The trading post established by the British East India Company at Surat. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
The colonial era still overshadows the present as no other time in history, and its ideas and artifacts — still so visibly around — are bound to be misinterpreted in their relationship with the present. It is here that Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, the author of Empire Building, has avoided the collusion with present-day India by tactfully staying out of range. Dealing with only the early struggles of colonialism, and the first physical establishment of the British Empire, the story she presents remains distant, partly submerged, and consequently reflective.
The railway station on the Bombay to Thana line in 1854, from The Illustrated London News.
In recent history, colonialism’s tragic presence is always seen in the light of India’s struggle for independence; and in the ensuing association, Britain remains a villain. But viewed from the mercantile success of Job Charnock’s British East India Company, the English intrusion could be read as an unusual start-up initiated by a wily entrepreneur; from this, an outsider’s standpoint, India was also a perennial cultural hurdle and a difficult bureaucratic struggle. It is this view that Empire Building explores through architecture, without mincing words, without submitting to condescension.
Two architectural aims
The Connemara Public Library, one of the country’s four national libraries, in Chennai, was formally opened in 1896 by the Governor after whom it was named. This structure was designed by architect Henry Irwin. | Photo Credit: R. Ragu
For the greater part of early colonial architectural history, it is well known that the new company was quick to establish visible supremacy over its native subjects by showcasing their architecture as distinct from local building. Though the book discusses indigenous materials and prevailing craft, the author feels little need to harp on previously well-recorded facts — the rigorous adaptation to climate and the use of local elements like courtyards, jaalis, deep eves and verandahs employed liberally in much of the early colonial work in Calcutta. The book strays away from the obvious.
All Saints Church in Trimulgherry township of Secunderabad was constructed in 1860 AD in Gothic style. | Photo Credit: K. Ramesh Babu
However, it does state clearly the two architectural intentions that set the early colonisers apart. First and foremost was the establishment of architectural boundaries in entirely unknown and invented type. The bungalow, the rest house, the observatory, the botanical garden, the club, the sanatorium, the barracks, the memorial, among others, were all recognised as new landmarks, including urban forms like forts, cantonments and hill stations. In them, Llewellyn-Jones reconstructs the cultural unease with unusual depth and grace. Thus appeared the long-spired churches against squat temple backdrops; isolated country estates against squalid bazaars, and a treasure of green manicured society clubs besides dusty maidans. Architecture’s basis was separation by contrast, survival by defence, difference and stylistic distinction.
A view of the 255-year-old Records Tower building, which is a part of the Chepauk Palace in Chennai. | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam
Western Railway Headquarters, Churchgate, Mumbai. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Second, was the more pervasive, less noticeable engineering works — construction enterprises as essential to conquest and governance. As the East India Company’s interests spread westwards from Calcutta into areas not seen by Europeans, roads, canals, railways, bridges, flood barriers, defence structures and forts that were essential to regulate a difficult and unknown landscape, and physically connect a disjointed country, became crucial. The people employed in this difficult task were often those whose interest — more than mere skill — could be tapped. Carpenters, architects, surveyors, diarists and draftsmen were essential in a place that required skills of observation, invention and application to large scale problems, and the desperate need to map a country that was still largely jungal.
Viceregal Lodge, now The Indian Institute of Advanced Study, in Shimla. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
A source of suffering
Yet, as the book describes, despite the great shield of protection offered by architecture, and the careful recreation of English settlements, India remained a source of relentless and prolonged suffering. Cemeteries filled church yards and extended cantonments with stone cenotaphs and tombstones, narrating tales of misery.
Three weathered headstones in an abandoned cemetery. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
The hillside along the approach to Nainital is littered with headstones of early demise: cholera, malaria, consumption cut lives short. Tuberculosis sanatoriums appeared in hill stations. Lunatic asylums were as prevalent as prisons and local hospitals. In each of many such establishments, the book gives a thoughtful presentation of the many characters involved, the varied circumstances that created the unusual settings.
Writers’ Building in Kolkata. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
From the establishment of the East India Company in Calcutta to Lutyens’ Delhi is an extended moment so surreal and stretched it is hard to draw any consequential meaningful relationship in the long equation.
Today, a time when colonialism is only seen as a sentiment hurtful to a national vanity, Llewellyn-Jones draws us away from the oppressive recent past to a more distant and revealing backdrop. Although little remains of early Empire, other than the monumental buildings of the time, she pulls together enough intriguing stories out of the charred fragments. The book is not written with the hectoring authority of an established urban history scholar — that the author is — but rather with the conversational ease of a thoughtful storyteller. Empire Building can be read as an engrossing sociological exercise from a painful historic era.
Empire Building; Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Penguin/Viking, ₹799.
The reviewer is a Delhi-based architect.
