Exhibiting the Empire

Cultures of display and the British Empire

John McAleer, John M. MacKenzie

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781526118356
  9780719091094
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526118349
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Exhibiting the empire considers how a whole range of cultural products – from paintings, prints, photographs, panoramas and 'popular' texts to ephemera, newspapers and the press, theatre and music, exhibitions, institutions and architecture – were used to record, celebrate and question the development of the British Empire. It represents a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the relationship between culture and empire. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, individual chapters bring fresh perspectives to the interpretation of media, material culture and display, and their interaction with history. Taken together, this collection suggests that the history of empire needs to be, in part at least, a history of display and of reception.

This book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British history, the history of empire, art history and the history of museums and collecting.

Table of contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• List of figures, music examples and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: Cultures of display and the British Empire
• An elite imperial vision: Eighteenth-century British country houses and four continents imagery
• Exhibiting exploration: Captain Cook, voyages of exploration and cultures of display
• Satirical peace prints and the cartographic unconscious
• Sanguinary engagements: Exhibiting the naval battles of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
• Empire under glass: The British Empire and the Crystal Palace, 1851–1911
• Ephemera and the British Empire
• Exhibiting the Empire in print: The press, the publishing world and the promotion of ‘Greater Britain’
• Exhibiting empire at the Delhi Durbar of 1911: Imperial and cultural contexts
• Elgar’s Pageant of Empire, 1924: An imperial leitmotif
• Representing ‘Our Island Sultanate’ in London and Zanzibar: Cross-currents currents
• Index