In his Sketches Illustrative of Oriental Manners and Customs, published in 1797, British soldier and artist Robert Mabon made a last-minute change to the frontispiece (Figure I.1). While we do not know exactly why he changed his mind, this illustration encapsulates the interface between visual arts and British imperialism. Mabon brings together the emblematic figures of History and Painting. While History draws the attention of Painting to Indian subjects as depicted on a tablet, a rainbow unfolds with the power of the latter's pencil. A picture is worth a thousand words, but, more importantly, visual representations convey deeper and more subtle significances than words are capable of producing. These are constituted by the images’ literary and historical backgrounds, the decisions made by artists and patrons alike, audience response, and, above all perhaps, the ideas that are revealed about power. Mabon's frontispiece allows us to think about imagery as an important arena to address how the British Empire in India can be known, understood, and, most importantly, remembered.

An Empire of Images is not a history of the British Indian Empire as told in images; rather, it foregrounds the visual arts’ centrality in the making of political legitimacy during the early years of British rule in India. I am concerned with the visual languages of imperialism between 1688 and 1815, a chronology internalized as the long eighteenth century in British historiography. A reassessment of this period, however, requires us to turn to its wider colonial context.