1851: THE GREAT EXHIBITION

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HT52205A/HT53205A Spring Term 2013-14 1851: THE GREAT EXHIBITION The Opening of the Great Exhibition, Hyde Park, 1851 The British Library Board CONVENOR: Vivienne Richmond, v.richmond@gold.ac.

1 HT52205A/HT53205A Spring Term : THE GREAT EXHIBITION The Opening of the Great Exhibition, Hyde Park, 1851 The British Library Board CONVENOR: Vivienne Richmond, RHB 287, Consultation and feedback times: Mondays 1-2 and 4-5; Tuesdays 3-4 LECTURES: Tuesdays 11-12, RHB 144 (Except February 11 - see below) SEMINARS: Tuesdays, 12-1 RHB 352, 2-3 RHB 307 (Except February 11 - see below) 1

2 GENERAL SCOPE OF THE COURSE In 1851 over 6 million people, from all classes and many countries, visited The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations housed in the Crystal Palace, purpose-built at lighting speed, in Hyde Park. There they found some 14,000 exhibits furniture, textiles, minerals, ceramics, industrial and agricultural machinery, glass, food, flowers, sculptures, writing and sewing materials, jewels, metalwork, architectural models, vehicles, clocks, globes, scientific, medical and musical instruments, trinkets, toys, stuffed animals, weapons, carriages, boats, medicines, dyes and clothing. Ostensibly celebrating world manufactures, the majority of the goods were produced in Britain and its colonies and were a proclamation of British industrial, technological and Imperial supremacy. When the Exhibition closed the Crystal Palace was relocated to Sydenham in south London. Here, in expanded form, it housed displays of the arts and sciences, intended to provide the masses with elevating, instructive entertainment, and formed the glittering summit of a capacious landscaped park which, according to one historian, traced the history of evolution from the primeval swamp to the peak of civilisation. The Palace housed a series of national and imperial celebrations until its dramatic destruction by fire in 1936, and inspired a host of exhibitions, fairs and expositions elsewhere. In this course we will explore the context in which the 1851 Great Exhibition was conceived and realised, its aims and purpose. We will focus on the material culture of the building, exhibits and landscape, as well as the people who made and visited them. We will also look beyond the 1850s, at the subsequent events held at the Crystal Palace, those it inspired elsewhere and its legacy which is still evident, not only in the crumbling ruins and Grade I- listed concrete dinosaurs, which we will visit, but also in such manifestations as the (much less successful) Millennium Dome (O2). Our aim will be to understand the role of material culture and community celebration in the construction and expression of national and imperial identity. TEACHING MODE Seminars. All students will be expected to participate in small- and large-group discussions. You will find this difficult to do if you have not done the preparatory work. Unless otherwise indicated, the weekly set readings are available to download from the course VLE. LEARNING OUTCOMES Level 5 students will be expected to demonstrate a good understanding of: the origins, purpose, aims and context of the Great Exhibition of 1851; the ways in which the Exhibition can be used to explore a range of aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history; the relationship between the 1851 Exhibition (and the subsequent Crystal Palace complex) and Britain s national and imperial identities; the influence of the 1851 Exhibition on subsequent exhibitions, fairs and expositions; 2

3 the modern legacy of the 1851 Exhibition; the value of material culture as a means of historical enquiry. Level 5 students will also be expected to demonstrate competence in the research, analysis and interpretation of primary and secondary sources, awareness of different scholarly approaches, and the ability to express their findings both orally and in writing, in clear accessible prose Level 6 students will be expected to demonstrate the Level 5 outcomes to an advanced level, expressed through more detailed and sophisticated interpretation and analysis of a wider range of primary and secondary materials, a more confident and independent approach to them, and the construction of more nuanced historical arguments. TRANSFERABLE SKILLS! Acquiring a broad range of knowledge and understanding, including a sense of development over time and an appreciate of the culture and attitudes of societies other than our own.! Writing concisely! Extracting important information! Analyzing! Attending to detail! Imagining alternatives! Identifying resources! Utilising/perceiving the value of alternative sources of information ASSESSMENT Level 5 (Year 2): a) Summative 750-word source analysis (25%) 2,500-word essay (75%) b) Formative 750-word draft source analysis 2,500 draft essay (75%) seminar presentation Level 6 (Year 3): a) Summative 1,000-word source analysis (25%) 3,000-word essay (75%) b) Formative 1,000-word draft source analysis 3,000-word draft essay (75%) seminar presentation 3

