The parish church of empire: sculpture and imperialism at St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1796–1916

Abstract

The introduction provides an overview of the special issue and situates it in the context of the AHRC research grant from which it originated and in the broader historiographic context of sculpture at St Paul’s Cathedral in the period from the arrival of the first quartet of monuments in the 1790s to the midst of the First World War. The introduction notes the comparative marginalization of sculpture studies at the cathedral, in comparison to studies of the architectural fabric of the building and its mosaic programmes, and of imperial sculpture within the broader scholarship on nineteenth-century British sculpture. The introduction lays out the variety of materials and genres of sculptural commemoration at St Paul’s, emphasizing the sculptural quality of the artists and artworks involved. It explores the particular place of slavery and abolition within the pantheon, and the way in which the pantheon ranges across the entirety of the British imperial world, from North America to South and Southeast Asia, from Australasia and Antarctica to Africa.