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COLONIAL INDIA DISPLAYED

Orientalism and Occidentalism:
A Study of Colonial India Display at the Crystal Palace Exhibition 1851
Outline:
1: Introduction

2: Orient and Occident in Discourse

2.1: Orientalism and Occidentalism

2.2: Challenges with Orientalism and Occidentalism

3: World Fairs
3.1: The Enterprise of World Fairs

3.2: Display of Colonies in the Fairs

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4: The Crystal Palace Exhibition - India Displayed

4.1: Crystal Palace Exhibition

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4.2: Display of Indian Colony

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5: Conclusion

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Bibliography

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1: INTRODUCTION:
Orientalism refers to the traits/characteristics of the Orient or the East and more
specifically Asia. The colonization of the East and the subsequent encounters of West
with it, led to development of a vast body of literature setting up the Asia / Orient / East
as binary opposite to the Europe/ West / Occident. In the wake of post colonial studies
this notion of Orient and Orientalism has been challenged but it still remains a
problematic territory in historical research. The term Orient according to Edward Said
was almost a European invention and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic
beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences [Said 1978, 1]. It was
a rich place they colonized which provided a definition of themselves for themselves
creating a contrast between the post-Enlightenment Europe and the East. Orientalism can
be discussed as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over
the Orient [Said 1978, 3]. For the British and French the Orient comprised mainly of
Asiatic cultures (Near-Middle and South East Asia) where as the American Orient is
mainly Far East cultures. The Orient is an idea that has history and a tradition of thought,
imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for West [Said
1978, 5]. This reality has, in my opinion, transcended the West. The binary opposite of
Orientalism is Occidentalism where West is the Occident. The representation of the West
in literature from and by (mostly) East becomes an occidental discourse or literature. This
oriental-occidental phenomenon will be discussed in first part of the paper.
World fairs or exposition of the 19 th century staged the exoticism of the Orient amongst
other things. The display of Orient through/by its fragmented and non contextual art
objects led the British (and other European) citizens RE-write the history of these objects.
As Breckenridge points out in her article, world fairs generated in the practical and
ideological apparatus necessary for modern collectors to transform objects by lifting them
out of their everyday contexts by placing them within the reach of institutions such as
museums. In these contexts, textualized objects acquired a new discursive value, and by
contrast helped to create a new, object centered mythology of rule in the imagined
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ecumene of Victoria [Breckenridge 1989, 211]. The second part of the paper will discuss
the 19th Century world fairs with respect to their display of colonies and the Orient (in
case of Ottoman Empire as it was never colonized but was Orient for the West).
The world fairs are considered having a linear narrative of West subjecting the East but
this is one side of the coin; Peter H Hoffenberg in his book An Empire on Display
gives insight into the Indian display at the world fairs where he addresses some very
interesting points. He points that the reconstruction or RE-writing of history may not only
be for the British citizen of their colonial subject in turn there was a history being
rewritten in the colony of the colonial subject for the colonial subjects. There was a
revival of the Indian heritage under the Raj. These relics (or objects) were sign for and of
the traditionalists authentic and original India, representing the Rajs capacity to
essentialize Indias history and society, revive older art forms and processes and integrate
the work of various regions and times [Hoffenberg 2001, 154]. There was
acknowledgement of the traditional ways of Indian manufacturing or production of art
which in turn attested its authenticity or genuineness. The reconstruction of history was
hence for local British citizen and the colonized.
For the paper study of Indian display at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition will be
conducted looking at it from the colonial oriental perspective. The paper intends to
explore this rewriting of history from and for both local British citizen and colonized
Indian, what value it had for these two different groups of people one who is detached
and one who is the product of the very culture/history that is being re written.

