This volume explores the ways in which artists and art historians envisioned civilisation over the course of the long nineteenth century. More specifically, it examines how Europeans and Americans represented themselves and others through the lens of civilisation, how understandings of historical and artistic development were reshaped by the idea, and how the idea changed and was put to new uses as the century progressed.Coined in mid-eighteenth-century Europe, civilisation was initially thought of as a single process that all societies underwent, some faster than others. In the nineteenth century, civilisation became the primary way of understanding historical development, but Europe's experiences in the world changed the meaning of the term. By the end of the century, the term was used to distinguish between distinctly different cultures, and there were some doubts about the direction and superiority of the European form. Civilisation was the subject of some of the most prominent public mural paintings and sculptures in Europe and the United States, especially those that speculated on the direction of history. It also underpinned Western depictions of non-Western societies, understandings of artistic and historical development throughout the world, and evaluations of social progress and artistic excellence. This volume explores all of these subjects, and will be of considerable interests to students and scholars of art history, European studies and postcolonial studies.