The book examines how increasing engagement with the rest of the world transformed European art, architecture and design. It considers how commercial activity and colonial ventures gave rise to new and diverse forms of visual and material culture across the globe. Drawing on a wide range of recent scholarship, it offers a new perspective that challenges Eurocentric approaches.

Reviews

'Art, Commerce and Colonialism is a marvellous and much-needed volume. It brilliantly represents the cutting edge of scholarship on the politics and the commerce of art in the early modern era, while making central issues and a fascinating array of objects readily accessible. This book is poised to shape the next generation of teaching early modern global art history, and offers a valuable road map for further study.'
Claudia Swan, Associate Professor of Art History, Northwestern University

'Art, Commerce and Colonialism masterfully shows how the interaction between Western Europe and the rest of world came to reshape the continent's art and visual culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this book trade, power and art are part of one global process.'
Giorgio Riello, Professor of Global History and Culture, University of Warwick

'The biggest strength of Art, Commerce and Colonialism is that each author provides brief narratives of how scholarly approaches to their topic have changed over time. These forays into historiography, written in ways that are understandable to undergraduate students new to the study of art history, are indispensable.'
Renaissance Quarterly

Introduction - Emma Barker
1 From Iberia to the Americas: Hispanic art of the colonial era - Piers Baker-Bates
2 The Golden Age revisited: Dutch art in global perspective - Emma Barker
3 Creative interactions: Chinoiserie in eighteenth-century Britain - Clare Taylor
4 Transatlantic architecture: classicism, colonialism and race - Elizabeth McKellar
Conclusion - Emma Barker
Index