Empires of the imagination

"Over the course of the century after 1750, Britain evolved from a substantial international power yet relative artistic backwater into a global superpower and a leading cultural force in Europe. Empires of the Imagination illuminates the manifold ways in which the culture of power and the power of culture were interwoven in this period of dramatic change. Britons invested artistic and imaginative effort to come to terms with the loss of the American colonies; to sustain the generation-long fight against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France; and to assert and legitimate their growing empire in India."--Jacket.