¹ As in the past, industrialists and private interests played a large role in the organization of the British Empire Exhibition, but the expansion of governmental powers resulting from World War I led to increased responsibilities for the cabinet, parliament, government ministries, and dominion and colonial governments. For information on the organization of the British Empire Exhibition, see Stephen, Daniel Mark, “Yoking West Africa to the Chariot of Progress: The Gold Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone at the British Empire Exhibition, 1924–25” (PhD diss., University of Colorado at Boulder, 2005)Google Scholar.

² Prominent organizers, who included private interests as well as governmental officials, did not all maintain the same view of empire but did share in common a hope that the exhibition would help to address alleged problems besetting Britain and the empire in the postwar years. These “problems” were variously conceived as the loss of European markets, the “uneven distribution of the white population among the territories of the British Empire,” industrial and commercial competition from Japan and the United States, raw material shortages, the “imbalance of the sexes” resulting in Britain from the war, “obstructionism” in India, the “yellow peril,” new military rivalries, and many others. For further information, see Stephen, “Yoking West Africa to the Chariot of Progress.”

³ For an introduction to debates concerning British imperialism in the twentieth century, see Louis, W. R., “Introduction,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Brown, Judith and Louis, W. R. (Oxford, 1999), 1–46Google Scholar. For an influential alternative reading of the history of “imperial decline” after World War I, see Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (London, 1993), 405–8Google Scholar.

⁴ Several smaller territories, such as the Gambia and the British mandated territories of the Cameroons and Togoland, sent exhibits but were not listed separately in the exhibition handbook.

⁵ For a discussion of British culture and its relationships to colonial peripheries informed by postcolonial theory, see Wee, C. J. W.-L., Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern (Lanham, MD, 2003)Google Scholar. For an analysis of the intersections between British culture and Africa, see Bush, Barbara, Imperialism, Race, and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919–1945 (London, 1999)Google Scholar; and Coombes's, Annie reading of race and material culture in Britain during the Edwardian years, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination (New Haven, CT, 1994)Google Scholar. On the colonial frontier, Lawrence, T. E., and the reconstruction of British masculinity during the interwar years, see Graham Dawson, “Part III: Public and Private Lives of T. E. Lawrence,” in Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinity (London, 1994), 167–230Google Scholar; and Rutherford, Jonathan, Forever England: Reflections on Race, Masculinity and Empire (London, 1997)Google Scholar. I am much in debt to Pieterse's, Jan Nederveen persuasive account of the importance of representations of Africa and Africans in European culture in White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁶ For discussions of the relationship between the postwar reinvention of progress and the culture of great exhibitions in Britain, Europe, and the United States, see Rydell, Robert, World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions (Chicago, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁷ On the politics of West African students and emerging anticolonial nationalism, see Adi, Hakim, West Africans in Britain, 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (London, 1998), 23–51Google Scholar.

⁸ For a gendered analysis of Pan-Africanism during the 1920s, see Stephens, Michelle Ann, Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914–1962 (Durham, NC, 2005)Google Scholar; see also Geiss, Immanuel, The Pan-African Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe, and Africa, trans. Keep, Ann (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Langley, J. Ayodele, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa, 1900–1945: A Study in Ideology and Social Classes (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar.

⁹ The full formal statement goals of the exhibition were “to find in the development and utilization of the raw materials of the Empire, new sources of imperial wealth, to foster inter-imperial trade and open fresh markets for Dominions and home producers, to make the different races of the Empire better known to one another; and to demonstrate to the people of Great Britain the almost illimitable possibilities of the Dominions, colonies, and dependencies overseas.” “Report on HMG Participation at the British Empire Exhibition,” Department of Overseas Trade (1927), The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) BT 60/14/2.

¹⁰ Lawrence, George Clarke, British Empire Exhibition 1924 Official Guide (London, 1924), 13Google Scholar.

¹¹ ibid., 126.

¹² On Indian participation in the British Empire Exhibition, see Hughes, Deborah L., “Kenya, India and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924,” Race and Class 47, no. 4 (April–June 2006): 66–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Private letter from Hugh Clifford to William Gowers, 17 April 1924, MSS.Afr.s.1149. Quoted with permission of the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford.

