The British Empire Exhibition of 1924 was one of the last in a long series of imperial spectacles propagandising empire. But its rhetoric of racial unity and impartial governance was undermined by an attempted Indian boycott of the event. This was prompted by the British government’s unequal treatment of white and Indian settlers in Kenya. White settler privileges, already enormous, were further underscored, while Indian rights were restricted, segregation imposed and Indian immigration curtailed. The resulting furore led not only to a proposed Indian boycott of the exhibition, but also drove former advocates of imperial co-operation more strongly towards the Indian nationalist cause.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, File L/PO/1/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya. Quoted in telegram 4832/33 from the Indian viceroy to the British secretary of state (11 September 1923).
2.
P. R. Rao , The Right Honourable V. S. Srinivasa Sastri: a political biography ( Bombay, Asia Publishing House , 1963), pp. 143-157.
3.
and Paul Greenhalgh , Ephemeral Vistas: the expositions universelles, great exhibitions and world’s fairs, 1851-1939 ( Manchester, University of Manchester Press , 1988).
4.
B. Porter , ‘Empire, what empire?’ Or, why 80% of early- and mid-Victorians were deliberately kept in ignorance of it’ , Victorian Studies (Vol. 46, no. 2, 2004), pp. 256-263 .
5.
D. R. Knight and A. D. Sabey , The Lion Roars at Wembley: British Empire Exhibition ( New Barnet, D. R. Knight , 1984).
6.
R. Rydell discusses Wembley in relation to other imperial events in the twentieth century in World of Fairs: the century-of-progress expositions ( Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press , 1993).
7.
British Empire Review (July 1924), p. 72 .
8.
British Empire Exhibition Appeal (1921), p. 12. The appeal describes opportunities for observing subject peoples and their cultures for the benefit of western science and contrasting them ‘with the bustling and energetic enterprise of the young white nations which have had their origins in the British Islands’.
9.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya. Letter to Prime Minister Baldwin from the Kenyan Indian Delegates (c. 19 July 1923).
10.
R. M. Maxon , Struggle for Kenya: the loss and reassertion of imperial initiative, 1912-1923 ( Cranbury, NJ, London and Mississauga, Ontario, Associated University Presses , 1993).
11.
For a fuller explanation of how these immigration policies operated, see Robert A. Huddenback , ‘The british empire as a “white man’s country”: racial attitudes and immigration legislation in the colonies of white settlement’ , Journal of British Studies (Vol. 13, no. 1, 1973), pp. 108-137 .
12.
Speeches and Writings of the Right Honorable V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Vol. 1 (Madras, Jupiter Press, 1969).
13.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/I/IA (i) East Africa: Kenya - India Office Archives, BL. Arabs also comprised a sizeable proportion of the colony’s population along with Goans.
14.
For more on this, see Dilley, op. cit. and Maxon, op. cit.
15.
Maxon, op. cit., p. 156.
16.
Big game hunting is cited as a considerable lure for attracting white settlement by a variety of sources including the Kenya Empire Exhibition Council’s Kenya: its industries, trade, sports and climate or Britain’s youngest and most attractive colony, published for sale at the British Empire Exhibition (London, 1924).
17.
K. Tidrick , Empire and the English Character ( London, I. B. Taurus , 1990), p. 130.
18.
Ibid.
19.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6(ii) East Africa: Kenya. ‘The Kenya Women’s Committee: the Indian question in Kenya’, p. 1.
20.
Ibid., p. 3.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Ibid., p. 2.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid., p. 3.
25.
This position is best articulated in the Kenya Empire Exhibition Council’s appeal to British investors and settlers at the exhibition. It asserted that there was no end to the potential of Kenya if the two races - the African and the Anglo-European - could ‘successfully nurture their instincts and cooperate for the Empire’, Kenya: its industries, op. cit., p. ix.
26.
See Burton, op. cit.
27.
P. Levine , ‘Venereal disease, prostitution and the politics of Empire: the case of British India’ , Journal of the History of Sexuality (Vol. 4, no. 4, 1995), pp. 579-602 .
28.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (iii) East Africa: Kenya; Cabinet Memo CP99 (23).
29.
Ibid.
30.
Ibid.
31.
T. Vijayaraghavacharya, Report of the Commissioner for India for the British Empire Exhibition, 1924 (Calcutta, Government of India Press, 1925), p. 24.
32.
Rao, op. cit., p. 157.
33.
These included Desai, Jeevanjee, Virjee, Varma, Yusuf Jevanjee and Tayab Ali. India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya. Letter to Prime Minister Baldwin from the Kenyan Indian Delegates (c. 19 July 1923).
34.
Ibid.
35.
Ibid.
36.
As for indigenous Africans, the Devonshire white paper reasserted the need for prolonged instruction in the processes of civilised governance and economic exchange; see ibid.
37.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, File L/PO/1/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya.
38.
Vijayaraghavacharya, p. 19.
39.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya. Telegram 4832/33.
40.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/I/6 (iii) East Africa: Kenya. Handwritten message (15 May 1923).
41.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (i) Telegram 4850.
42.
Advocate of India (20 August 1923).
43.
Ibid.
44.
‘Retaliation and Kenya’, Advocate of India (27 August 1923).
45.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/1/6 (i) Telegram 4832/33 from viceroy to secretary of state (11 September 1923).
46.
‘Indians and the Empire’, Advocate of India (26 July 1923).
47.
Ibid.
48.
United Kingdom, India Office Record, file L/PO/I/6 (i) East Africa: Kenya. Letter to viceroy (19 July 1923).
49.
Ibid.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Statesman (25 August 1923).
52.
Before the settlement, Sastri pleaded with Lord Peel to uphold the principles of equality that had been confirmed in the Imperial Conference resolution.
53.
Statesman (25 August 1923).
54.
Vijayaraghavacharya, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
55.
New India (Madras) (31 July 1923).
56.
‘Indian claims in Kenya: Bombay meeting: the retaliatory measures suggested’, Advocate of India (31 August 1923).
57.
This declaration for retaliation and the reciprocity bill passed by the National Assembly were directed at dominion governments that had passed restrictive immigration policies and put limitations on the number of white settlers who could enter India (Advocate of India (31 August 1923)).
58.
The issue was broached most often in connection with an All-India Exhibition in Calcutta planned for that autumn in preparation for exportation to Wembley the following spring.
59.
Advocate of India (20 August 1923).
60.
Ibid.
61.
Ibid.
62.
His Royal Highness’s opening speech, British Empire Exhibition (24 April 1924).
