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.