"Some Imperial Institute": Architecture, symbolism, and the ideal of empire in late Victorian Britain, 1887-93

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2003, Pages

  Bremner, G Alex ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 27144449559     PISSN: 00379808     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3655083     Document Type: Review

References (103)

1. Demolition began in 1957. The Imperial Institute moved to Holland Park in1962 and was renamed the Commonwealth Institute. Of the original institute, only the Queen's Tower remains, now part of Imperial College at the Universityof London. For a historical account of the institute in its imperial context, see John M. Mac Kenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960 (Manchester, 1984), 122-46;
2. Mark Crinson, "Imperial Story-lands: Architecture and Display atthe Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes, " An History 22, no. 1 (1999), 99-123.
3. For further accounts of the Imperial Institute, see "Imperial Institute, " in F. H. W. Sheppard, ed., Survey of London: The Museums Areaof South Kensington and Westminster, vol. 37 (London, 1975), 220-27;
4. William Golant, Image of Empire: The Early History of the Imperial Institute, 1887-1925 (Exeter, 1984);
5. Donald Simpson, "'A Universal Britain': The Royal Colonial Instituteand the Foundation of the Imperial Institute, " Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (July 1987), 587-90
6. Michael Worboys, "The Imperial Institute: The State and the Development of the Resources of the Colonial Empire, 1887-1923, " in John M.Mac Kenzie, ed., Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester, 1990), 164-86.
7. See, for example, Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837(New Haven, 1992);
8. Peter J. Cain and Antony G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914 (London, 1993);
9. Andrew S. Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics c.1880-1932 (London, 2000);
10. Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire(London, 2001);
11. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination (Chicago, 2002).
12. See also William R. Louis, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1998-99).
13. For instance, see Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (St. Leonards, 1998);
14. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism: The New Critical Idiom(London, 1998).
15. The two classic works in this field are Edward Said's Orientalism(London, 1978)
16. Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993).
17. Some notable exceptions in this field of inquiry are Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850: A Study in the History of Artand Ideas (New Haven, 1985);
18. Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain(Berkeley, 1989);
19. Mark Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture(London, 1996);
20. Beth F. Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Durham, 1999).
21. See also Tim Barringer, "Imperial Visions: Responses to India and Africa in Victorian Art and Design, " in John M. Mac Kenzie, ed., The Victorian Vision: Inventing New Britain, (London, 2001), 315-33.
22. E. H. H. Green, "The Political Economy of Empire, 1880-1914" in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1999), 347.
23. Thompson, Imperial Britain;
24. Peter Cain ed., Empire and Imperialism: The Debate of the 1870s(South Bend, 1999), 1-18.
25. James A. Froude, Oceana, or England and Her Colonies (London, 1886).
26. The last verse of Tennyson's ode reads: "Britain's myriad voicescall/'Sons, be welded each and all, / Into one imperial whole, / One with Britain, heart and soul!/ One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne!/ Britons, hold yourown!" See The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson (London, 1893), 578.
27. See also Sheppard, The Survey of London, I: 50-55;
28. Kenric B. Murray, "The Imperial Institute, " Fortnightly Review 47 (1887), 384.
29. Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and Worlds Fairs, 1851-1939 (London, 1988), 52-81.
30. John M. Mac Kenzie, "Empire and Metropolitan Cultures, " in Porter, The Oxford History of the British Empire, 282-83.
31. The stated aim of the exhibition was "to give to the inhabitants ofthe British Isles, to foreigners and to one another, practical demonstration ofthe wealth and industrial development of the outlying portions of the British Empire" with a view to "strengthening the feelings of good-fellowshipand kindness existing between the mother-country and her colonies." See Mac Kenzie, "Empire and Metropolitan Cultures, " 283;
32. H. Trueman Wood, "Exhibitions, " The Nineteenth Century 20(July-Dec. 1886), 640.
33. George Baden-Powell, letter to the editor, Times, 24 Sept. 1886, 8;
34. Times, 24 Dec. 1886, 7.
35. Some suspicion also surrounded the so-called South Kensington Gang, ledby Sir Phillip Cunliffe-Owen. It was thought that as organizers they hadprofited financially from the series of exhibitions that was held at South Kensington between 1883 and 1886. See Simpson, "'A Universal Britain, '" 588 (see n. 1).
36. The committee was announced on 5 Nov. 1886. See George Baden-Powell, "An Empire Institute, " National Review 8 (1887), 441. Among its ranks«ere Lord Carnarvon (Secretary of State for the Colonies), G. J. Goschen(Chancellor of the Exchequer and MP), Sir Frederic Leighton (president of the Royal Academy), J. Pattison Currie (governor of the Bank of England), and J. H.Tritton (chairman of the London Chamber of Commerce).
37. Times, 5 July 1887, 9.
38. William Golant points out that the economic depression of 1883-86resulted in the appointment of a Royal Commission on the Department of Trade and Industry, which confirmed that other nations were now able to meet their owndemands for manufactured goods and even compete with England for a share of theworld market. See Golant, Image of Empire, 6 (see n. 1).
