An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the North Atlantic World, 1660-1830 (Critical Perspectives in Art History)

The contributors to this volume analyze visual culture in the context of British and French Colonial activity in the North Atlantic from 1660-1830. It is a response to a noticeable omission in current art history and cultural studies, which have largely ignored the diverse and important body of visual imagery relating to colonialism, Atlantic slavery and the development of racial ideology. This fascinating collection demonstrates that the visualization of individuals, communities, social types, fictive characters, artefacts and landscapes, played a highly significant role in both the European representation and self-representation of the peoples and places of the Atlantic colonial world. Consequently, it reasserts the primacy of visual culture as an active participant in forming this complex and fluid "imagined community."