4 Deadlines: NB: All work to be submitted online via the VLE. NB: PLEASE REMEMBER TO USE THE APPROPRIATE TEMPLATE AND COMPLETE THE SELF-ASSESSMENT FORM TO AVOID FEEDBACK/GRADING PENALTIES. Draft source analysis (formative): Tuesday, February , 1pm Source analysis (summative): Tuesday March , 1pm Draft essay (formative): Tuesday March Essay (summative): Thursday May , 1pm 4

5 LIST OF CLASSES NB: For weekly readings and other preparatory work see VLE. Week Introduction: The Great Exhibition and Material Culture Week Exhibiting Industry Week Exhibiting Empire Week Visitors Week Visit to Crystal Palace Park and Museum NB: THIS CLASS TAKES PLACE ON WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 12, FROM 2-4PM (INSTEAD OF THE USUAL TUESDAY CLASS). Week Reading Week Week The Crystal Palace After the Great Exhibition Week Influence Week : The Festival of Britain Week The Millenium Dome Week Whose National Identity? 5

6 Material Culture Appadurai, Arjun,The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) Barber, Sarah and Corinna M Peniston-Bird (eds), History Beyond The Text: A Student s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009) Barringer, Tim and Tom Flynn (eds), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998) Bennett, Tony and Patrick Joyce (eds), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010) Briggs, Asa, Victorian Things (Stroud: Sutton, 2003 [1988) Carrier, James G., Gifts and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism Since 1700 (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995). Available as ebook through Goldsmiths Library. Coombes, Annie E., Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) Gosden, Chris, Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture (Berg, 2006) Harvey, Karen, History and Material Culture: A Student s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (London: Routledge, 2009) Jordanova, Ludmilla, The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Lawrence, Diane, Genteel Women: Empire and Domestic Material Culture, (Manchester University Press, 2012) Lubar, Steven D and W. David Kingery, History from Things: Essays on Material Culture (Smithsonian, 2005) Macgregor, Neill, The History of the World in 100 Objects (London: Penguin, 2012) Miller, Daniel, Stuff (Cambridge: Polity, 2009) Richards, Thomas, Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle (Standford: Standford University Press, 1991) Waters, Catherine, Commodity Culture in Dicken s Household Words: The Social Life of Goods (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) Great Exhibition/Crystal Palace Agathocleous, Tanya, Urban Reallism and the Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Nineteenth Century: Visible City Invisible World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Chapter 1, The palace and the periodical: The Great Exhibition, Cosmopolis, and the discourse of cosmopolitanism Anon., Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition 1851 (London: 1851), Senate House Library, Special Collections, reference only Anon., Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) Anon., The Crystal Palace: A Little Book for Little Boys for 1851 (London: James Nisbet, 1851), download from course VLE. Anon., The Great Exhibition: A Facsimile of the Illustrated Catalogue of London s 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition (Gramercy, 1995) Anon, The World s Fair, or, Children s Prize Gift Book of the Great Exhibition of 1851: Describing the Beautiful Inventions and Manufactures Exhibited Therein: With Pretty Stories About the People who have Made and Sent Them: and how The Live when at Home (London: Thomas Dean & Son, 1851), Senate House Library, Special Collections, reference only Armstrong, Isobel, Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) Auerbach, Jeffrey A, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 6