2: ORIENT AND OCCIDENT IN DISCOURSE:

2.1: Orientalism and Occidentalism:
According to Said, Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is
reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse
collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some
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nefarious Western imperialist plot to hold down the Oriental world. . . . Indeed, my
real argument is that Orientalism is -- and does not simply represent -- a considerable
dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the
Orient than it does with our world [Said 1978, 12]. What is that our world? It is the
West. Hence the most discussed and debated book by Edward Said Orientalism,
expresses that the construction of the Orient by the western scholarship was more (if not
more than in equal proportions) about the West itself. In setting East as a more
indigenous, traditional and non industrial geography the West in turn created itself as a
more progressive, modern and industrialized geography. Orientalism is description of the
East or the non Western society, culture, arts and crafts etc. in scholarship and literary
criticism mostly by western scholars. During the time when Europe was making colonies
all around the globe, there was a fundamental urgency to understand the foreign colonies
in order to establish their hegemony over them. According to Mackenzie, Orientalism
came to represent a construct, not reality, an emblem of domination and a weapon of
power ..a product of scholarly admiration for diverse and exotic cultures, and became
the literary means of creating a stereotypical and mythic East through which European
rule could be more readily asserted [MacKenzie, 1995, xii]. He further states, Visual
representations of the East, no less than literary ones, apparently offer further evidence
that Orientalism represents the epitome of occidental power, paralleling the monolithic
discourse identified by Said in literary renderings of the East and expressing a set of
binary oppositions, turning the represented Orient into the moral negative of the West
[MacKenzie, 1995, xiii]. If we revisit the idea of constructing the self by defining the
other as in the mirror-image reflection and if it was about self definition (as binary
opposite or otherwise), in my opinion the time is ripe to look into encounters and
interaction between the cultures that came in contact with each other as a result of
Western imperialism. It is not a novel suggestion made through this paper but study of
encounters are already being carried out by scholars where looking beyond Said-ian
Orientalism and developing a critique around some of the monolithic conceptions and
limitations of the book are underway. This does not mean to discredit the book in anyway
but calls for a more pragmatic analysis of not just the book but the prevalent literature on
Orientalism.
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Looking at the other side of this mirror, in their book Occidentalism: A Short History of
Anti-Westernism by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit it is stated that, The
dehumanizing picture of the west painted by its enemies is what we have called
Occidentalism [Buruma, Margalit, 2004]. They are creating a polarity in discourse
where Occidentalism serves as the antithesis of Orientalism. Although the book is set in a
tone of post 9/11 American dislike around the globe, it does not really delve deep into
phenomenon of Occidentalism. Said also points to the trap of falling for idea of
Occidentalism and finding answers for Orientalism or going beyond and setting the two
terms as opposite essentializing realities in the literary world. Wang Ning in her 1997
article Orientalism v/s Occidentalism elaborates on this concept Occidentalism has
been in minds of many people although it has not yet become a theoretical topic. It every
now and then manipulates our research on East-West cultural relations sometimes playing
a role of intensifying the East - West opposition rather than establishing communication
and dialogue [Ning. 1997]. Her basic argument is that in todays world of cultural
pluralism, although however tempting the idea of Occidentalism is to negate the Western
hegemony, we in the literary circle must consider the nuances of the contemporary world
and avoid creating Occident as the other of the East. The challenge of present scholarship
is looking at cultural encounters and their complex complimentary or contrasting forces
that form these associations.

2.2: Challenges with Orientalism and Occidentalism:

