Landscapes of Extraction: Colonial and Industrial Histories of British Landscapes, 1700-1900

This panel will explore the complex interplay of colonial wealth and industrial development in British landscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Britain’s imperial reach expanded, wealth amassed through colonial exploitation fuelled drastic transformations of the British countryside, from Capability Brown’s ‘naturalistic’ landscapes to the copper works of South Wales. Equally, pictorial representations of British landscape registered the physical and social spaces being reshaped by the rise of what Andreas Malm calls ‘fossil capital’. This panel invites papers that interrogate seemingly picturesque or idyllic depictions of the British landscape by attending to their embeddedness in the interlocking operations of colonial domination and resource extraction. We also welcome papers that examine critical representations of the British landscape as a site of exploitation or despoilation. Alongside paintings, prints, and photographs we will consider maps, technical diagrams, and other pictorial formats to uncover the diverse perspectives on industry, energy, pollution, race, and empire that emerged during this period.

Topics may include the representation of colonial wealth in ‘country house portraits’, the imperial or industrial ties of lauded British painters or patrons, and the celebration, critique, or erasure of colonial and industrial extraction in landscape paintings. We particularly encourage submissions that broaden ‘British’ art by focusing on Welsh, Scottish, and Irish landscapes and painters, as well as papers considering the colonial and environmental legacies of British imperialism and industrial development.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Eleanor Stephenson, University of Cambridge, ems220@cam.ac.uk

Dr Stephanie O’Rourke, University of St Andrews, so38@st-andrews.ac.uk