Times Past: How the the 1911 Scottish Exhibition thrust Scotland's history and culture into the forefront

Curated by people who passionately believed in the Union with England, it told a patriotic and distinctive history of Scotland. However, the history it told was that of specific section of Scottish society - Protestant Scottish men, so excluded the histories of many of the many thousands of people who would have visited it.

Of Glasgow’s four great exhibitions in the late 19th and early 20th century, there is little doubt in my mind about which of the four was the most important for Scotland as a whole, namely the Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry in 1911.

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I have written briefly elsewhere about this extraordinary event which followed the International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry in 1888 and the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, but in today’s column I am making a study of the 1911 exhibition and noting the keyword in its title – Scottish.

For in one fell swoop that exhibition thrust Scotland and its history and culture into the forefront of Scottish minds, and more than nine million visitors saw that this was no mean country.

It may have been put together from a Conservative and Unionist standpoint – there was barely a mention of Catholicism and Irish immigration – but the organisers really were keen to demonstrate that Scotland did indeed have a history and culture of its own, and that Scotland was an important part of the United Kingdom and the British Empire.

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The 1901 exhibition had made a profit of £35,000 and gained 11.5m visitors, so when a large group of academics and local business people plus the odd politician got together in early 1909 to plan another exhibition for 1911, they knew they were potentially on a winner, cash-wise.

The best description I have ever read of the 1911 Exhibition was penned in 2015 by Neil G. W. Curtis, now the Head of Museums at Aberdeen University, to whom I am indebted for permission to quote from his masterly work ‘The place of history, literature and politics in the 1911 Scottish Exhibition’ as published in the Scottish Literary Review in 2015.

The exhibition was intended to cash in on the growing public interest in Scottish history and culture and the rising genuine academic demand for history to be taught at Glasgow University.

It was the Lord Provost of Glasgow’s Secretary John Samuel who suggested that the fund-raising for a Chair of Scottish History at the University should be the aim of the 1911 exhibition.

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The Official Guide stated the case plainly: “The inception of this Exhibition had its origin in the belief, shared by many, that the time had fully arrived when Scottish History should be placed in a different plane than it had hitherto occupied in the education of the rising generations of Scottish children, and not less in the teaching of the subject in our schools and colleges.

“It was thought that to attain this object a movement should be initiated for the raising of such a sum of money as would adequately endow a Chair of Scottish History and cognate subjects in Glasgow University. At the outset of the movement it was thought that the objects might be best attained by instituting an exhibition in which the National History, Art, and Industry of Scotland were expounded.”

It has to be admitted that Glasgow’s exhibition was in no small part a reaction to Edinburgh’s Scottish National Exhibition held in Saughton Park in 1908.

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That exhibition, as had been the case with Glasgow’s 1888 and 1901 exhibitions, mixed public entertainment with education and was successful in doing so. The 1911 exhibition repeated the same formula, with the emphasis on Scottish history and culture.

The main centrepiece of the exhibition was the Palace of History which displayed thousands of items loaned by public and private collections across Scotland, though curiously none from the then National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh, its management saying they did not have power to lend objects.

It hardly mattered, for the Palace was a treasure trove, albeit a trifle scattered, not least because more than 100 people worked on assembling the Palace in a rush.

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As Neil Curtis explained: “With less than two years between the announcement of the exhibition and its opening, the quantity and quality of material assembled in such a short time is more striking than the apparent disorganisation.”

Based on Falkland Palace in Fife, the Palace of History was a temporary structure based around an expanded Kelvingrove House. The West Gallery in the Palace was devoted to militaria and as the Official Guide stated: “Here may be seen the weapons handled by the Covenanters when religious liberty was at stake, there the sword of Robert the Bruce, or the sword of Sir John de Graham, and of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Not less instructive is the large collection explicative of the military prowess of Scottish sailors and regiments.”

There was a Literary Gallery with much emphasis on the works of Scott and Burns, and a Prehistoric Gallery which was a revelation to most visitors.

The Palace ignored the struggle of the working classes, however. As Curtis stated: “There was, however, little mention of the history of the urban poor in Scotland other than a display of beggars’ badges that say more about the control of beggars by burgh and parish authorities than they do about the experience of poverty.”

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Other buildings and pavilions housed the Palace of Art and the popular Concert Hall with restaurants and play areas abounding.

One memorable part of the exhibition was ‘An Clachan’, a Highland settlement which appeared to have more to do with Brigadoon than reality. Gaelic speakers were employed to give An Clachan a sense of authenticity, and to be fair, it became a major attraction for the Highland community in Glasgow who held ceilidhs there.

Opened on May 2, 1911, by the Duke of Connaught, son of Glasgow ‘fan’ Queen Victoria, the exhibition ran until November 4.

Some £15,000 of the overall profits of £20,000 went immediately to the University and the Chair of Scottish History and Literature was inaugurated in 1913.

Professor Robert Rait was the first occupier of the chair which has subsequently been filled by Professors Robert Rait, John Duncan Mackie, George Pryde, Archie Duncan, Ted Cowan and the current occupant, Dauvit Broun, all of whom have made significant contributions to Scottish historical studies.

For their work alone we should be thankful for the 1911 exhibition.