Imperial places. Built manifestations of imperial culture in Europe, 1815-1945

Europe, commonly imagined as a collective of nation-states with distinct national histories, shares an imperial past. Imperial places approaches this imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth century as a process in which European states cooperated rather than competed with each other, facilitated by their economic, political, academic, infrastructural and cultural networks. Such transnational networks were essential to the formation of a shared European imperial culture which developed throughout society. The project analyses six (types of) physical sites in Europe that belong to these networks, and one in a former colony. Structures and institutions like government buildings, ports and docklands, museums, industrial facilities and shops or the headquarters of missionary societies became nodes at imperial crossroads and representations of imperial culture in Europe. By focusing on such ‘imperial places’, the project aims to contribute to a better understanding of Europe’s imperial history. Moreover it investigates how the emergence of a European imperial culture intersected with or was absorbed in national historiographies.