Delhi Durbar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org‎

Delhi Durbar of 1903,Elephant Carriage of the Maharaja of Rewa at the Retainers' Review, 7th January 1903

Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon arriving at the Delhi Durbar, 1903.

Elephant Carriage of the Maharaja of Rewa

Delhi Durbar Garden Party at the Viceroys House - 1911

The durbar was held to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India.

The two full weeks of festivities were devised in meticulous detail by Lord Curzon. It was a dazzling display of pomp, power and split second timing. Neither the earlier Delhi Durbar of 1877, nor the later Durbar held there in 1911, could match the pagentry of Lord Curzon’s 1903 festivities. In a few short months at the end of 1902, a deserted plain was transformed into an elaborate tented city, complete with temporary light railway to bring crowds of spectators out from Delhi, a post office with its own stamp, telephone and telegraphic facilities, a variety of stores, a Police force with specially designed uniform, hospital, magistrate’s court and complex sanitation, drainage and electric light installations. Souvenir guide books were sold and maps of the camping ground distributed. Marketing opportunities were craftily exploited. Special medals were struck, firework displays, exhibitions and glamorous dances held.
Elephant Carriage of the Maharaja of Rewa, Delhi Durbar of 1903.

Edward VII, to Curzon’s disappointment, did not attend but sent his brother, the Duke of Connaught who arrived with a mass of dignitaries by train from Bombay just as Curzon and his government came in the other direction from Calcutta. The assembly awaiting them displayed possibly the greatest collection of jewels to be seen in one place. Each of the Indian princes was adorned with the most spectacular of his gems from the collections of centuries. Maharajahs came with great retinues from all over India, many of them meeting for the first time while the massed ranks of the Indian armies, under their Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener, paraded, played their bands and restrained the crowds of common people.

On the first day, the Curzons entered the area of festivities, together with the maharajahs, riding on elephants, some with huge gold candelabras stuck on their tusks. The durbar ceremony itself fell on New Year's Day and was followed by days of polo and other sports, dinners, balls, military reviews, bands, and exhibitions. The world’s press despatched their best journalists, artists and photographers to cover proceedings. The popularity of movie footage of the event, shown in makeshift cinemas throughout India, is often credited with having launched the country’s early film industry.

The Aga Khan III used this occasion to speak out for the expansion of all types of educational facilities in India.

The event culminated in a grand coronation ball attended only by the highest ranking guests, all reigned over by Lord Curzon and more so by the stunning Lady Curzon in her glittering jewels and regal peacock gown. (From Wikipedia)

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CORONATION DURBAR AT DELHI | colonialfilm

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www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1956‎

Coverage of the Delhi Durbar of 1902-1903. No titles. View over heads of spectators of review of troops ...

Block colonialfilm.org.uk

1911 PHOTO INDIA DELHI DURBAR PUNJAB CAMP

1911 PHOTO INDIA DELHI DURBAR NIZAMS CAMP

1911 PHOTO INDIA DELHI DURBAR BARODA CAMP

Charles Urban (centre) with his camera team at Delhi

The prince identified on the Gaumont newsfilm of the Delhi Durbaras being the Gaekwar of Baroda, turning his back to King George and Queen Mary. Whether it is the Gaekwar is uncertain (see discussion below)

The Emperor and Empress rose from their thrones and walked to the central Royal Pavilion. Fanfares sounded. The official proclamation of the King’s coronation in June was made, in English and Urdu, and there were various announcements concerning beneficial funds and concessions made to the people of India. The royal couple returned to the Shamiana, while a salute was fired and cheers were taken up by the thirty thousand troops, then the sixty or more thousand guests, then those many thousands more outside the arena. At the Shamiana, the Emperor gave two last announcements concerning political changes, which had been kept in the greatest secrecy for months. These were that the capital of India was to move to Delhi, and that the partition of Bengal (an unpopular decision from the Curzon era) was to be cancelled. Both announcements, but particularly former, were received in almost stunned silence, before being greeted by general cheering. The Durbar was declared formally closed, the royal couple returned to their carriage, and departed.

The mood at the time, at least among the British, was one of complete awe as the majesty and colour of the spectacle, which seemed to be the very apex of the imperial dream. Journalist Philips Gibbs summed up its (British) impact:

Sound and colour combined to form a panorama of beauty and grandeur such as one might suppose could have its being only in a dream. Uniforms, robes, turbans of every shade and tone produced an effect which, though infinitely varied in its contrasts, was blended into one flawless harmony by the orderliness of the entire scheme. There seemed a mystic bond that welded the tremendous music of the bands, the clear notes of the bugles, and the tramp-tramp-tramp of marching hosts, into one vast paean of triumphant praise to the King-Emperor, and that found its more material counterpart in the riot of colour displayed so lavishly on every side.