The literature reviewed for the purpose of this paper reflects strongly towards scholarship
rejecting the monolithic connotation of the problematic terms Orientalism and
Occidentalism. Vladimir I Braginsky in his 1997 review article on Rediscovering the
Oriental in the Orient and Europe: New Books of East-West Cultural Interface: A
Review Article states (as commonly held notion) Eastern traditions were perceived in
the West as monotonous, repetitive and boring for as the articles under discussion
demonstrate, the West was drawing enthusiastically upon these boring Eastern
traditions. Moreover, as always happens in such contacts between cultures, it drew
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exactly what it needed for its own cultural development. Sometimes Western artist found
in the cultures of the East a repository of the creative decisions they were looking for,
sometimes a resonator of sorts, amplifying the loudness of decision almost made, and
sometimes a confirmation that the decision were made rightly [Braginsky 1997].
MacKenzie also draws a detailed account of such artistic encounters in his book. The
basic suggestion as put forward by Said as well is that the West discovered what it lacked
in itself in the East. The leaving behind of traditional arts and crafts in the wake of
modernization and industrialization, the factory production of goods etc. made the
production of arts in the East more authentic and genuine. They drew inspiration from it I
am not suggesting this interface transformed the West, as it is stated above the West took
from East as much was required. Similarly the East drew what it could and wanted from
the West. East provided answers to the cultural problems of the West and vice versa. It
was a two way street of cultural exchange, where now in discourse a departure from
narrative of colonial subjects and the oppressive imperial hegemony is required. A
comparative cultural discourse that probably generates discussion around the premise,
where any/every present day culture can (may) be looked as the hybrid of these EastWest encounters. This will in my opinion produce a fruitful furthering discourse on the
subject and might reduce prevailing biases and prejudices.
This cultural production that is an offspring of this encounter of East West where
processes of self definition and recognition were under way, Simon Harrison in his article
suggests three types of encounters. The cultural Other can present three broadly
distinguishable relations to the Self, either separately or in combination: it can embody
difference-as-inferiority, difference-as-superiority and difference-as-equality [Harrison
2003, 345]. The self and the other in this can be interchangeable for both East and West
depending on the positionality of the author. All of the three levels of encounters can be
read as analyzing the motives of the discourse formation. For example to establish a
hierarchic superiority with the other the self will produce a difference discourse based on
difference as superiority so on and so forth. The dilemma of Oriental scholarship is that it
focuses majorly on the superiority discourse establishing East as the inferior but this was
not the case as has been stated earlier in the paper. The artistic inspirations from the East
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were made into a genre of art called the Oriental arts and Oriental studies schools and
departments are part of major universities in USA and Europe.

Fig 01: Eugne Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834, the Louvre, Paris
(Source wikipedia)

Fig 02: John Frederick Lewis, The midday meal, Cairo. (Source wikipedia)

The cultural Other seemed to express precisely what was muted in the Self. In the very
act of representing the Other as essentially different in this way, these discourses defined
specific similarities or commonalities but ones which they were unable to
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acknowledge- between the Other and the certain dimensions of the Self [Harrison 2003,
346]. In my opinion the nostalgia for the past in the industrialized world for West was
represented in the art work examples of which are shown above. These are few
dimensions that can be exploited to reevaluate the Orient- Occident discourse. A rereading of artistic inspiration with non hierarchic agendas or a non political (not
overlooking the politics of course) discussion of cultural exchange and encounters where
hegemony of the colonizer takes a back seat, will be a challenge for the current scholars.

3: WORLD FAIRS:
3.1: The Enterprise of World Fairs:
The world fairs or expositions were cultural phenomena that took root in Europe in 18 th
and 19th century. The French being the initiators in 1844 held the French Industrial
Exposition that was followed by the Great Exposition in 1851 by Britain. The Great
Exposition is commonly called Crystal Palace Exhibition and is normally dubbed as the
trend setter in the long line of Imperial/Colonial Industrial World Expositions. These
world fairs were like the malls of today having all the provisions of the modern day urban
life under one roof including food and entertainment. Entertainment was a major part of
this enterprise, animals and exotic plants, art and crafts from all around the globe
(independent states and colonies) were staged in a competitive environment of world
expo. All these immensely popular shows offered a visual encyclopedia of industry,
commerce, technology, transport, ethnography, crafts, womens work and art, marshalling
the global panoply of the imperial relationship [MacKenzie 2011, 75]. Modernity was
celebrated and tradition was staged as a spectacle for consumption and entertainment, not
to be lived but theatrically experienced as a show. Here the exotic animals and indigenous
art and crafts became part of displaying the colonies, some suggest, this dichotomy was
deliberate to show progress of West versus the traditional East. The building in or kiosks
built for the expos were mostly temporary and modular so they can be dismantled and
reassembled at other places. These buildings also as a natural outcome became museums
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housing the displayed artifacts as a more permanent museum collection to be consumed

for educational and entertainment purposes in future. The world fairs held an economic
benefit no doubt creating a capitalistic society we live in today but for the paper my
interest is to look at the display of the colonial other.

