Brown, Michael and Begiato, Joanne (2025) Exhibiting Tommy Atkins : senses, spectacle, and military modernity in late Victorian Britain. Historical Research. ISSN 0950-3471
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This article considers the conjunction of senses, emotions and objects in the Royal Military Exhibition of 1890 to deepen our understanding of popular militarism in late Victorian Britain. Exhibitory culture was reaching its peak in this period in parallel with the rise of urban spectatorship, making both objects and people the subject of the gaze. Deploying the concepts of emotional objects and ‘prosthetic feeling’, we show that the uniquely modern, inter-sensory and immersive experience of the Royal Military Exhibition was central to shaping positive popular sentiment about the army at a time of profound technological, geopolitical and cultural change.