7 Auerbach, Jeffrey A, and Peter H Hoffenberg (eds), Britain, the Empire and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008) Beaver, Patrick, The Crystal Palace, : A Portrait of Victorian Enterprise (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1970) Broughton, James, The Pleasure Garden (1957) film, re-released on film by BFI Buzard, James, Joseph W Childers and Eileen Gillooly (eds), Victorian Prism: Refractions of the Crystal Palace (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007) Cantor, Geoffrey, The Great Exhibition: A Documentary History (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013) Clemm, Sabine, Dickens, Journalism and Nationhood: Mapping the World in Household Words, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009) Davis, John R, The Great Exhibition (Stroud: Sutton, 1991) Hobhouse, Hermione, The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition: Art, Science and Productive industry: A History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (Athlone Press, 2002) Leapman, Michael, The World for a Shilling: How the Great Exhibition of 1851 Shaped a Nation (London: Headline, 2001) Leith, Ian, Delamotte s Crystal Palace: A Victorian Pleasure Dome Revealed (Swindon: English Heritage, 2005) Mayhew, Henry and George Cruickshank, 1851, or, The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys and Family, who Came up to London to Enjoy Themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition (London, 1851) Piggott, J, Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham (London: C Hurst, 2004) Purbrick, Louise (ed), The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) Shuter, Jane, The Great Exhibition (Oxford: Heinemann, 2003) Wyatt, M. Digby, Views of the Crystal Palace and Park, Sydenham, from Drawings by Eminent Artists, And Photographs by P. H. Delamotte (London: Day & Son, 1854) Senate House Special Collections, reference only. Young, Paul, Globalization and the Great Exhibition: The Victorian New World Order (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Empire/Colonialism/ Otherness Beaven, Brad, Visions of Empire: Patriotism, Popular Culture and the City, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) Hall, Catherine and Sonya O Rose (eds) At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,, 2006) Hassam, Andrew, Portable Iron Structures and Uncertain Colonial Spaces at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, in Felix Driver and David Gilbert, Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) Hoffenberg, Peter H., An Empire On Display; English, Indian and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) Ferguson, Niall, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2004) Jackson, Ashley, Buildings of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) - The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) James, Lawrence, Rise and Fall of the British Empire (London: Little Brown, 1994) Lawrence, Susan (ed.), Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity in Great Britain and its Colonies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010) Mackenzie, John M (ed), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987) - Propaganda and Empire The Manipulation of British Public Opinion,

8 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) Pels, Peter and Oscar Salemink (eds), Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology (University of Michigan Press, 2000) Piggott, J., Reflections of Empire: how efforts to celebrate imperial triumphs at Joseph Paxton s Crystal Palace in Sydenham burnt out after 1911, History Today 61:4 (2011), Porter, Bernard, The Absent-minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Qureshi, Sadiah, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth-century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) Ruby, Scott, The Crystal Palace Exhibition and Britain s Encounter with Russia, in Anthony Cross (ed.) A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture (Cambridge: OpenBook, 2012), pp available on Google Books Said, Edward, Culture and imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994) - Orientalism (London: Penguin,2003) Schwarz, Bill, The White Man s World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Have: Yale University Press, 2001) Stocking, George W Jr, Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1991) Thompson, Andrew, The Empire Strikes Back: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Midnineteenth Century (Harlow: Longman, 2005) - Britain s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Twells, Alison, The Mission and the English Middle Class, : The Heathen at Home and Overseas (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Zola, Emile, The Ladies Paradise, introduction by Brian Nelson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Exhibitions/Events/Structures Influenced by the Great Exhibition/Crystal Palace Atkinson, Harriet, The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012) Blair, Tony and Elizabeth Wilhide, The Millenium Dome: The Official Book of the Dome (London: HarperCollins, 1999) Conekin, Becky, Autobiography of a Nation: the 1951 Festival of Britain (New York: Manchester University Press, 2003) Crampsey, Bob, The Empire Exhibition of 1938: The Last Durbar (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1988) Crossick, Geoffrey and Swerge Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption: the European Department Store, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999) Gold, John R and Margaret M, Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) Greenhalgh, Paul, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988 Heffer, Simon, High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain (Random House, 2013), Chapter 9: The Progressive Mind: The Great Exhibition and its Legacy Jolivette, Catherine, Landscape, Art and Identity in 1950s Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) Lancaster, Bill, The Department Store: A Social History (London: Leicester University Press, 1995) McCrum, Robert (ed.) and Alex Madina, Millenium Experience: The Guide (New Millenium Experience, 1999) McKenna, Neil, Great Exhibitions: From the Crystal Palace to the Festival of Britain, (Channel 4 Television, 1999) Meyer, Jonathan, Great Exhibitions: London, Paris, New York, Philadelphia , Furniture and Decorative Arts (Antique Collectors Club, 2006) Rappaport, Diane, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London s West End (Princeton 8

