ABSTRACT
Much has been written on the architectural history of the British Empire, especially India. This literature has often adopted a celebratory or elegiac tone, and has generally concentrated on the buildings made and occupied by the British themselves-the great public buildings that symbolized empire.1 Now that the pioneering work of Tony King, Amos Rapoport and Tom Markus has placed building form in a new sociological context, the building forms of Empire can also be viewed in their relation to the power structures of colonialism. Tony King has urged the case for ‘a carefully documented comparative account of the actual buildings’ to assist in understanding the function and organization of the colonial city.2 Olsen has identified the emergence of a ‘professional building’ during an important period of the British Empire:
After Waterloo there appeared one after another new types of building designed from the outset for a specialized function…Prior to that period, most urban buildings were amateur, adaptable for a variety of purposes. (Olsen, 1974)
There were many types of public building which expressed political, and specifically colonial, symbolisms, and the civilizing role of western urban civilization. They included government offices, town halls, and educational institutions. The Post Office symbolized the world-wide network of communications which Empire helped to create. The clock tower symbolized new time disciplines:
With its hourly gongs chiming far above their heads, the clock helped to remind students and passersby not only of the supremacy of the Raj but of the virtues of punctuality. The modern world in India, as it had been for the peasant-becomefactory worker in Britain a century before, was to be marked by discipline and orderliness. (Metcalf, 1989, pp. 78-80)
The theatre, which Raffles saw as a source of authority, was to impart the values inherent to civilized society, especially the villain being punished for his crimes.
