Review of Bailey’s The Architecture of Empire | Rachael Maxon

BOOK REVIEW

The Architecture of Empire: France in India and Southeast Asia, 1664-1962
by Gauvin A. Bailey

McGill-Queen’s University Press
2022. 488 pp.
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-228-01142-2

Reviewed by Rachael Maxon (University of Iowa)

Bailey’s The Architecture of Empire is a meticulously researched and insightful exploration of the sociopolitical contexts and individuals behind French colonial architecture. The book’s nine chapters offer a comprehensive analysis of the design, construction, and decoration of religious, political, and civic buildings, dating from France’s ancien régime to its modern empire under the Third Republic in India and Southeast Asia. Through this lens, the book emphasizes the enduring impact of French architectural styles on its colonies in Asia.

While the book is not comprehensive in scope, it offers a broad coverage of French architectural projects in the region, including military, civic, and religious buildings from seventeenth-century Madagascar, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India and Siam, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indochina. Major sites like Pondicherry, Ayutthaya, Dien Khanh, Saigon, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh are thoroughly examined, showcasing the breadth of French architectural influence. Bailey provides detailed case studies of approximately fifty buildings, exploring their architectural significance and the lives of the architects, builders, and decorators involved. In this way, Bailey uses biography to add depth to the historical narrative, highlighting individuals who have often been overlooked in favor of the larger significance of these structures in discussions of empire building.

Bailey adopts a chronological and thematic approach for each chapter, providing a long-term perspective that spans centuries and continents. The introduction sets the stage by outlining the book’s goals, scope, and methodologies, offering a clear framework for the detailed case studies that follow. Bailey’s work is visually enriched with full-color photographs, architectural drawings, and maps, providing detailed views of both the interiors and exteriors of a number of buildings. This visual documentation supports Bailey’s arguments and enhances the reader’s understanding of the architectural and cultural exchanges that took place.

The strength of Bailey’s work lies in his thorough research and clear, informative writing style. The book makes excellent use of primary sources, enriching Bailey’s analysis of both the buildings and the people involved in their creation. Bailey skillfully weaves together architectural, cultural, and political threads to present a nuanced analysis of the French colonial legacy in India and key Southeast Asian cities like Hanoi, Phnom Penh, and Saigon. Throughout the work, Bailey expertly defines his terms and perfectly explains how the architectural forms and features fit into these definitions throughout. He weaves these buildings through the chapters, keeping them relevant and providing continuity across what might otherwise appear to be disparate architectural structures.

One of the book’s notable features is its examination of not only military but also civic and religious buildings in cities occupied, administered, and visited by the French in India, Southeast Asia, and Indochina. This, alongside its long timeline, ensures that the reader is provided with a solid overview of the diverse cultural interactions and architectural styles that resulted from these entanglements. As Bailey notes throughout his work, there was no real comprehensive architectural program that the French imposed within all its colonized territories; rather, it varied significantly through time and by location. By providing the reader with a variety of these situations, Bailey is better able to convince us of this fact, especially since he limits his discussion of urbanism to individual buildings rather than broader urban patterns.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 highlight the failures of French colonial efforts in India and Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on the financial costs and the pursuit of external validation from other colonial powers like the Dutch and British and how that impacted their architectural building projects. The most compelling chapters appear later in the book and discuss the cultural interactions that led to the indigenization and hybridization of French buildings. Chapter 7, for instance, delves into the themes of appropriation and theft in architecture in Phenom Penh in the early twentieth century. This chapter explores how the French and their architects manipulated local architectural elements and traditions to utilize them in the creation of museums. Bailey stresses the local contributions to the design and construction of these spaces, providing an alternate perspective on these buildings as they relate to French and Western museum forms.

The cultural and political interaction between the French and the Indigenous peoples is rarely expressed through architecture, so Bailey’s work is a refreshing glance at visual expression between the French and Indian, Indochinese, and Southeast Asian cultures. It certainly highlights the work that can still be done on the region’s architectural works and provides groundwork for future work on the subject of cultural interaction and colonialism’s impact on visual media both inside and outside the French lens. When combined with the volume’s focus on the builders, designers, and decorators, this work provides a more holistic glimpse of the individuals involved in creating the visual narratives that resulted when these cultures collided. This book is essential for anyone interested in architectural history and the cultural interactions between Europe and Asia from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

[This review from H-Net is reproduced under a Creative Commons License]