{"title":"Capturing the World: Exhibition Trophies, Ethnography, and Displays of Imperial Power","authors":"Amy Woodson-Boulton","doi":"10.1017/jbr.2025.15","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Exhibition trophies have become invisible to most people reading about and looking at images of the great world’s fairs. This is not surprising; trophies have fallen out of our awareness because they, and the criticisms they provoked, have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This article reveals not only this largely overlooked form, but also just how much cultural work they were doing and why so many people found them disturbing. Exhibition trophies became a solution to the nineteenth-century design problem of representing progress, imperial power, extractive superabundance, control of the natural world, and industrial capacity. Nineteenth-century exhibitors and collectors made trophies out of a wide array of commodities, animals, raw materials, manufactured goods, weapons, and “primitive” objects. But by carrying with them ancient connotations of high-minded victory and violence, exhibition trophies also inspired criticisms that got to the heart of modern forms of conquest. Divisive in the middle of the nineteenth century, trophies were ubiquitous by the turn of the twentieth. Meanwhile a new, rival way of displaying imperial power emerged that challenged ethnographic trophies in particular: the new science of anthropology. This article begins to recover this lost form and its implications—from disquiet to the acceptance of abundance (even overabundance) as a collective goal.</p>","PeriodicalId":46738,"journal":{"name":"Journal of British Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of British Studies","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2025.15","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Exhibition trophies have become invisible to most people reading about and looking at images of the great world’s fairs. This is not surprising; trophies have fallen out of our awareness because they, and the criticisms they provoked, have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This article reveals not only this largely overlooked form, but also just how much cultural work they were doing and why so many people found them disturbing. Exhibition trophies became a solution to the nineteenth-century design problem of representing progress, imperial power, extractive superabundance, control of the natural world, and industrial capacity. Nineteenth-century exhibitors and collectors made trophies out of a wide array of commodities, animals, raw materials, manufactured goods, weapons, and “primitive” objects. But by carrying with them ancient connotations of high-minded victory and violence, exhibition trophies also inspired criticisms that got to the heart of modern forms of conquest. Divisive in the middle of the nineteenth century, trophies were ubiquitous by the turn of the twentieth. Meanwhile a new, rival way of displaying imperial power emerged that challenged ethnographic trophies in particular: the new science of anthropology. This article begins to recover this lost form and its implications—from disquiet to the acceptance of abundance (even overabundance) as a collective goal.
期刊介绍:
The official publication of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS), the Journal of British Studies, has positioned itself as the critical resource for scholars of British culture from the Middle Ages through the present. Drawing on both established and emerging approaches, JBS presents scholarly articles and books reviews from renowned international authors who share their ideas on British society, politics, law, economics, and the arts. In 2005 (Vol. 44), the journal merged with the NACBS publication Albion, creating one journal for NACBS membership. The NACBS also sponsors an annual conference , as well as several academic prizes, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate essay contests .