39. For a concise account of these issues, see Green, "The Political Economy of Empire, " 346-68 (see n. 8).
40. Murray, "The Imperial Institute, " 388-89 (see n. 11).
41. See the advertisements section of Building News, 4 Feb. 1887.
42. Architect, 1 July 1887, 5.
43. The Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies and India, Red Book pamphlet (London, 1887), 5.
44. Paul Greenhalgh has argued that the separation of space in this way atthe Great Exhibition was designed to display the industrial might of Britain andits empire. See Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 52-56 (see n. 12).
45. British Architect, 1 July 1887, 4.
46. Lord Norton, "Imperial Federation - Its Impossibility, "Nineteenth Century 16 (Sept. 1884), 505-16.
47. Owen quoted in Carla Yanni, Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display (London, 1999), 114.
48. Crinson, "Imperial Story-lands, " 109 (see n. 1).
49. Builder, 16 July 1887, 92.
50. Arnold, Re-Presenting the Metropolis: Architecture, Urban Experience and Social Life in London 1800-1840 (Aldershot, 2000), I. The image of St. Paul's asa symbol of empire is poignantly represented in the famous 1872 etching The New Zealander by Gustave Doré.
51. See also Felix Driver and David Gilbert, "Imperial Cities:Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories" in F. Driver and G.Gilbert, eds., Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester, 1999), 1. The association with St. Paul's was also noted by Building News, 1July 1887, 3.
52. Thomas G. Jackson, Modern Gothic Architecture (London, 1873).
53. The classical language of architecture was certainly seen to carry suchconnotations, noted John Ruskin, "as plainly as if they were graven on itin words." For Ruskin, however, classicism was wholly too vain andarrogant, what he called "morally corrupt, " and it was something that"the instinct of the world felt... in a moment, " he declared. "Inthe new precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceivedsomething peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an appallingmanner; princes delighted in it, and courtiers." John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, in E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, eds., The Complete Works of John Ruskin (London, 1904), 46, 73-75.
54. For an account of classicism in colonial contexts, see Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (London, 1989), 8-16.
55. See Bernard Read, Victorian Sculpture (New Haven, 1982), 215-72;
56. Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture (New Haven, 1983), 37-72.
57. G. Aitchison, "Sculpture in Its Relation to Architecture, "Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects 4 (1888), 176-77.
58. Henry B. Garling, "On the Treatment of Sculpture Applied to Architecture, " Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects 4(1888), 200.
59. Rossetti would later reiterate this principle, and it would become acentral theme at the National Association for the Advancement of Arts and Its Application to Industry congress held in Liverpool, Dec. 1888. See Beattie, The New Sculpture, 55-56.
60. See, e.g., Augustus W. N. Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (London, 1843).
61. Frank Cundall, Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition(London, 1886), vii.
62. See also Mac Kenzie, Propaganda and Empire, 125-26 (seen. 1).
63. C. C. Eldridge, Disraeli and the Rise of the New Imperialism(Cardiff, 1996), 54-55.
64. For a discussion of the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi, see Bernard S.Cohn, "Representing Authority in Victorian India" in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, England, 1983), 165-209.
65. Archibald P. Thornton, The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies (London, 1959);
66. Times, 11 May 1893, 9.
67. Peter J. Bowler, The Invention of Progress: The Victorians and the Past(Oxford, 1989), 10-40.
68. See also John W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge, England, 1966);
69. John B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (London, 1924).
70. See, e.g., Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York, 1983).
71. Bowler, The Invention of Progress, 18.
72. George Baden-Powell, "The Empire and Its Institute, "Fortnightly Review 59 (Jan.-June 1893), 891.
73. Baden-Powell quoting Francis Galton in "An Empire Institute, "439 (see n. 17).
74. For a discussion of the idea of "progress" and its broaderimplications regarding British imperial identity, see Michael Havinden and David Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and Its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960 (London, 1993), 45-69;
75. Christina Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London, 1971);
76. Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore, 1996);
77. Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 1978).
78. An article in Architect of 6 Jan. 1893 noted how the sculpture was"yet to be introduced" (13). The need for economy meant that in 1892Collcutt was refused funds for much of the sculptural caning on thefaçade. See Sheppard, Survey of London, 225 (see n. 1).
79. See Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power (see n. 6).
80. For a discussion of the relationship between British imperial enthusiasmand the South Kensington Museum, see Tim Barringer, "The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project, " in Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, eds., Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London, 1998), 11-27.
81. It is interesting to note that in Patrick Mac Dowell's allegorical group Europe, the principal figure of Europa holds an orb and scepter. This, thesculptor noted, was to symbolize the "influence which our quarter of theglobe exercised over the others." See Colin Cunningham, "Iconographyand Victorian Values, " in Chris Brooks, ed., The Albert Memorial (New Haven, 2000), 242.
