This study considers the relationship between landscape and the Arcadian funereal imagination in the context of eighteenth century Britain, arguing that the Arcadian landscapes imagined by the British elite were instruments of rituals facilitating the reformation and transformation of socioeconomic, political, and moral structures of the British empire. Drawing upon texts and landscape practices, three case studies are examined: Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) Twickenham grotto and his descriptive letter to Edward Blount; Sir William Chambers’ (1723-1796) Dissertation on oriental gardening and his design for Kew gardens, Sir John Soane’s (1753-1837) manuscript Crude hints towards an history of my house in LIF and his house-museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. The landscape itinerary of Pope’s Twickenham villa, in relation to his letter to Blount, suggests that it was structured analogous to the initiatory route of the Eleusinian mysteries as accounted in Pope’s translation of the Odyssey. Noting Pope’s engagement with Freemasonry, associated with the Opposition party, I suggest this implied Odyssean journey not only metaphorically anticipates the restitution of the Stuart dynasty and the reassertion of a political order founded upon aristocratic land ownership, but is also a means by which the ‘initiates’ contest the Enlightenment ideal of a mind of autonomy. In relation to the Burkean sublime, Chambers’ Dissertation, an imaginary travel narrative, is read as a city landscaping theory which aims to shape the morals of British citizens exposed to the erosion of commercial society. Whilst the scenes of luxury in the Chinese gardens imply a double effect of commercial society, the funereal imagery of ‘the surprising,’ built upon the Burkean sublime-effect, is intended as a cure of moral corruption associated with luxury. Stimulated by geological notions (e.g. stratigraphy and catastrophism), Soane’s ruinous text of Crude hints, a mirror of the house-museum as well as the earth, illustrates a parallel between the ‘first principles’ of the movement of the earth and that of the mind, i.e. imagination and signification. The funereal imagination in the text, which itself represents simultaneous creation and destruction, is revealed to be the architect’s construction of an ideal language that can express the being of the nation and the self. This thesis ends with a theoretical discussion of the role of the funereal imagination in eighteenth century landscape and architecture, i.e. how British imperial identity was forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly within the temporally and spatially extended discursive realm of Arcadian mythology.

The grant of the diwani to the East India Company in August 1765 represents a climacteric moment in British imperial histories. Vested by the Mughal Emperor Shah Allam II, this newfound right to collect revenue saddled the Company with the broader and formal economic, judicial and military responsibilities of a territorial empire. Wherefore, in the era of post-Mughal political splintering, the EIC, as an emerging subcontinental state had to contend with internal revolts abetted by ethno-religious and socio-economic crises, but also because of threats posed by the Kingdom of Mysore and the Maratha Confederacy. Nevertheless, in the midst of the American Revolution, the EIC’s contentious and contested conduct of imperial governance in India became an ideological, philosophical and pragmatic point of domestic and imperial contention. Thus, confronted with the simultaneous internal and external implications of the crises of Empire between 1765 and 1788, the role of the Company’s fiscal-military administration and exercise of violence within the spheres British imperial governance was reconceptualised and in doing so contemporaries underwrote the emergence of what historians have subsequently called the ‘Second British Empire’ in India. Alternatively, the reconceptualisation of the EIC’s fiscal-military administration served to ensure the continuity and preservation of the British imperial nexus as it was imposed upon Bengal. This work, therefore, traces the Company’s fiscal-military administration and dispensation of violence during the ‘crises of empire’ as a point of genesis in the development and reformation of British imperial governance. Moreover, it will show that the interdependent nature of the Company’s ‘fiscal-military hybridity’ ultimately came to underwrite further the ideological, philosophical and pragmatic consolidation of imperial governance in ‘British India’. Accordingly, this dissertation examines the interdependent role between Parliament’s reconceptualisation of the East India Company’s fiscal-military administration of violence and the changing nature of British imperial governance in ‘British India’.

Late 18th Britain was experiencing the beginnings of social unrest fueled in part by the American and French Revolutions. The established two class social system was being challenged by the emergence of a middle class seeking something more than traditional agricultural work. While they subscribed to very different philosophies of mind, both Stewart and Mill saw the solution to potential social chaos in a revised educational system that would open the doors to a peaceful development of that middle class. What the new educational system should look like was a direct function of the theory of mind held by the two protagonists. Employing an enlarged Foucaultian framework, this dissertation examines the various forces at work in transforming British society as it prepares for the unanticipated forthcoming industrial revolution. / Ph. D.

This thesis examines the British monarchy in the eighteenth century and how the philosophy of Frederick, Prince of Wales, helped to shape that monarchy. The early Hanoverians were seen with contempt by many of their subjects, often being ridiculed as ignorant outsiders. They helped matters none by their indifference to Britain, its people, or its culture. Prince Frederick, George II’s eldest son, however, changed all of this. His philosophy on kingship, influenced by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke’s work, The Patriot King, helped to change the perception of the Hanoverian dynasty. When Prince Frederick died in 1751 before he could take the throne, it was left up to his son, Prince George, to carry out Frederick’s vision. As George III, he fulfilled the philosophy and became the embodiment of the patriot king. This resulted in a surge in popularity for the Hanoverians, solidifying their place on the British throne.