British Imperialism and its Legacies: Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry, Glasgow 1911
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 113 objects commemorating the 1911 Exhibition of Natural History, Art and Industry, known as the Scottish National Exhibition. It was held in Kelvingrove Park, beside Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and attracted over 9 million visitors between May and November. Admission and season tickets and purchases helped establish the Chair in Scottish History and Literature at the University of Glasgow, in 1913. The collection includes examples of admission tickets, souvenir publications, medals, trays, plates, plans, glassware, cutlery, ceramics, postcards and photographs.
Visitors to the Exhibition from other parts of the Empire included the South African Prime Minister Louis Botha, who was in Glasgow to receive the Freedom of the City that August. The African ‘village’ display in Kelvingrove Park was built to house African performers, dancers, wrestlers, and musicians.
Among the West Africans present were griots – poets and historians – and Mandinka/Malinke, Serracolet and Souson people, some of whom were practising Muslims. Reports in Scottish newspapers described characteristics and beliefs of each group, such as wearing charms to ward off evil, secret sorcery, tattooed blue lips, trading enslaved people, and willingness to fight a holy war. They were described as living in a village of the ‘Black Continent’, where visitors could observe ‘bush life’. Another media report stated that 5,000 visitors passed through the ‘village’ every half hour in June, with 500,000 seeing it over the course of the whole exhibition. Other peopled ‘village’ displays included ones for Lapland and for the Scottish Highlands (called An Clachan, meaning a small village or hamlet).
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