¹⁴ Cottam, David, Sir Owen Williams, 1890–1969 (London, 1986)Google Scholar. The designation “concrete buildings of Egyptian dimensions” was a direction given to Williams by the exhibition general manager Ulick Wintour.

¹⁵ Bush, Barbara, “Gender and Empire in the Twentieth Century,” in Gender and Empire, ed. Levine, Philippa (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; on the domestic realignment of gender during the interwar period, see Light, Alison, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Kent, Susan K., Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton, NJ, 1993), and Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990 (London, 1999), chap. 12Google Scholar.

¹⁶ For psychologically informed discussions on the role of the colonial frontier in the reconstruction of masculinity during the interwar years, see especially Dawson, “The Blond Bedouin,” in Soldier Heroes; and Rutherford, Forever England. For a discussion on empire and British manhood informed by postcolonial theory, see Wee, Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern. See also Bush, , “Gender and Empire in the Twentieth Century”; Tosh, John and Roper, Michael, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Green, Michael, Children of the Sun (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Sluga, Glenda, “Masculinities, Nations and the New World Order: Peacemaking and Nationalism in Britain, France, and the United States after the First World War,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. Dudink, Stefan, Hagemann, Karen, and Tosh, John (Manchester, 2004)Google Scholar; and Stephens, Black Empire.

¹⁷ For information regarding Britain's postwar imperial conferences and especially the Imperial Economic Conference of 1923, see Hancock, William K., Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, vol. 2, Problems of Economic Policy, 1918–1939, pt. 1 (London, 1942), 110–26Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Boahen, A. Adu, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore, 1987), 108–9Google Scholar, and Boahen, A. Adu, ed., Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935 (London, 1985), 200–207Google Scholar; see also Constantine, Stephen, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Barkan, Elazar, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the Wars (Cambridge, 1992), 41Google Scholar.

²⁰ The political and cultural construction of “martial races” formed a crucial link between imperial and domestic culture; for discussions, see Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar; and Streets, Heather, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, 2004)Google Scholar.

²¹ Barkan, , The Retreat of Scientific Racism, 38–41Google Scholar; Zuckerman, Lord, ed., The Concepts of Human Evolution (London, 1973), 5–6Google Scholar.

²² See the exhibition pamphlet, “The Anthropological Section at the British Empire Exhibition 1924,” published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, British Library.

²³ Nigeria: Its History and Products (Wembley, 1924).

²⁴ An example of the “Hamitic hypothesis,” which ascribed progress to the arrival of “racially advanced” Semitic groups (originally conceived as descendents of Ham) who taught skills to “lesser races.” Fage, John Donnelly, A History of Africa (London, 1978), 59–60Google Scholar.

²⁵ “The British Empire Exhibition: A Suggestion,” West Africa, 11 August 1923, 898.

²⁶ This conference sought to educate British audiences with regard to religious diversity within the British Empire but (unlike a similar and more famous conference held in conjunction with Chicago's World Columbian Exhibition in 1892) to avoid controversy by forbidding discussion on religious questions, merely allowing a number of scholars, including seven representing branches of Islam, to read papers before journalists and a public audience. Hare, William Loftus, ed., Religions of the Empire: A Conference on Some Living Religions within the Empire (London, 1924)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Maxwell, J. C., “The Native Races of the British West African Colonies,” in The Native Races of the Empire, ed. Godfrey Lagden (London, 1924), 131–64Google Scholar.

²⁸ Decima had been awarded the C.B.E. in 1918 for her role in founding the Women's Emergency Corps and establishing leave clubs for British servicemen in Paris. “Lady Moore-Guggisberg,” The Times, 20 February 1964.

²⁹ Guggisberg, Decima Moore and Guggisberg, Frederick Gordon, We Two in West Africa (London, 1909), 21Google Scholar. The “inevitable black bottle” is probably a reference to hard spirits, trade in which accompanied economic penetration of West Africa. By the 1920s paternalistic colonial governments moved to restrict the trade, believing that alcohol consumption had debilitating effects on African culture and economic activity.