9 NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) Rennie, Paul, Festival of Britain: Design 1951 (Antique Collectors Club, 2007) Turner, Barry, Beacon for Change: How the 1951 Festival of Britain Shaped the Modern Age (London: Aurum, 2011) van Wes , Peter, Architecture of Instruction and Delight: A Socio-Historical Analysis of World Exhibitions as a Didactic Phenomenon (Rotterdam: 010, 2001) full ebook available on Google Books Museums/Heritage Barringer, Tim and Tom Flynn (eds), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Abingdon: Routledge, 1998) Barthel, Diane, Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996) Bennett, Tony, Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism London, Routlegde, 2004) Black, Barbara, On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000) Cowell, Ben, The Heritage Obsession: The Battle for England s Past (Stroud: Tempus, 2008) Harrison, Rodney, Heritage: Critical Approaches (London: Routledge, 2012) (ed.), Understanding the Politics of Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010) Hewison, Robert, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen, 1987) Kriegel, Lara, Grand Designs: Labor, Empire and the Museum in Victorian Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) Levell, Nicky (ed.), Oriental Visions: Exhibitions, Travel and Collecting in the Victorian Age (London: Horniman Museum and Garden, 2001) Longair, Sarah and John McAleer (eds), Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2012) Melman, Billie,, The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Smith, Laurajane, Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006) Thurley, Simon, Men from the Ministry: How Britain Saved its Heritage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) Industry/Industrialisation Allen, R.C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Berg, Maxine, The Age of Manufactures, : Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, (London: Routledge, 1994) Bizup, Joseph, Manufacturing Culture: Vindications of Early Victorian Industry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003) de Vries, J., The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Floud, R. and Paul Johnson (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain : vol. 1 Industrialisation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution: Europe (London: Abacus, 1962) - The Age of Capital (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975) Hopkins, Eric, Industrialisaiton and Society, A Social History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000) Hudson, P., The Industrial Revolution (London: Arnold, 1992). S. King, S. and G. Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) Mokyr, J., The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective (Boulder, CO.: Westview Press, 9

10 1993). - The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2009). Morgan, K., The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change, (London: Longman, 1999) Philoponus, The Great Exhibition of 1851, or, The Wealth of the World in its Workshops: Comparing the Relative Skill of the Manufacturers, Designers and Artisans of England with that of France Belgium, Prussia, and Other Coneinental States (London: E Churton, 1851), Senate House Library Special Collections, reference only, and digital version via Making of the Modern World Richardson, John, The Real Exhibitors Exhibited: or, An Inquiry into the Condition of Those Industrial Classes who have Really Represented England at the Great Exhibition (London: 1851), Senate House Library Special Collections, reference only Schwarz, L. D., London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Victorian Religion Burris, John P., Exhibiting Religion: Colonialism and Spectacle at International Expositions (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001) Cantor, Geoffrey, Religion and the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Claydon, Tony and Ian McBride (eds), Protestantism and National Identity Erdozain, Dominic, The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recretation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010) Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) McLeod, Hugh, Religion and Society in England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996) Religion and the Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Britaiin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984) Architecture Colquhoun, Kate, A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton (Fourth Estate, 2003) Forty, Adrian, Concrete and Culture: A Material History (London: Reaktion, 2012) Gaskell, S Martin, Model Housing: From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain (London: Mansell, 1986) Jackson, Ashley, Buildings of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) McKean, John, Crystal Palace: Joseph Paxton and Charles Fox (Phaidon, 1994) Murphy, Douglas, The Architecture of Failure (Ropley: Zero, 2012) Nead, Lynda, Victorian Bablyon: People Streets and Images in Nineteenth-century London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) Vale, Lawrence, Architecture, Power and National Identity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008) (National) Identity Baucom, Ian, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) Bronstein, Jamie L. and Andrew T. Harris, Empire, State and Society: Britain Since 1830 (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) Colls, Robert, Identity of England (Oxvford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Edensor, Tim, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2002) ebook via Goldsmiths Library Featherstone, Simon, Englishness: Twentieth-century Popular Culture and the Forming of English Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) ebook via Goldsmiths Library Gilbert, Pamela K., Imagined Londons (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002) 10

11 Gordon Betts, G., (The Twilight of Britain: Cultural Nationalism, Multiculturalism and the Politics Of Toleration (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002) Joyce, Patrick, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-century England Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994( Kumar, Krishan,The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2003) Leese, Peter, Britain Since 1945: Aspects of Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) MacPhee, Graham and Prem Poddar (eds), Empire and After: Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective (Oxford: Berghan, 2007) Mandler, Peter, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) McGuigan, Jim, Cultural Analysis (London: Sage, 2009) Plotz, John, Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2010) Samuel, Raphael, Patriotism, 3 vols (London: Routledge, 1989) Ward, Paul, Britishness Since 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004) Weight, Richard, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, (London: Macmillan, 2002) See Course VLE for links to useful websites Bromley Libraries has a wealth of sources relating to the Crystal Palace 11

The Metropolis: Social and Cultural History Winter 2008 MA Course, 2 credits Gábor Gyáni

The Metropolis: Social and Cultural History Winter 2008 MA Course, 2 credits Gábor Gyáni visgyani@ceu.hu This course is intended to figure out the main parameters of metropolitan life characterizing the