Feeling Modern European Imperial Architecture

This Element is an invitation to embrace the insights and claims of the history of emotions. The thematic content encompasses defining emotions, understanding power, multivalent, changing, and unexpected experiences of imperial buildings and unlearning imperial architecture through the lens of the history of emotions.This Element serves as an invitation to architectural historians of modern European imperialism to embrace the insights and claims of the history of emotions. That said, the Element is not a call for an 'intimate', 'affective' or 'emotional' history. Rather, it is an attempt to show how the omission of emotions as mere effects of historical circumstances, devoid of reason, judgment and rationality, combined with a failure to historicise both emotions themselves and the relationship between buildings and feelings, impoverishes our understanding of European imperial architecture. The thematic content of the Element encompasses defining emotions, understanding power, multivalence, changing and unexpected experiences of imperial buildings and unlearning the experience of imperial architecture through the lens of the history of emotions.