³⁰ For discussions of the British West African colonial economy in the 1920s, see Hopkins, Anthony G., An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973)Google Scholar, and “Economic Aspects of Political Movements in Nigeria and in the Gold Coast, 1918–1939,” Journal of African History 7, no. 1 (1966): 133–52; and Rodney, Walter, “The Colonial Economy,” in UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. 7, Africa under Colonial Domination, 1888–1935, ed. Boahen, A. Adu (London, 1985), 332–81Google Scholar.

³¹ The numbers of indigenous newspapers and journals published in Britain's West African territories fluctuated, but about a dozen journals were published during the early 1920s. For information on the West African press, see Omu, Fred I. A., Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1880–1937 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1978)Google Scholar; Quartey, K. A. B. Jones, A Summary History of the Ghana Press, 1822–1960 (Accra, 1974)Google Scholar.

³² Sir Hugh Clifford, “Minute,” Nigeria Gazette, 18 January 1923.

³³ “The British Empire Exhibition,” Nigerian Pioneer, 26 January 1923, 7.

³⁴ Clifford, “Minute.”

³⁵ Nigeria: Its History and Products, 13.

³⁶ “Sierra Leone and the 1924 Exhibition,” West Africa, 19 May 1923, 514.

³⁷ For information on taxation in Britain's West African colonies, see Crowder, Michael, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Evanston, IL, 1968), 206–10Google Scholar.

³⁸ “Sierra Leone at Wembley,” West Africa, 14 July 1923, 773.

³⁹ McCaskie, T. C., “Cultural Encounters: Britain and Africa in the Nineteenth Century,” in Black Experience and the Empire, ed. Morgan, Philip D. and Hawkins, Sean (Oxford, 2004), 166–93Google Scholar; Vivian Bickford-Smith, “The Betrayal of Creole Elites,” in Morgan and Hawkins, Black Experience and the Empire, 194–227; Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule, 427–28, 454–81.

⁴⁰ “Past Exhibitions,” Gold Coast Independent, 9 February 1924.

⁴¹ Coombes, Reinventing Africa, 202–3.

⁴² “Rambling Notes and News: Mr. Solanke to Broadcast,” Nigerian Pioneer, 15 August 1924.

⁴³ “Nigeria Filmed for the British Empire Exhibition,” West Africa, 30 June 1924.

⁴⁴ For information on Belcher's trip, see “British Empire Exhibition: Mission's Tour of Dominions,” The Times, 19 January 1922.

⁴⁵ “Points from Letters,” The Times, 19 February 1923.

⁴⁶ Letter signed “Nigerian,” West Africa, 29 March 1924.

⁴⁷ “London Letter,” Nigerian Pioneer, 15 February 1924.

⁴⁸ “Empire Exhibition Visitors,” The Times, 14 February 1924.

⁴⁹ W. Addison, letter to J. H. Thomas, 28 January 1924, TNA: PRO, CO 4603.

⁵⁰ “Official Minutes,” 29 January 1924, TNA: PRO, CO 4603.

⁵¹ “Women's Plans for Wembley,” The Times, 19 February 1924.

⁵² “Past Exhibitions,” Gold Coast Independent, 9 February 1924, 110.

⁵³ “West Africa and the Exhibition,” West Africa, 5 April 1924.

⁵⁴ “West Africa and the Exhibition,” West Africa, 24 May 1924.

⁵⁵ “The Overseas Buildings at the British Empire Exhibition,” Nigerian Pioneer, 7 March 1924, 7.

⁵⁶ “British Empire Exhibition, 1924,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, 12 April 1924.

⁵⁷ Weaver, Lawrence, Exhibitions and the Arts of Display (London, 1925), 97Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ “West Africa and the Exhibition,” West Africa, 26 July 1924 and 1 November 1924; African World, 20 April 1924.

⁵⁹ Price, George Ward, With the Prince to West Africa (London, 1925)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Nigeria contributed 54,000 enlisted and nonenlisted forces for these campaigns. For information regarding West African forces during World War I, see Matthews, James K., “World War I and the Rise of African Nationalism: Nigerian Veterans as Catalysts of Change,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20, no. 3 (September 1982): 493–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule, 252–59.

