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L'EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1851 – COMMENTARY
Introduction
The document is a speech pronounced by Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861), the husband of Queen Victoria. The speech was given at Guildhall, London City Hall in 1849 (and, in 1851, part of the Great Exhibition catalog) and was addressed to businessmen and industrials.
In 1949, Prince Albert is 30. He has been married to Queen Victoria for ten years at that time.
His position as consort did not confer any power or duties upon him. But over time, Prince Albert adopted many public causes, such as educational reform and a worldwide abolition of slavery, and took on the responsibilities of running the Queen's household, estates and office.
Revolutions spread throughout Europe in 1848 as the result of a widespread economic crisis. A man of progressive and relatively liberal ideas, Albert not only led reforms in university education, welfare, the royal finances and slavery, he had a special interest in applying science and art to the manufacturing industry.
In 1949, he was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851. It arose from the annual exhibitions of the Society of Arts, of which Albert was President from 1843, and owed most of its success to his efforts to promote it. Albert served as president of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and had to fight for every stage of the project.
Opponents of the exhibition prophesied that foreign rogues and revolutionists would overrun England, subvert the morals of the people, and destroy their faith. Albert quietly persevered, trusting always that British manufacturing would benefit from exposure to the best products of foreign countries.
The Exhibition, sponsored by the court and organized by the aristocracy, reflected Britain's commitment to economic progress and hence to Liberalism. It touched an enthusiastic nerve in the popular mind. For many ordinary people, it was the first occasion for a visit to London, an exhausting long day-trip on one of the special trains which brought visitors from all over the country. Two railways were created for the occasion.
The Great Exhibition was the first international exhibition of manufactured products and was enormously influential on the development of many aspects of society including art and design education, international trade and relations, and even tourism.
Problematic: To what extent Prince Albert's speech reveals the impact of the Great Exhibition and its significance regarding to the Industrial Revolution?
First, we will study…then… and finally…
"THE TIME IN WHICH HE LIVED"
A/ A period of most wonderful transition
L.6, Prince Albert emphasizes the fact that nobody "will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition". He refers to the industrial and social changes happening in Great Britain.
Nonetheless, industrialization was gradual and relative in its impact. British capitalism had increased both investment and living standards.
Industrialization as concept was only germinating in the 1820s. Britain annexed 20% of world trade, and probably about half the trade in manufactured goods. Three sectors were dominant : coal, iron and textiles. Cotton technology spread to other textiles – speedily to Yorkshire worsteds, slowly to linen and wool. But it also boosted engineering and metal construction.
The British government did not play a positive role in industrialization neither did it abstain in the interests of laissez-faire. The 1840s remained a decade of crisis.
British industry was still dominated by textiles, and the market was both finite and subject to increasing competition from America and Europe. The industry was overcapitalized, and the adoption of each new invention meant that the return on capital decreased; each commercial depression was steeper and longer lasting than the last.
B/… and of modern inventions
L. 16: "The rapidity and the power of lightning".
L. 18: "Moving power of civilization extended to all branches of science, industry, and art".
L. 32 "Science discovers these laws of power, motion and transformation; industry applies them to the raw matter which the earth …"
Throughout his speech, Prince Albert refers to the inventions and new improvements known thanks to science and spread with the industry. Electricity, means of transport and new technology were the most important ones. Here are some examples : By 1804, Richard Trevithick demonstrated the locomotive in Wales, soon adopted in the northern coalfield. By 1830, 175 miles of line, authorized by Parliament, had been built. Commercial boom of the mid-1820s gave a nex boost with the promotion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Cotton production had almost doubled between 1820 and 1830 and Manchester's population had risen by 47%.
By 1840 nearly 2400 miles of track connected London with Birmingham, Manchester and Brighton. Railway : By 1849, 224.6 millions were invested. The impact on the economy and then on the society was gigantic, giving birth to a new way to live.
NEW WORLD OR TRADITIONAL WORLD
A/A religious world
L.3: "Providence has been ordained".
L. 27: "So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in his world…to L.32".
Several times, Prince Albert refers to religion. The mid-Victorians were convinced that their way of life was not only better but also quite unlike that known by their predecessors. The birth of industrialism, discoveries in science and a developing understanding of the natural world were all tangible evidence of progress.
To Prince Albert and the Victorian society, progress meant moral development. Albert intended to spread these values through the Great Exhibition. In 1851, visitors expected and found an affirmation that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.
Nevertheless, the society which the Great Exhibition of 1851 revealed was increasingly urban, perhaps increasingly secular, certainly increasingly non-Anglican in tone. Mid-Victorian politics reflected these tendencies, all of which pointed towards Liberalism.
