‘Empire’ is a word that bespeaks power and raises issues of sovereignty, oppression, and global capital. So what was the British Empire? How did it expand, and why did it decline? India, Australia, North, West, and South Africa, and the Caribbean: these are some of the territories colonized by Britain. This course explores the representation of empire in nineteenth-century British literature, history, and art, and its legacy for British culture and identity today—the networks of people, goods, and capital through which Modern Britain has defined itself.