Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of display and the British Empire ed. by John McAleer and John M. Mackenzie (review)

Over thirty years ago, John M. Mackenzie published the first two volumes in what has become the influential and popular “Studies in Imperialism” series. The Manchester University Press titles have marched along with larger scholarly and public interests in war, propaganda, museums, race, and gender, more often than not wrestling with the core question of whether Britain was truly an imperial society and culture in foundational and meaningful ways. This most recent volume, Exhibiting the Empire: Cultures of display and the British Empire, continues that project by turning to questions of display and to representations in the world of material culture. Its ten essays will be of interest not only to historians of Britain and its empire from the mid-eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, but also to scholars and practitioners in the worlds of art, museums, music, and printing, or publishing. These are primarily urban subjects, so students of the history of cities (London, primarily, but not exclusively) will also find evidence and arguments of interest. The middle four essays will be particularly attractive to Victorianists.

Mackenzie and John McAleer introduce succinct test cases to turn our attention to “the literal display and exhibition of empire (and the idea of empire) in the imperial metropolis,” a topic they think has not been given its due (1–2). I am not sure that a case can be made for that assertion, although it can comfortably be said that studies in the materiality of imperial culture can still be fresh and provocative. There are many available works on visual culture, exhibitions, and printing as those endeavors danced with imperial expansion, but it would be unseemly and inaccurate to say that such scholarship has provided the final word. Readers have turned time and again to such topics as William Hogarth’s prints, the Crystal Palace, exhibits from Captain Cook’s voyages, and Edward Elgar’s “Pageant of Empire” (1924); this volume offers an opportunity to do the same once more.

The conversation among similar, yet distinct, scholarship on common topics sets up a helpful debate for authors and instructors. One could pair Jeffrey Auerbach’s rich essay on the ways in which the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park and then Sydenham displayed “Empire Under Glass” with other works on the Great Exhibition and its successors, and not only learn a lot, but also encourage fruitful discussion and analyses among students. That in turn could encourage contextual queries of display for which historians are uniquely qualified. Listening to and reading about Elgar’s music in context as discussed by Nalini Ghuman could not only help but also encourage the totality of such display and experience. These two chapters and many of the other essays are relatively short and accessible to university students, whether undergraduates or those pursuing advanced degrees.

The editors recognize that they are encouraging the visual turn in the study of imperial culture, a pivot distinct from the growing interest in network theories among students of British imperialism, and one that draws upon the more established cultural turn. As with that turn, though, I would strongly encourage that we pay attention to the genre itself, and not only the representation. How and why do particular types of displays work? What is necessary in a material and non-material way for a certain genre to be effective in one context and not so in others, or more effective than a different genre in the same context? The strongest studies in the cultural turn reckon with what culture itself means and how the cultural form works, in addition to making a more specific claim about an idea, value, or image. That analysis inevitably leads to multiple readings, as is the case with this volume’s different readings of what empire meant in a particular context of time and place, and...