82. See, e.g., John Ruskin, "Lectures on Art" (inaugural coursedelivered at Oxford in hilary term, 1870) in Cook and Wedderbum, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, 40-43 (see n. 55). On p. 41 n. 2, it is noted that theseideas were "the most pregnant and essential" of all Ruskin'steachings. In one of his letters to Henry Acland concerning the Oxford Museum, Ruskin wrote of the ancient university: "Now, therefore, and now only, itseems to me, the University has become complete in her function as a teacher ofthe youth of the nation, to which every hour gives wider authority over distantlands; and from which every rood of extended dominion demands new, various, andvariously applicable knowledge of the laws which govern the constitution of theglobe, and must finally regulate the industry, no less than discipline theintellect of the human race."
83. "Letter from Mr. Ruskin, No. 2" in H. W. Acland and John Ruskin, The Oxford Museum (London, 1859), 64-65.
84. Cook and Wedderbum, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, 39.
85. La Construction Moderne, 29 Oct, 1892, 41;
86. See Gavin Stamp and Colin Amery, Victorian Buildings of London, 1837-1887(London, 1980), 168;
87. See The Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the Colonies and India, 2d ed. (London, 1893), 29-30.
88. Architect, 12 May 1893, 311.
89. Graphic, 13 May 1893, 546.
90. David B. Brownlee, "The First High Victorians: British Architectural Theory in the 1840s, "Architectura 15, no. 1 (1985), 33-46.
91. See Alexander J. Beresford Hope, "Part and Future Developments of Architecture, " The Ecclesiologist 5 (1846), 52. Hope's ideas had aconsiderable impact on architectural thinking during the mid- to late Victorianperiod. As a leading figure of the Ecclesiological Society (president from1859), his ideas were to affect a wide and influential audience, including hisfriend, historian, and Oxford Architectural Society member, Edward A. Freeman(1823-1892). Architectural historian Robert Kerr, for instance, ranked him amongsuch great thinkers in the field as James Fergusson, Ruskin, and Pugin. Alongwith Freeman, Hope's variation on the idea of "development" was toenlighten thinking on ecclesiastical architecture throughout the late nineteenthcentury. Notwithstanding his numerous contributions to the Ecclesiologist, Hope's most influential publication in this regard was The Common Sense of Art(London, 1858), in which he argued for the synthesizing potential ofarchitecture.
92. Mordaunt Crook, The Dilemma of Style (London, 1989), 162. Later Hopewould note concerning this idea and its importance to Gothic architecture:"In the principles of progressive architecture, of architectureillimitable, according to all the inventions of science and all the developmentsof art, in accordance with all the great powers of nature that have been mademan's slave, and with all the materials dug from the bowels of the earth, andall the exigencies which modern civilisation has called into being...."
93. See Alexander J. Beresford Hope, The Condition and Prospect of Architectural Art(lecture delivered at the Architectural Museum, South Kensington, 24 Mar. 1863) (London, 1863), 16.
94. Alexander J. Beresford Hope quoted in "Mr. Hope on the State of Ecclesiological Science, " Ecclesiologist 7 (1847), 89-90. In his Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin also noted the relationship between architectureand power: "Architecture is the art which disposes and adorns the edificesraised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to hismental health, power, and pleasure."
95. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1880 ed. (New York, 1889), 8.
96. Anon. (Alexander J. Beresford Hope), Saturday Review, 29 Jan. 1856, 236.He would later remark: "Empires are crashing. New worlds are forming. Inthe midst of all this zeal and turmoil there is the grand figure of Christian, progressive, bright, European, and especially English Art, rising higher andhigher from the dark and surging waves of the ocean. The spectacle is grand, butwe must act, not gaze."
97. See Beresford Hope, The Condition and Prospect of Architectural Art, 34.
98. This kind of "Eastern" detailing was used to a much greaterextent in Collcutt's next major competition design, for the new South Kensington Museum (later Victoria and Albert Museum). See John Physick, The Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1982), 199.
99. Robert G. Irving, "Bombay and Imperial Delhi: Cities as Symbols, " in A. Hopkins and Gavin Stamp, eds., Lutyens Abroad: The Work of Sir Edward Lutyens outside the British Isles (London, 2002), 171.
100. George Hersey, High Victorian Gothic: A Study in Associationism(Baltimore, 1972), 48.
101. These architects often considered that an adaptation of Venetian Gothicforms was the most appropriate style to use in "the East" as it wasmore suited to the climate. The Ecclesiological Society (now the Cambridge Camden Society) had also stipulated the use of simpler Romanesque forms in New Zealand parish churches because "as the work will be chiefly done by nativeartists, it seems natural to teach them first that style which first prevailedin our own country; while its rudeness and massiveness, and the grotesquecharacter of its sculpture, will probably render it easier to be understood andappreciated by them." Ecclesiologist 1 (1846), 4-5.
102. Barringer, "The South Kensington Museum, " 11 (see n. 91).
103. Felix Driver and David Gilbert, "Heart of Empire? Landscape, Spaceand Performance in Imperial London, " Environment and Planning D: Societyand Space 16 (1998), 18.