Fig 03: Poster for Brussels Exhibition 1897

(Source wikipedia)

Fig 04: Postcard from Paris Exhibition 1931

(Source wikipedia)

3.2: Display of Colonies in the Fairs:

Discussing the French exposition of 1931 in her article Patricia Morton explains that the
mission of the exposition was Colonization is legitimate. It is beneficial. According to
her the display program served well for these two intentions or ideas. These displays were
although programmed to be different from the earlier colonial displays and fairs as they
included the colonies and provided them with their own display of indigenous culture but
it also reflected that the French need to bring civilization to these cultures. The 1931
exposition was consciously made more pedagogic and accurate, even though it had
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elements of entertainment. Drawing from these basic assumptions made by Morton the
problem the locals at the center were facing was a complete alienation towards the
colony, its culture and people. The exposition then was part of displaying the colony in
the center and hence creating a reciprocal familiarity between Self and the Other. These
expositions maintained a hierarchic model where the colonizer had the civilization
mission for its colonies like a duty or obligation from a higher culture to civilize the
lower more un-advance culture. Bringing the colony to the center provided the locals at
the center with opportunities to own the colony through its artifacts and they could take a
fragment of the culture to their homes and develop their own history around them. A
culture was at their disposal at wholesale rates. The end result of the French exposition
was a museum where the hierarchy was reinstated through the narrative of the display
The French were shown in the bas relief designed for the faade of the museum as
civilized modestly attired cultured people where as the binary opposition is formed by
depicting the colonized women with bare chest and men only in loin clothes in their
native architecture and activities which defer so much and are lower to the metropolitan
culture of the French. According to Morton This split in the display was intended to
further the expositions program of fixing people and things in their proper places with in
colonial power hierarchies, which made the museum a success with in the logic of
exposition. The Musee des Colonies embodied the national colonial architecture sought
by Laprade with in an uneasy commingling of the conflicting images and conceptions of
the metropole, the colonies and la plus grande France [Morton 1998, 375]. These
expositions represented a microcosmic realm where piecemeal exhibits became
summaries of culture in themselves. [Celik 1992, 1] Architecture of the Orient played a
significant role in these displays as the pavilions were designed replicating monuments in
the colony generating awe and fascination amongst the visitors creating the self and other
at the moment of this visual encounter. This architectural setting was to serve the
imagination of the Arabian nights and other such exotic tales for the West. Zeynep Celik
suggests in her book Displaying the Orient discussing the Ottoman case, that West was
only one actor in these displays where more complex realities surface when perspectives
from the Orient are studied. She, like many discussed above are interested to look at
cross-cultural dialogue to shake this polar system and deconstruct the fixed cultural
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boundaries. There is a need for looking at the imperialism - colonialism etc in new light
and to not divide the world into compartments and world expositions can become a case
study for this purpose.

4: THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION - INDIA DISPLAYED

4.1: Crystal Palace Exhibition:

Fig 05: Crystal Palace Exhibition 1851 (Source Google image)

