1851: The Great Exhibition Week 3 Exhibiting Empire

Jeffrey Auerbach Hermione Hobhouse Ashley Jackson Edward Said Paul Young

Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994)

According to the Official Catalogue, foreign exhibitors included: ‘British Possessions’ in Asia (India and Ceylon), Europe (Malta, Gibraltar, and the Channel Islands), Africa (Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, the Seychelles), the Americas (Canada, the Caribbean islands such as Barbados, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Grenada), and Australasia (Australia and New Zealand). Jeffrey Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

Dickinson’s Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of

Great Exhibition as ‘Peace Festival’ (Queen Victoria) Max Schlesinger: ‘Colossus of glass! which would make believe that all the nations are united by the bonds of brotherhood … The flags flutter gaily through the cool of the evening. There the Prussian colours are all but entwined with those of Austria. Here the Papal States touch upon Sardinia. And down there … The Russian eagle stretches his wings, and flutters as if impelled by a desire to fraternise with the stars and stripes of North America!’

The Indian Court

Ivory-cutters at Berhampoor (Bengal), Illustrated London News, April 1851

Art Union: ‘the East India company exhibits had the effect of “impressing every visitor with the importance of such possessions to Great Britain”.’

‘European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.’ Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003)

‘An examination of the way in which Exhibition commentary represented non-European peoples reveals a mindset which not only justified … exploitative trading relations, but sanctioned the violence which accompanied them.’ Paul Young, ‘Mission Impossible: Globalization and the Great Exhibition’, in Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg (eds), Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008)

‘Cannibal Islanders’: an illustration from Thomas Onwhyn, Mr and Mrs Brown's Visit to London to see the Great Exhibition of all Nations. How they were astonished at its wonders, inconvenienced by the crowds, and frightened out of their wits, by the Foreigners.

Frontispiece from Henry Sutherland Edwards’ satire, Authentic Account of the Chinese Commission, which was sent to report on the Great Exhibition; wherein the opinion of China is shown as not corresponding at all with our own.

Great Exhibition presents Empire as: Source of raw materials Diverse and fascinating Means of demonstrating British national ID and superiority Integrated commercial entity Progressive/civlising Philanthropic