The Greater Britain Exhibition 1899

The rapid development of Japan at the turn of the last century, including the defeat of Russia in 1904-5, intrigued the western Imperial powers, but also aroused reactions of contempt and suspicion. Britain was the most important of the powers upon which Japan earnestly wished to impress herself to mitigate the rising tide of anti-Japanese sentiment. An exhibition in London, therefore, was seen as a timely event by the Meiji Government to advance Japanese agendas in political, economic and educational terms. This is the first major study of this remarkable venture, fully reviewed and documented, and concerned principally with the Japanese side of the story.

Files contain material such as art exhibition catalogues, invitations, press clippings, media releases and/or other ephemeral items relating to Australian artists and galleries, where there are more than three artists exhibiting at the one exhibition. Other material may be collected under individual artists in the Australian Art and Artists file.

The exhibitions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras are the lens through which this book examines the economic, cultural, and social forces that helped define Britain and the Empire. It focuses on exhibitions in England, Australia, and India from the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Empire.

In 1899, on the eve of the Boer War, Captain Charles Cox from Parramatta took 100 Australian cavalrymen to train with the British army in England. These military apprentices became British soldiers as well as Australian ones. But everything went wrong. Publicity got in the way of cavalry drill which, in any case, the Australians were allowed to shirk. The debacle ended with Cox volunteering his little command for the Boer War, with the British making him get the consent of his government and his men, and finally with a murder on a lonely farm in South Africa. There was no more talk of Australian fighting men morphing into colonial members of the British army. Still, the newspapers said the venture was a brilliant success, that Australians had proved themselves natural warriors, that the British Empire was stronger for what happened-all of which Australians rejoiced to hear. It was, in the end, a kind of victory.