'Brothers of the Empire?': India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25

Stephen, Daniel

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwq042

Cited by 7 publications

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“…If they did not quite fulfil Barnett's Ruskinian aspirations, they did at least garner some enthusiasm among the local residents. Questions of conception and reception were also pursued in articles by Stephen and Britton. Stephen provides a critical evaluation of the British Empire Exhibition in 1924–5, when it travelled to India, where it became a symbol attracting nationalist grievances regarding ‘race’ and economic inequality.…”

Section: –1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Questions of conception and reception were also pursued in articles by Stephen and Britton. Stephen provides a critical evaluation of the British Empire Exhibition in 1924–5, when it travelled to India, where it became a symbol attracting nationalist grievances regarding ‘race’ and economic inequality. Britton recovers the representational politics of the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition, pointing to a pivotal tension between the use of hackneyed historical narratives and imagery (including of the Highlands) and the organizers' modernizing agenda of social and industrial progress.…”

Section: –1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Review of periodical literature published in 2011

Faith

Davis

Paul

et al. 2012

The Economic History Review

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Section: –1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: –1945mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

Faith

Davis

Paul

et al. 2012

The Economic History Review

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“…Recent work in the history of expositions and museums has started to move away from this bias towards curatorial intentions, and has begun to expand our understanding of the archive of the fair. Scholars have examined the experiences of visitors and performers (Niquette and Buxton, 1997;Marthur, 2000;Parezo and Fowler, 2007;Qureshi, 2011), debates and counterpropaganda movements stimulated by expositions (Hughes, 2006;Geppert, 2010;Britton, 2010;Stephen, 2013), tried to recreate the 'layout of the fair' and its pavilions in book form (Hollengreen, et al, 2014, p 6), and viewed fairs as miniature cities with real urban problems (Brown, 2009). This essay adds to such literature by proposing three interventions.…”

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confidence: 99%

From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s Home? Experiencing ‘Tropical Africa’ at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition

Skotnes-Brown¹

2023

Science Museum Group Journal

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The 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition was the largest colonial exposition in British history. Twenty-seven million people explored its 238-acre grounds, gazed at its displays, and marvelled at its architectural wonders. While exhibits ranged from a series of so-called 'native villages', to a spectacle of tropical medicine, the official intent was consistent -to promote the development of a more self-sufficient Empire. The exploitation of 'underdeveloped' African Crown Colonies was considered important in securing this vision. Eschewing the image of 'Diseased Africa', curators sought to encourage temporary settlement and investment by suggesting that medicine had transformed tropical Africa into a land of infinite wealth for the intrepid capitalist. In contrast to many analyses of World's Fairs, which have focused on catalogues and official materials at the expense of visitor's narratives, I uncover the tensions between curatorial intention and visitors' experiences. Through an analysis of divergent responses from science communicators and lay-publics, I argue that the curators' vision of 'Brightest Africa' was sometimes received, sometimes contested, misinterpreted, or lost in translation. This was because the fair was more than a series of exhibits: it was a miniature city, populated by living displayed peoples, which prompted concerns about disease, sanitation, and racial comingling. While catalogues and captions to the displays sought to pacify the White Man's Grave, the curators misjudged the effect of the sensorial experience of the exhibition, which often suggested the opposite. Its sights, smells, and sensations conformed to a stereotype of tropical Africa as a deadly place, rather than a "white man's home".

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Performing Multiculturalism: The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965

Natarajan¹

2014

J. Br. Stud.

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The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965 was an important moment of postimperial reengagement. Over three weeks, Britain hosted visual artists, musicians, dancers, poets, and writers representing national cultures, who together presented a diverse Commonwealth assembled in terms of egalitarian multiculturalism. This article examines the investments of individual nations in participating in this festival to argue for the transnational production of multiculturalism at the end of empire. As a postimperial phenomenon, Commonwealth multiculturalism depended on the legibility of distinct national cultures assembled through an equitable framework. Governments sponsored representative cultural forms in response to domestic political circumstances and international economic needs, and against the imperial aesthetic hierarchies of the past. Examining the diverse interests assembled through the festival is essential to understanding the legacies of imperial power for more seemingly democratic frameworks of difference.

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'Brothers of the Empire?': India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s Home? Experiencing ‘Tropical Africa’ at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition

Performing Multiculturalism: The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965

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'Brothers of the Empire?': India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

From the White Man&rsquo;s Grave to the White Man&rsquo;s Home? Experiencing &lsquo;Tropical Africa&rsquo; at the 1924&ndash;25 British Empire Exhibition

Performing Multiculturalism: The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965

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From the White Man’s Grave to the White Man’s Home? Experiencing ‘Tropical Africa’ at the 1924–25 British Empire Exhibition