British artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were fascinated by the ruins of Hindu and Buddhist pagodas, wats, and monuments found in Southeast Asia. For the British, images of the remains of past civilisations inspired philosophical meditations on the rise and decline of empires. British artists used images of Southeast Asian ruins in their work as symbols of the fall often humbling and disturbingly prophetic of British empire and society. This richly illustrated and important study adds multiple dimensions to the history of art and image production in Britain during...