
John Belchem
4.Architecture of the State in Ireland: The Colonial Question, 1800–1922
Richard Butler
5. Studied Indifference: Eighteenth-century Irish Architecture in Modern British Architectural Histories
Conor Lucey

Part II: Empire Building in Britain
6.An Empire Under Construction: The View from Inside East India House
Emily Mann
7. Foreign Mud, Home Comforts: Taipans, Opium, and the Remitted Wealth of Jardine, Matheson & Co. in Scotland
G. A. Bremner
8. Spaces of Empire in Victorian and Edwardian London
Richard Dennis
9. Australia House: Shaping Dominion Status in the Imperial Capital, 1907-63
Eileen Chanin
10. Empire Timber: Architecture, Trade, and Forestry, 1920-1950
Neal Shasore
11. How to Live in Britain: The Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square
Mark Crinson