Resurrecting the imperial body: monuments and Anglo-American military violence in St Paul’s Cathedral

This article explores how a diverse assemblage of monuments erected in St Paul’s Cathedral to commemorate men who fought in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 operated as a collective expression of imperial ideology. It is primarily a visual essay, using photographs of these monuments as a starting point, and focusing on the body of the deceased and its representation in sculptural and photographic form. The text offers a short exploration of how military bodies conceptualized violence for audiences in St Paul’s Cathedral and how the sculpted body offers a way to understand monuments as vehicles of imperial propaganda.