All London is stir . and some part of all the world these lines noted in John Ruskins
personal diary are used as opening lines by Peter H. Hoffenberg for his book An Empire
on Display discussing the Crystal Palace Exhibition. It indeed was no mean feat about
14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet
(92,000 m2) of exhibition space. The exhibition attracted more than six million visitors.
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were the main patrons for the exhibition. The exhibition
due to its massive scale, not only of display but of number of people who visited, set
precedent for the exhibitions to come. The exhibition was an agent by which similar
shows proliferated in landscapes like India and Australia. It was discussed as the greatest
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parent exhibition amongst the gentlemen of London with no comparisons what so ever.
Its role as a watershed became even more apparent as the event receded in history and
memory [Hoffenberg 2001, 6]. The exhibition haunted the future exhibitioners for
constant comparisons and led to ultimate disappointment if their exhibition was not at par
with the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace exhibition is called Crystal Palace
because the temporary modular structure designed to house the display was built of glass
panels with steel and timber framing, hence displaying the revolutionary design, an
outcome of industrialization. Eiffel tower is another such expositional structure that
displayed the revolutionary new architecture of the industrial age. The exhibition lasted
six months after which the building was located near Sydenham Hill. In 1936 the
building caught fire and was destroyed.

4.2: Display of Indian Colony:

The Indian display at the Crystal Palace Exhibition outstripped other countries display
due to the wealth of objects transported by the East India Company for the fair. The
location was also prominent at the center of the intersection of its two transepts (acting
according to me as jewel in the crown of Britains colonies). The Indian display although
springing some criticism created mainly awe and wonder where it was thought that it may
account for another industrial revolution based on refinement of design and objects than
utility. Art critics and artists like John Ruskin, William Morris and Bernard Leach found
inspiration of their work in the art of East and the colonies which instilled in them a
medieval essence missing from their contemporary West. The world fairs display of
colonies facilitated this dialogue and dissemination.

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Fig 06: Crystal Palace Exhibition 1851- Indian Colony Display

(Source Google image)
The Indian display made many professionals like photographers botanist etc to use these
objects at their own will where photographers or artist would use them to fashion
aesthetics, botanist and other such people would delve into classification of the objects to
provide them order and this fascination remained in Britain and was acknowledge by the
Royalty. The post Darwinian Europe was fixated with the evolutionary process and
classification which might have provided them with a sense hierarchic superiority. The
post Crystal Palace exhibition era led to the interest in collecting Indian objects (hence
promoting antiquarianism and connoisseurship). Royalty benefitted from the presents
given to them by Indian nobles and aristocracy, while common people would travel and
collect on their tours to India. While collecting the unruly unordered objects from India
and providing them with order and narrative (of the possessor) gave the Britains
authority and illusion of control. Possession of these objects for consumption on small
scale formed a relation to what State was doing, consuming the colony. In the Crystal
Palace, India made consumption and its orientation to the human body central. Robes,
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crowns, jewels, thrones and weapons were all vehicles for meaningful ornamentation,
enhancement, display and protection of the body. In everyday life, the associated
technologies used to manipulate these objects were sumptuary technologies of honor,
prestige, and blood that focused on the body as the body politics rather as a private
reality. The value system that gave meaning to the objects in Indias display presumed
that the royal body was the embodiment of social and political realities and activities. Put
another way, Indian objects took on value based on human corporeal relations
[Breckenridge 1989, 205]. This corporeality in the production of art is what attracted the
modern European artists. The darbar (royal court) interior and display where the Queen
would walk through a processional walkway and sit at the throne mimicking the monarch
in India is something that is highlighted by Harrison in his article where he suggests the
definition of self while defining the other.
The Crystal Palace India display became very popular and based on this for future
exhibition they would fight for more space and due to popularity would get away with
more space then allotted. Although praised for their displays at the Crystal Palace,
Indian commissioners also actively lobbied for additional space at subsequent shows.
Limited to 24,000 sq ft in 1851, the Rajs officers filled over 65,000 sq ft in the Colonial
and Indian Exhibition halls and an additional 40,000 in the separate Indian Palace in
1886 [Hoffenberg 2001, 9]. This reflects at the overseas demand for the products of
Indian colony of British Raj that in turn brought in my opinion, economic benefits to both
the center and colony. As the popularity grew of the Indian display the colony and the
center formed a methodology to enact the display. Casts of the archaeological finds in
India were sent to the center where they were reconstructed to replicate the original.
Henry Cole was one of the earliest officers who suggested making of casts rather than
pillaging and taking the originals. Policies were established for economic benefits and
shipment of these casts instead of the original pieces unearthed. This as stated by
Hoffenberg shows that these relics lost to the vagaries of time were rediscovered under
the Rajs patronage. The work done by the Company and Raj cannot be discredited the
Archaeological Survey of India is one such legacy in the East from which both the colony
and the center benefitted. The archaeologist working in Indian went back to Britain and
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helped in dissemination of the architecture and heritage of India facilitating construction

