ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that at different moments Ireland was received as a nation at the Great Exhibition despite being classified as a region. All Great Exhibition accounts address their readers as if disaster or destitution in Ireland was well known, but few commentaries mention the Famine or Hunger by name. The Illustrated Exhibitor opens its Irish issue with optimism about the future of Ireland and a plea not to dwell upon the past. All Irish exhibits in 1851, whatever they were made of and whatever part of Ireland they were from, produced an image of Ireland as industrious that eclipsed, partially and momentarily, the view that it was an inevitably impoverished agricultural economy. However, specific and contrasting accounts of Ireland were articulated through the different kinds of Irish manufactures exhibited in 1851. The general industrial improvement brought about by the textile industry in Ireland was employment. Textiles have an important place in nineteenth-century narratives of progress.
