Date Available
12-7-2011
Year of Publication
2008
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Document Type
Thesis
College
Arts and Sciences
Department
History
First Advisor
Dr. Phil Harling
Abstract
The cultural venue of European exhibitions in the late-nineteenth century enabled the promotion of the modern nationhoods of imperial powers. This study examines the official attempts of Britain to project its imperial power and modern nationhood through exhibits of colonial Indian “tradition” in London. It traces the historical dynamics of such Indian displays in three exhibitions: the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, and the 1924 Empire Exhibition. The juxtaposition of Indian “tradition” and British “modernity” at the exhibitions denoted India’s inferior “difference” from Britain, and thus the necessity of imperial rule in India. The exhibitions also evidenced the tensions of such notions with those of Indian modernity, especially by the inter-war period. Chapter One examines how the spatial and architectural landscapes of the exhibitions made visible the hierarchies of British imperial rule in India. Chapter Two discusses exhibits of India’s supposedly pre-industrial socioeconomic conditions. Chapter Three assesses the ethnography of the exhibitions, and how they denoted the racial inferiority of Indian “natives” at the same time that they recognized the political power of Indian princes and middle-class elites.
Recommended Citation
Wilburn, Alayna, "IMPERIAL KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL DISPLAY: REPRESENTATIONS OF COLONIAL INDIA IN LATE-NINETEENTH AND EARLY-TWENTIETH CENTURY LONDON" (2008). University of Kentucky Master's Theses. 558.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_theses/558
