Festival of Empire

[1] It was described at the time as 'a social gathering of the British family' encouraging the 'firmer welding of those invisible bonds which hold together the greatest empire the world has ever known'.

[3] Robert George Windsor-Clive, first Earl of Plymouth, Conservative government minister managed and promoted the Festival as a sub contracted event; it was nothing to do with the Crystal Palace company which was in receivership at the time.

[6] They were linked by an electric tramway called the 'All-Red Route' on which open-sided cars took the visitor on a circular tour of the dominions with typical scenery of each country around the buildings listed above.

Metaphorically, it took British men and women to places they had never seen and, in all likelihood, would never see, as one observer enthused "the East Indian exhibits had the effect of impressing every visitor with the importance to such possessions of Great Britain".

[11] The buildings of the 1911 Festival of Empire were linked by an electric tramway called the 'All-Red Route' on which open-sided cars took visitors on a circular tour of the 'dominions' with typical scenery of each country.

There were displays of so-called "natives at work", including African tribesmen, Malay people constructing houses and Maori villagers.

Music was provided for The Pageant of London by 20 composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge,[17] Cecil Forsyth, Henry Balfour Gardiner, Edward German and Haydn Wood.

Famous competitors included Stanley Vivian Bacon (from Great Britain), Harold Hardwick (from Australia), Malcolm Champion (from New Zealand), George Hodgson and John Lindsay Tait (both from Canada).

[30][31] The team championship in athletics was decided on a points basis, with the countries' finishing position in each race totalling up a combined score.

Canada won with the lowest score with eight points, having topped the podium in three of the five events, and was awarded the Inter-Empire trophy by Lord Lonsdale.

The Pall Mall Gazette opined that the grounds were transformed, "Aladin-like into a glittering group of white pavilions, like a cluster of snowy peaks recast in molds of beauty and geographical significance".

It was an event promoting “Firmer welding of invisible bonds which hold together the greatest empire in the world”[citation needed], yet other accounts recognise that there were underlying tensions and antipathies and that the festival did little to bridge the gap between the classes.

The use of exhibitions where "human models were arranged into visual narratives that Latham deemed representative of their ethnic traits", promoted and reinforced ideas of what it looked like to be from Africa or India, and these people were commonly described as primitives and cannibals being "saved" by the act of colonisation.