The World’s Fair: or, Children’s prize gift book of the Great Exhibition of 1851 

This children’s gift book conflates the Exhibition’s gathering of things with its gathering of people, presenting child readers with prose descriptions of various nations’ “productions” alongside what the title page calls “pretty stories about the people who have made and sent [the objects], and how they live when at home.”  Its lithograph illustrations depict scenes from these anecdotal “pretty stories” rather than offering views of the Exhibition itself—a trait which distinguishes it from other children’s books displayed in this case. For example, India (then under British rule) is represented in part by an illustration of a Hindu sati, which the book describes as “a very cruel custom…which I know will shock you very much” (page 10). This illustration has no relation to India's contributions to the Exhibition; instead, it functions to affirm the centrality of the colonial ‘civilizing mission’ to the Exhibition’s grand vision of a world in which all nations might “be joined together in love and trade, like one great family” (page 3). 

In keeping with this perspective, a nation’s perceived failure to contribute to the Exhibition becomes proof—according to the book—of a snobbish unwillingness to participate in this familial unity. Such is the case with China: "[s]ome things have been sent from China to our Exhibition; but the Chinese people do not seem to care very much about it. Indeed, I wonder they sent at all, for they consider themselves as the only civilized nation in the world." In other cases, contributions are not mentioned at all in order to highlight the poverty of a particular nation; for example: "The Poles live in a cold, flat, marshy country, in the north of Europe. The peasantry are in a miserable state, very dirty, and frequently drunken; and their land is in a wretched condition." In short, then, the book envisions the Crystal Palace as a proving ground in which nations might demonstrate their ability or willingness to materially and culturally participate in a new, global society.