"An (Im)perfect Paradise": Materiality, space and the embodiment of empire at Shugborough Hall.

这项研究项目将仔细分析Shugborough庄园的收藏品、建筑和花园，以回答有关土地庄园的形成、当地和全球思想之间的互动以及物质文化对18世纪英国帝国身份的重要性等更广泛的问题。该项目将通过将Shugborough置于国际背景下，挑战将乡村庄园作为固定的英国身份认同渠道的说法。通过考虑乔治·安森在卡罗莱纳州和大西洋经济中的活动，本博士学位旨在更深入地了解安生夫妇是如何为舒格伯勒庄园的开发提供资金的。在这样做的同时，它还将考虑安森夫妇的全球联系如何影响舒格伯勒的美学，以及该空间如何在其省级地区作为帝国主义的表达和帝国本身的代理人发挥作用。该项目的时间范围将集中在18世纪中叶托马斯和乔治·安森领导下的Shugborough庄园的开发，尽管该项目的结束日期尚未确定；这在很大程度上是因为该项目将由收藏品和遗产文件本身领导，在对它们进行审查之前，很难在更具体的时间框架内适应该项目。

This research project will closely analyse the collections, buildings and gardens of the Shugborough estate in order toanswer broader questions about the formation of landed estates, the interaction between local and global ideas and theimportance of material culture to imperial identity in eighteenth-century England. This project will challenge therepresentation of country estates as fixed conduits of 'English' identity by placing Shugborough in an internationalcontext. By considering the role of George Ansons' activities in the Carolinas and in the Atlantic economy moregenerally, this PhD aims to gain a deeper understanding as to how the Ansons were able to finance the development ofthe Shugborough estate. In so doing, it will also consider how the Ansons' global connections influenced the aestheticsof Shugborough, and how the space functioned in its provincial locality as an expression of imperialism and an agent ofempire in its own right. The time scale of this project will focus on the development of the Shugborough estate underThomas and George Anson in the mid-eighteenth century, although an end date for the project has not yet been decided;this is largely because the project will be led by the collections and estate papers themselves, and until they have beenexamined, it would be difficult to fit the project within a more specific time frame.