Moving statues: Monuments to empire from London's Waterloo Place to the Maidan in Calcutta

Abstract

From the end of the Napoleonic wars through the First World War, London was made into a historic city that showcased it as the heart of a growing empire. Waves of urban reform produced public spaces, such as Waterloo Place, that were populated with statues of military and imperial heroes involved in Britain's territorial conquests. The result was that London came to be imagined as old, designed in a neoclassical style that could be seen across the empire in cities such as Calcutta, which had been the capital of British India through the nineteenth century. Some statues installed in Calcutta were made in London and displayed at the Royal Academy or elsewhere before they were sent abroad. In spite of the seeming permanence of statues, this essay shows that throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, statues were moved on multiple occasions to respond to changing political and aesthetic demands.