Abstract
AbstractNineteenth-century Glasgow was widely imagined and presented as the proud ‘Second City of the Empire’. This article investigates the implications of this identification with the empire by analysing Glasgow's great town hall, built 1883–89, as the main manifestation of the city's civic pride. It shows how the building's architectural style, sculpture and inauguration ceremonies created a specific image of ‘imperial’ Glasgow which emphasized loyalty to Union and empire. Instead of undermining each other, the layered political allegiances of civic pride, nationalism, unionism and imperialism were mutually reinforcing, shaping the town hall still in use today.
Highlights
‘[T]o promote with zeal and perseverance the highest and best interests of this great community and of the empire to which it belongs.’ That was what in October 1889, Glasgow’s Lord Provost James King hoped the city’s new town hall would enable its municipal government to do.1 Coupling Glasgow’s fortunes to the British empire’s might seem a simple case of local chauvinism
This article investigates the implications of this identification with the empire by analysing Glasgow’s great town hall, built 1883–89, as the main manifestation of the city’s civic pride
It was part of a widely held conviction that the city’s population size and industrial power made it of imperial significance as the ‘Second City of the Empire’
Summary
‘[T]o promote with zeal and perseverance the highest and best interests of this great community and of the empire to which it belongs.’ That was what in October 1889, Glasgow’s Lord Provost James King hoped the city’s new town hall would enable its municipal government to do.1 Coupling Glasgow’s fortunes to the British empire’s might seem a simple case of local chauvinism.
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