of pavilions at the fairs etc.
The fever of fairs did not remain to West only. As the consequence of the Great
Exhibition, a string of similar exhibitions were staged in India under the patronage of Raj
and were well attended by the locals. Over 20,000 visited the Indian art and industry
exhibitions organized by the Governor Richard Temple in the Punjab and Central
Provinces during the 1860s, and 235,000 visitors poured through the rooms at Jeypore
Art and Industrial Exhibition during its opening weeks in early 1883. The Calcutta
International Exhibitions doors opened in December of that year and over a million
visitors had been admitted by the time those doors closed four months later [Hoffenberg
2001, 9]. The story does not end here as was the custom in the West of designing
museums as the resultant of the fairs to house objects at display in permanent collection,
similar museums were established in India after fairs. Thomas Hendley, a high ranking
Indian Govt. official in Jeypore, concluded in 1914 that at least 12 local exhibitions
resulted in permanent museum collections of art objects, scientific displays and
commercial goods in British India [Hoffenberg 2001, 13]. The penetration of ideas of
center was not the only thing when it comes to British India, a number of Indian people
migrated/visited Britain for scores of different purposes 1 [Mackenzie 2011, 81]. The unilinear narrative does not fit these descriptions where a clear cultural exchange is taking
place between colony and center of goods, arts, crafts and people. New traditions like
fairs and museums were setting up in India where modernization in the wake of
colonization was taking root and was accepted at large in my opinion. After the de
colonization the sub continent did not go back to imperial pre industrial pre colonial past.
The aftermath of post colonial era was the formation of India and Pakistan in 1947, two
separate states for reason that are not in the scope of this paper to be discussed, but these
were two modern republics of the 20th century.

1-

For further readings refer Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 by
Shompa Lahiri (London 2000), Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History by Rosina Visram (London 2002).
These books are referred by Mackenzie (2011) see page 88 endnote 99.

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5: CONCLUSION:
In conclusion a summary of some interesting points that are discussed throughout the
paper is presented. As is established through literature reviewed and discussed in the
paper that Orient-Occident discourse must be looked without the polar spectacles in the
light of forming wider zones of familiar domesticity [MacKenzie 2011, 63] and world
fairs were display grounds where these familiarity were made visible and contested.
These fairs may be serving political hegemonic agendas of the West as superior but there
was transformation happening and it was reciprocal. If East provided the nostalgic fervor
for artistic inspiration in the West the interactions with the West was modernizing the
East in turn. Was this transformation for good or for bad are very basic and juvenile
questions to be asked. If one looks at the actors and factors of this transformation and
develop histories of cultural exchange with it permutations and combinations a very rich
discourse can be produced. The anxieties of modern age for the European population
made them find refuge in lesser modern polities like India or Africa. The Orient and
Occident can be seen as mechanized in comparison to manual labor and rather than
producing binary histories these phenomenas can be studied through their reception at
large by locals at both the side.
As is presented in the paper it was a two way exchange where re writing of culture norms
and histories was underway for both the sides and it must be looked and studied as such.
The formation of institutions like museums in context of India or establishment of
archaeology is one such example where a non oppressive dialogue can be developed
further. There is much more that is left to be explored hence in my opinion the effort to
build Occidentalism into a discourse that produced similar outcomes as Oriental
discourse is futile. The cultures should be studied in the exchange and encounters where
travel becomes another fascinating subject to be explored.

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elik, Zeynep. Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-century World's Fairs.
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