Pride and Curiosity: British Encounter with Textile Products in the Second Punjab Exhibition, 1881-1882

Abstract

In nineteenth-century colonial exhibitions, cross cultural encounters  between humans and things shaped people’s ideas and transformed emotions. British curators’ possession of Indian crafts through collecting,
exhibiting and interpreting, in the Second Punjab Exhibition, held in 1881- 1882, in Lahore, was aimed at invoking the emotion of pride over Empire among British colonials in India. However, this cross-cultural encounter in the exhibitionary space invoked curiosity and surprise, and British officials seemed possessed by the possession, as it were.