The Great Game? Anglo-Afghan monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1816–1916

Abstract

This article considers the perhaps surprising centrality of sculptural engagements with Afghanistan and the broader north-west frontier of the Raj during the century after the Battle of Waterloo. The article ranges across a broad array of commemorative media, from standing white marble figurative statues and portrait busts, through allegorical mourning figures and memorial brasses, to High Church religious sculpture and scenes of biblical history. It argues that sculptors never really settled on a sculptural iconography for Afghanistan, in spite of drawing on key photographic and print representations of the region, but that the very malleability of the genre of Anglo-Afghan monuments in St Paul’s might itself have collectively represented a necessary linguistic, conceptual and personal mobility on the north-west frontier of the Raj.