B/ An industrial & capitalist world
L. 17: "The great principle of division of labour which may be called the moving power of civilization"
L. 24: "the publicity of the present day causes that no sooner is a discovery or invention made, than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts".
L.25 to 27…
The Great Exhibition of 1851 had also to reflect the growth of British industry and its meaning. Free-trade meant much more than simply the abolition of protective tariffs. It was exemplifying a whole philosophy of political, social, economic organization. John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848, the handbook of mid-Victorian liberalism, put the point in a nutshell: Laisser-faire, in short, should be the general practice. The free-trade movement accompanied rather than anticipated the commitment of the British economy to manufacturing, transport, and service industries with an urban base.
This view of individualism gained from the widely popular writings of the social evolutionists. The concept of evolution, and consequently of 'progress', whether on the individual, national, or global level, came to permeate every aspect of Victorian life and thought.
Compared with any other country, the British economy in the period 1850-70 was extraordinary in its complexity and in the range of its products and activities. It was strong on the basic raw materials of an early industrial economy – coal and iron – and it increased its world ascendancy in these two commodities as Continental countries imported British coal and iron to supply the basic materials for their own industrialization. An energetic manufacturing sector pressed forward with a huge range of items, from ships and steam engines through textiles to the enormous variety of small manufactured goods which adorned Victorian houses and, by their export in British ships, "Victorianized" the whole trading world.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION
A/ A showcase of Great Britain's power
L.10 : "Product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities".
L. 36 to 45
Within the Great Exhibition, free comfort facilities were available to all; filtered water was supplied by the Chelsea Waterworks Company and, for the first time, public lavatories were provided for the gentlemen and 'rest rooms' for the ladies. In addition, many of the countries were advertising themselves through free samples, for instance an Eau de Cologne fountain in the Austrian Court and chocolate drops in the Saxony Court.
For the mid-nineteenth-century citizen this would have been a unique experience. It was the first time that the nations of the world had ever come together in one place, other than on a battlefield and even then not in such numbers or in such variety, and it was a remarkable showcase for the manufactures of Britain and the world.
Britain was the most powerful and important nation in the world, with an empire that encircled the globe, and dominated not only militarily but also in terms of civilian skills.
In May of 1851, these self-congratulatory thoughts would have been in the minds of visitors as they travelled from all parts of the country to the Exhibition in London. As they entered Hyde Park such thoughts would have been confirmed by the size, magnificence and structural perfection of the building that met their eyes. With the sun reflected in its massive glass surface they would undoubtedly have agreed with the magazine Punch that it was 'a Crystal Palace'.
The Crystal Palace
( )The drama of its building must have heightened their expectations as they went through the doors to be overwhelmed by the height of the iron and glass transept which soared 108ft (33m) above their heads. The park's fully-grown elm trees encased within the building added to the impression that the visitor was inside a vast greenhouse.
From the entrance the nave stretched apparently endlessly until the brightly painted iron pillars and girders in blue, yellow and red merged into grey in the distance. Everywhere was a feeling of light and colour with the great dark red banners hanging from the galleries telling of the myriad manufactured goods of Britain, the raw materials and exotic productions of her Empire, while farther back lay all the other strange countries of the world to explore.
This building, with its skeleton of cast-iron columns supporting a network of girders, was based on a 24ft (7.3m) module of parts pre-fabricated in Birmingham. It not only was innovative technologically, but also used many other industrial skills and inventions of the time. The removal of the glass tax only a few years previously had contributed to the development of plate glass by the Birmingham glass company, Chance Bros.
The Crystal Palace used 300,000 sheets in the largest size ever made (4ft 1in x 10ins/1.3m x 25.3cm). Steam engines on site drove the machinery to cut the wooden glazing bars as well as the 24 miles (40km) of Paxton's patent guttering used to hold the glass in position on his simple but effective ridge and furrow roof.
The invention of the telegraph allowed rapid communication between the site and the manufacturers in the Midlands. In less than nine months from 30 August 1850, when the contractors took over the site, a building 1848ft (562m) long and 408ft (124m) wide rose in Hyde Park. It was capable of holding over 100,000 objects representing nearly 14,000 exhibitors, half from Britain and the Empire, half from other countries.
By the time the exhibition closed on 15 October 1851 more than 6 million people had passed through its doors. The vast majority of these were the ordinary people of Britain who came from every corner of the land, some of them seeing London, let alone the marvels of the Exhibition, for the first time. Many were brought from the North by the enterprising Thomas Cook who had just started running temperance excursion trains. When they arrived they were as amazed and impressed by the productions of industry and the ingenious scientific gadgetry, much of it now preserved in the Science Museum, as by the decorative and applied.
