Assess the significance of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

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Assess the significance of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Between 19-24 June 1897, Britain and the British Empire celebrated the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne. The Queen had broken George 111’s record by several months and had reigned for 60 years. Her Diamond Jubilee was therefore duly celebrated. There were great festivities throughout Great Britain and the Empire including the great royal procession to St Paul’s for a service of thanksgiving. Also there was held a military tattoo at Windsor, a service at St George’s chapel, Windsor and the Countess of Jersey’s garden party at Osterley Park. Presents and tributes were paid to Queen Victoria and there included ceremony and display and speechmaking. Among the presents sent to the Queen was a diamond valued at £300,000 from the Nizam of Hyderabad, which was stolen before it reached the Queen. There were many street parties and free food was given to the poor.

The Queen’s jubilee in 1887 was made the occasion of the first imperial conference, and her Diamond Jubilee ten years later was a great imperial spectacular in its own right and was accompanied by another conference of the Empire’s chief ministers. The music halls played ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ and ‘Son’s of the sea. In 1899 Rudyard Kipling issued the most famous of his calls to Englishmen to fulfil their destiny:

Take up the white man’s burden-

Send forth the best ye breed-

Go bind your son’s to exile

To serve your captive’s need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild-

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half-child.

Something about the Empire stirred the British people at this time and this feeling gave rise to a number of patriotic songs that outlasted the late-Victorians- such as ‘God save the King’, ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Hearts of oak’.

Reactions from many other nations were generally positive. The French newspaper Le Figaro declared that Rome itself had been ‘equalled; if not surpassed, by the power in which Canada, Australia, India, in the China Sea’s, in Egypt, Central and South Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean rules the peoples and governs their interests’.

For the mass of the population, both wealthy and poor, the pinnacle of the celebrations was the great Royal procession to St Paul’s Cathedral on 22 June. Before Queen Victoria left Buckingham Palace on that morning she sent a telegraph to every corner of the empire, It read; ‘from my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them.’

The Diamond Jubilee was held for a variety of reasons. It was not the first large-scale celebration that had been held during the Queen’s reign. The Golden jubilee ten years earlier proved to be a useful dress rehearsal for the festivities in 1897.

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Joseph Chamberlain, the man who was appointed Colonial secretary in 1895 was one of the chief instigators of the celebrations. He was deeply committed to the consolidation and expansion of the empire and was enthusiastic for Great Britain to display the achievements of the British people and of the glory of the British Empire.

The Diamond Jubilee was hoped to make the vast majority of the British people feel proud of their country and its successes throughout the world. If this could be achieved then it was thought that the British public would be more content with their ...

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