Print Culture in Victorian England: The Ottoman Empire at the Great Exhibition of 1851

Abstract

This thesis provides a study of the Ottoman Empire’s display and citizens at the Great Exhibition of 1851 as represented by British print culture. Using official and satirical sources, it examines mediated images of the “Turk,” identifying and interpreting differences between English and Turkish cultures as represented before, during, and directly after the exhibition in primary sources such as the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue and Punch magazine. Using Western preconceptions and stereotypes, a “Turkish Other” character type was created and disseminated throughout British print media. This character type illustrated Turkish reforms instigated in the nineteenth-century which merged European ideals with Turkish cultural traditions; in doing so, the Ottoman Empire infringed on British national identity. To protect this cultural identity, British satire depicted exaggerated “Turkish Other” characters which, according to Freud’s theory of the narcissism of minor differences (as interpreted by Anton Blok), prevented violent physical conflict between these cultures.