B/ Symbol of unity
L. 10: "Unity"
L. 19: "Formerly the greatest mental energies strove at universal knowledhe confined to the few, now they are directed to specialities… becoming at once the property of the community at large"
The Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, to give it its full title, was a huge and monumental enterprise, of importance in art, science and technology, of political, economic and social significance, and involving elements from just about the whole globe. The desire was to celebrate commercial liberalism and Free Trade, the liberal view of the advantages of the British political and social model, the East India Company’s conviction of the wealth of the empire in terms of raw materials.
Hence, the Exhibition could incorporate elements of patriotism while trumpeting the value of internationalism and universal peace.
Regarding to the other nations participating to the Great Exhibition, France, for example, boasted “one of the most attractive and extensive in the Exhibition.” Silk looms from Lyon, ingenious kitchen contrivances, and modish furniture combined in this account to make France the “Queen of fashion.”
Belgium receives similar praise for her brilliant collection of arms, mass-produced rifles of the “Swiss fashion,” and rich velvet furniture.
Conclusion
The Great Exhibition of 1851 celebrated the ascendancy of the United Kingdom in the market place of the world, though many of the Continental exhibits, especially those from the German states, gave British manufacturers pause when the high quality of their technology was examined. The success of the Exhibition astonished contemporaries. Figures for attendance were published daily in the press. Its substantial profits were later used to build the museums at South Kensington.
Members of the propertied classes congratulated themselves: the nervous, brittle atmosphere of the 1840s was giving way to the calmer tone of the 1850s, which by the 1860s had become positively self-confident.
A street ballad sold at the Exhibition emphasized the curious blend of artisan self-reliance, free-trade internationalism, and monarchic chauvinism which was to define the language of much of British public life for the rest of the century.
Ultimately, the Exhibition’s significance lay in its formulation of Britain’s view of itself and that sense of ‘Britishness’, it also encompassed foreigners’ perceptions of this moderately liberal, industrialised and commercially permissive country. Indeed, while it served as a spring-board for internationalism in many forms, and was arguably an important milestone in the process of globalisation, the Great Exhibition also did much to solidify senses of national unity and divergence abroad, and not just in Britain.
See a testimony of a British who went to the Great Exhibition below…
Travelling to the Great Exhibition
A description of the crowds that came to see the Great Exhibiton, and description of a visit as a momentous occasion for any family.
'Enormous excursion trains daily poured their thousands into the city... Throughout the season... it was like.., a gigantic picnic... large numbers of work people received holidays for the purpose... 800 agricultural labourers in their peasants attire from Surrey and Sussex conducted by their clergy at a cost of two and twopence each person - numerous firms in the north sent their people who must have been gratified by the sight of their own handiwork - an agricultural implement worker in Suffolk sent his people in two hired vessels provided with sleeping berths, cooking apparatus and every comfort.'
From 'The Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts' by Charles Tomlinson, London, 1852
"It was decided that when Mr Blandydash went to the Great Exhibition, Mrs Blandydash should go with him. And then all the objections, and apprehensions she had of dangers, vanished like the vapour before the sun... The News of the World was borrowed every Saturday night, and the first thing hunted for, was the article on 'The Great Exhibition' and she read this to her beloved Barnabas...
But then, the next consideration was how should they go. Mr Blandydash and family were in very humble circumstances in life... They would, therefore, travel to London in their pony and cart... and as the distance was only seventy miles, it would be hard if they could not do it in a couple of days; then, if they allowed themselves a week for their trip, they would have two days to go, and two days to be in London, and two days to come back. Miss Leonora seemed to have an inclination to go by the rail; but her papa overruled it by saying that he had one wooden leg, and he did not wish to come back with another. Railways might do very well for people, who, like Turks, believed in fatalism; but for those who wished to take care of their bones and live as long as they could, they would never do.
The morning arrived on which they were to commence this long talked of excursion. [The journey took them three days]... They were now within a stone's throw of the great, grand, and beautiful Hyde Park... And as they now entered the confines of the park, they very soon saw [the Crystal Palace's] majestic head towering up among the trees, sparkling in the rays of the sun, like the sea by moonlight, the banners of all nations floating on top of it.
There it is, there it is', said Mr B, 'and I mean to say as it does great honour to the mighty Prince Albert who invented it... That's the sort of thing, my dear, to take the shine out of all the foreign kings and empires, popes and nabobs.'"'
Images: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/study-room-resource-the-great-exhibition/
