Making London historic: monuments to Empire from Waterloo Place to Trafalgar Square

The design of Waterloo Place as a pedestrian street lined with statues came about at the start of the nineteenth century as London was remade into a major world city with aspirations to becoming the heart of empire.

In the years between the 1840s and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, local residents commissioned a series of sculptures to mark Britain's military victories and colonial expansions. Even though these were privately funded projects, they shaped a public history of empire in the form of statues.

Durba Ghosh(Opens in new window) is Professor of History at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the history of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent through the relationship between colonial agents, officials, and elites and those who were colonized. She is the author of D. Ghosh (2006) Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge University Press) and D. Ghosh (2017) Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (Cambridge University Press).