Empire Building: The Construction of British India, 1690-1860

The book "Empire Building" explores the East India Company's impact on India's built environment, focusing on defense, urbanization, and infrastructural development. It assesses Indian responses to the changing landscape, including adopting British manufacturing technologies and British public institutions.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 19 January 2023
Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd

Here is the rephrased text:

The Empire Building: A New Account of the East India Company's Impact on India

The East India Company's influence on India is explored in depth in the book "The Empire Building," with a particular emphasis on how it altered the country's built environment in the areas of defense, urbanization, and infrastructure development. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones analyzes these initiatives through the lens of political building, employing Indian contractors and laborers.

The British constructed a wide range of structures during their rule in India, including railways, docks, municipal buildings, freemason lodges, hotels, race courses, barracks, cemeteries, statues, and canals. These buildings not only served practical purposes but also made political statements, whether consciously or unconsciously. The book is less concerned with architectural styles and more with the subtle infiltration of these structures into the minds of those who saw and used them.

Llewellyn-Jones assesses Indian responses to the changing landscape. Indians often welcomed new manufacturing technologies from Britain, such as minting and gunpowder, while the British learned from and adapted local methods. From military engineers and cartography to imported raw metals and steam power, the book considers the social and environmental changes wrought by colonialism.

A significant shift occurred during this period, with formerly private, Indian-controlled functions such as education, entertainment, trading, and healing being taken over by British public institutions like universities, theaters, chambers of commerce, and hospitals. The East India Company's impact on India's built environment was profound, shaping the country's physical landscape and its social and economic development for centuries to come.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781787388048