When architecture is used to stake a political claim and project authority, we may expect it to be unmistakable. Grand palaces and imposing fortresses command attention. Yet Euro-Western political entities have long relied also on far more unassuming built objects to mark their sovereignty. Drawing on case studies spanning five continents – ranging from an ancient Roman military sanctuary, a medieval Venetian traveler inn in Southwestern Asia, and a Portuguese trading post in Western Africa, to a British telegraph pole in Oceania, and a recent US American detention camp in Central America – this book examines how buildings have been instrumental in exerting control. It reveals spatial practices through which power is demonstrated in structures of the everyday, equipping readers to recognize these objects in the built environment around them.

• A journey into the universal concept of the architecture of power
• Twenty-four global case studies spanning more than two millennia of colonial expansion
• Illustrated throughout with original architectural and cartographic drawings