EMPIRE: Cultural Consumption in the Age of European Expansion

3 units

“Conquest has made me what I am, and only conquest can enable me to hold my position.” So said Napoleon Bonaparte, but those words could just as easily have been said by any aspiring conqueror of the early modern age. The expansion of Europe had a devastating impact on the cultures of the conquered, but brought with it new materials and motifs that forever changed European visual culture. This course will survey the history of EMPIRE from a global perspective. The rise of Spanish, Dutch, French, but especially the British Empire will be explored through the changes they brought to European art and architecture. Further themes to be explored include trade in textiles, sugar, coffee, and other commodities; the imitation industry in porcelain, kashmir, and chintz; and colonial wealth and the English country house.