The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,  or the “Crystal Palace Exhibition,” London, 1851

One of the earliest major international exhibitions was the “Crystal Palace” in London, named after the enormous glass and iron structure that housed it in Hyde Park as a celebration of British industrial might. It promoted a goal of peaceful intercourse among nations and provided a stage with which to drive home to its huge audiences ideas of social and industrial progress. The exhibits made it increasingly clear which nations were progressive, and which were not.

View of the Crystal Palace, London, 1851.

From Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, from the originals painted for ... Prince Albert, by Messrs. Nash, Haghe and Roberts Published- London 1854. Source: British Library. Source: British Library

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“Oriental” Nations on Display

Among the pageant of forty-four nationalities on display at the Crystal Palace were many “oriental” nations, and differences in their exhibits reflected Britain’s varying attitudes toward them. The unevenness of their exhibits was used to illustrate “types” of nations, and to categorize nations along a continuum of “progress,” with the industrialized West—and especially Britain—at the pinnacle, and other nations falling along a descending scale.

 
 
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Disparate Sources for the China Exhibit

While a major commission had been appointed to promote the exhibits of the Ottomon Empire and to procure materials in an organized fashion from throughout that huge region, no such official effort was made for China. The objects representing China were drawn from many disparate sources with little or no input from the Chinese government, perhaps reflecting the anti-British attitudes of the Chinese emperor Xianfeng 咸丰帝 in the wake of China’s Opium War defeat. The exhibit included industrial products and handicrafts collected by the British Consul in Shanghai, the East India Company, and individual British merchants working in China, plants and spices from the London Horticultural Society, and jades, porcelains, textiles, silks, bronzes, and paintings submitted by collectors of Chinese art.

Part of the China exhibition at the Great Exhibition (Crystal Palace) London, 1851

From Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, from the originals painted for ... Prince Albert, by Messrs. Nash, Haghe and Roberts Published- London 1854. Source: British Library

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