The Great Exhibition, 1851

Even before it opened on 1 May 1851, the Great Exhibition’s significance was debated. It was promoted by powerful forces in favor of modernization, which involved far-reaching transformation of society in connection with industrialization. Supported by idealistic aims—ground-breaking; trend setting; containing thousands of items; reflecting turbulent dynamics in politics, the economy, and society—it caused an explosion of contemporary written commentary and analysis. It also left voluminous records. Intricate preparation and arrangement, the work of juries, an official and unofficial interpretation of the Exhibition as a measure of human progress all generated a vast output of paperwork. So did discussion of its legacy. This extensive contemporary literature on the Great Exhibition provides an invaluable resource, increasingly accessible via digitization, and facilitates investigation of the subject to the present. Narrative, reverential treatments of the Great Exhibition accompanied legacy projects such as the Crystal Palace after its removal to Sydenham, the South Kensington cultural complex, and educational reform. It served as a reference point for subsequent expositions and the later Expo movement. With generational change and increasing cynicism regarding Victorian idealism came criticism. Yet its connection with a period of economic growth, political stability, and British prowess meant it remained prominent in patriotic and nostalgic historical narratives of the nineteenth century. Anniversaries invite reconsideration. The year 1951 produced studies demonstrating historical distance, nostalgia, and connections with the Festival of Britain that year. Rising interest in economic and social history in the 1960s led to investigation of the Exhibition in terms of labor, the working class, urbanization, and anthropology. Criticism of capitalism and the emergence of postmodernism encouraged consideration of the Exhibition’s social and political agendas. The Exhibition’s role in the creation of modern industrial bourgeois traditions and concomitant social structures and control moved center stage. So did its function in nation building, imperialism, and globalization. Postmodernist concern with discourse encouraged exploration of complexities associated with the process of modernization. The 150th anniversary of the Exhibition was a timely catalyst. It produced an extensive exploration of meanings, interpretations, and participants. It spurred on research into the Exhibition’s antecedents and international dimensions. Recent intellectual currents have focused on the Exhibition’s connection to, for example, imperialism, slavery, and the environment.