⁶¹ C. T. Lawrence, “Report on Nigerian Section, British Empire Exhibition,” West Africa, 1 November 1924.

⁶² Joseph Boakye Danquah, “What I Would Try to See at the Gold Coast If I Were a British Princess Visiting the Colony,” West Africa, 3 January 1925.

⁶³ The designation of the British as “the great wandering, working, colonizing race, descended from sea-rovers and Vikings” was authored by Seeley, John, Expansion of England (Chicago, 1971), 66Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Price, With the Prince to West Africa.

⁶⁵ Gordon, Leon, White Cargo: A Play of the Primitive (Boston, 1925), 29Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ ibid., 82.

⁶⁷ “London Letter,” Nigerian Pioneer, 13 June 1924, 5; West Africa, June 1924.

⁶⁸ “White Cargo: Does the Play Fairly Represent West African Life?” West Africa, 26 July 1924.

⁶⁹ Executive Council Minutes, 8 April 1924, and Council Meeting, 15 April 1924, Archives of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London.

⁷⁰ “A Coaster's London Log,” West Africa, 17 March 1923, 253.

⁷¹ Various reports in The African World and West Africa.

⁷² “West Africa at Wembley,” West Africa, 14 June 1924.

⁷³ W. F. Hutchinson, “Nigeria's Share at Wembley,” The African World Special Supplement, 30 April 1924.

⁷⁴ “‘Monkeys!'” West Africa, 4 July 1925.

⁷⁵ V. C. Scott O'Connor, “An Odyssey of Empire, Part III: Sierra Leone,” Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1924.

⁷⁶ “West Africa and the Empire Exhibition,” West Africa, 12 April 1924, 322.

⁷⁷ “The Arts and Crafts of the Gold Coast and Ashanti,” West Africa, 2 August 1924, 781, and 16 August, 1924, 830. Danquah would publish his own work on Ashanti ethnology a few years later, following on the more anecdotal work of Gold Coast nationalist leader Hayford, J. E. Casely. Danquah, Joseph Boakye, Akan Laws and Customs (London, 1928)Google Scholar; Ephraim, JosephHayford, Casely, Gold Coast Native Institutions (London, 1903)Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Kitoyi Ajasa, “The New Nigeria,” Nigerian Pioneer, 13 June 1924.

⁷⁹ See Boahen, A. Adu, ed., General History of Africa, vol. 7, Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935 (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar; Bush, Imperialism, Race, and Resistance; Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule; Ohaegbulam, Ugboaja F., West African Responses to European Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Lanham, MD, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ See Adi, West Africans in Britain; and Stephens, Black Empire.

⁸¹ Joseph Boakye Danquah, Editorial, The Gold Coast Leader, reprinted in West Africa, 30 August 1924, 912.

⁸² “When West Africa Woos,” Sunday Express, 4 May 1924.

⁸³ Colonial Office records, “West Africa 1924, October–December Vol. III,” TNA: PRO, CO 554/54.

⁸⁴ ibid.

⁸⁵ M.H., “The Gold Coast Africans and Wembley,” West Africa, 13 June 1923.

⁸⁶ “London Letter,” Nigerian Pioneer, 13 June 1924.

⁸⁷ Adi, West Africans in Britain.

⁸⁸ ibid.

⁸⁹ Unsigned letter, 20 February 1925, to Earl of Birkenhead, TNA: PRO, T 172/1462.

⁹⁰ Marianne Torgovnick has argued that Western discourses of “primitiveness” are central to understanding wider forms of power, “that a rhetoric of control and domination exists in Western discourse on the primitive is beyond question. And it exists in at least two senses: control and domination of primitives (and those thought of as like primitives) abroad; and a parallel control and domination over others often exists alongside (behind) a rhetoric of more obscure desires: of sexual desires or fears, of class, or religious, or national, or racial anxieties, of confusion or outright self-loathing”; Torgovnick, Marianne, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago, 1990), 192Google Scholar.

⁹¹ For further discussions of populist conceptions of race in the 1920s, see Bush, Imperialism, Race, and Resistance; Bourne, Stephen, Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television (London, 2001)Google Scholar; and Pieterse, White on Black.