Many People use art as a way of coming to terms with their environment, with religious or political ideas, and with social relations. This is particularly true of imperial systems. Members of the dominant group invariably use art as a device to explain and justify their power, to express the mystique of rulers, and to illustrate their knowledge and command of the natural world. Those who find themselves incorporated into empires often pass through phases of adapting their art to that of their political masters, rediscovering the wellsprings of their own art - sometimes as a conscious act of resistance, and, finally, reflecting through their art a new national consciousness.The history of art in the British Empire illustrates all of these developments. The British visual arts were unquestionably stimulated by imperial rule: the experience of warfare and of economic and political power, and the encompassing of almost the entire world and its peoples within a new global order led to a remarkably innovative drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility. Europeans who established themselves as permanent settlers in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa embarked upon a search for distinctive artistic expression appropriate to their sense of national identity. Empire may have stimulated British art, but it disrupted the artistic life of the societies conquered by the British.