Description: Swati Chattopadhyay presents a paradigm-breaking account of the minor, overlooked spaces of empire, for anyone wishing to decolonize disciplinary practices in architectural, urban, and colonial history.
Brief description: Swati Chattopadhyay is Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, with an affiliated appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
Review Quotes:
"A new paradigm for methods in architectural history ... Truly a monumental achievement." --Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award Committee, Society of Architectural Historians
"Fascinating, engaging, experimental ... [A] genre-bending mode of narration." --Historians of British Art Book Award Committee "Studies [of empire] typically focus on the nation state or on 'connected histories' which foreground international, elite networks at the expense of the local. This intriguing book offers us microhistories instead. An architectural history as much as social history." --Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History "This brilliantly provocative study provides an alternative, micro-scalar history of colonial and middle-class domiciles, along with an extraordinary archaeology of objects and bodies that mediated the intimacy of the rulers and the ruled-taking us on an exhilarating journey from the cellars, kitchens, dining rooms and verandahs of the imperial mansions of Calcutta to the streets, bazars and bungalows of the Bengal and north-Indian countryside." --Sudipta Sen, University of California, Davis, USA "In this erudite yet eminently accessible volume, Chattopadhyay imaginatively stitches together the overlooked worlds of fragmented and seemingly minor spaces underpinning the workings of everyday life and better regarded practices, inspiring readers, by example, to recognize their indispensability and resilience." --Zeynep Kezer, Newcastle University, UK "An original examination of empire from marginal spaces in the built environment. This book unites subalterns with the spatial medium of their agency during colonial rule. It brilliantly reveals the hidden infrastructure of empire through an architectural and social history of service, separation, and subordination." --K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University, USA