The film companies hurried back to Britain. Only Urban’s camera team filming in the Kinemacolor process stayed behind (his black-and-white films were returned to Britain, however). He was seeing things beyond the news, and felt that so precious were the films that his team has captured that there was danger of their being stolen or damaged by his rivals. He later recalled:

We had the choicest of all possible positions; the officials afforded us the best of protection. They had heard rumors that rival film companies were bent on damaging or destroying our pictures and inasmuch as the King expected to see these pictures in London, it was up to the Army to see that we got them safely there. Each night we used to develop the negatives exposed during the day, and bury them in cases dug in the sand in my tent with a piece of linoleum and a rug on top – my bed on top of them, a pistol under my pillow and armed guards patrolling our camp.

The other film companies had also brought with them film processing equipment, so that they could show their films locally as well as dispatch prints back to Britain. Prints were sped back to Britain by ship and train. According to Stephen Bottomore, pre-eminent historian of the films of the 1902/3 and 1911 Durbars, all of the companies got their films onto screens in London on the same day, Saturday, 30 December 1911, including Kineto (Urban’s company filming in black-and-white), most if not all showing their results in the first show of the morning at 11:00. The films were news records, between five and fifteen minutes in length.

King George and Queen Mary viewing Barker Motion Photography’s black-and-white films of the Durbar at Calcutta House, 6 January 1912, from the Illustrated London News. Lord Hardinge noted in his diary: “In the evening we had a dinner of 50 and a cinematograph afterwards giving scenes from the Durbar and the Calcutta visit. They were not good but the King and Queen seemed to enjoy seeing them”

The films were a great, if brief, commercial success. Viewed as news, they were the toast of the town in January, and a dead duck by February, as Bottomore notes. News has to be fast, then it has to die, and a strategy of speed in order to capture the passing interest of the crowd was the only one the newsreel companies understood. Prints were sent out around the world, though perhaps not surprisingly few territories view the ceremonies with quite the same enthusiasm as did the British. But wherever you were, and whatever your sympathies, by February the Delhi Durbar was history. Its pomp was past.

On 2 February 1912 at the Scala Theatre in London Charles Urban revealed his strategy. He did not see the Delhi Durbar as news; he saw it as living theatre. His plan was to recreate the experience and the emotion of the Delhi Durbar as far as might be possible on a London stage. It was not that people were tired of the Durbar; they had not seen it as it had been seen, and as it could now be presented. Urban organised his Kinemacolor footage into a two and a half hour programme (16,000 feet), a previously unheard of length for a film show, and with introductions and intervals it in fact stretched to three hours in full. It had the overall title With Our King and Queen Through India. Its centrepiece was entitled the Coronation Durbar at Delhi, but the programme as a whole covered the whole tour. The Scala stage was turned into a mock-up of the Taj Mahal, with special lighting effects. Music was composed and scored for forty-eight pieces, a chorus of twenty-four, a twenty-piece fife and drum corps, and three bagpipes. Music that had been played at the actual event was used whereever possible, including fanfares. This was virtual reality – pictures, sound, colour, pomp and circumstance, and all for a better and cheaper seat than if you had been one of those who had sailed off to India. The show at the Scala was going to be better than the real thing.

Things turned out as Urban had dreamed. With Our King and Queen in India became a huge hit, commercially and socially. It became the show that every discriminating person in London had to go and see, then repeated that success acros the UK, and then worldwide (it did particularly well in America). Society came to the Scala to see a medium that it would never have deigned to cast an eye on before. Duke and duchesses, lords and ladies, royalty themselves (King George and Queen Mary visited the Scala to see the film on 11 May 1912), all came to see the Durbar recreated on the screen. Children were taken to a show whose worthiness greatly commended it to parents who had previously been suspicious of moving pictures. Among such visitors were the young John Grierson (aged 11), Ivor Montagu (7) and Paul Rotha (4), future lions of the British documentary movement.

With our King and Queen in India was not a conventional film. Quite aside from its length, and the fact that it was in colour, it was more of a theatrical event than a film per se. Its different components recording incidents from the whole royal tour could be selected or ordered according to the length of available programme, so that no one screening might be the same as the next. The use of a lecturer throughout, the special music, stage and lighting effects, the whole sensory impact created something that was rather more than a mere picture show (to use a phrase said by one of Urban’s acquaintances at the time).

Four colour images from the 1912 Kinemacolor catalogue showing scenes from With Our King and Queen through India. It was not possible to reproduce Kinemacolor in print, so the images were conventionally coloured for print and do not accurately represent how the film actually looked. Clockwise from top left – the arrival of the royal couple in Bombay, state entry into Delhi, the royal review, and the Durbar ceremony itself

the Kinemacolor film survives, having been discovered in the Russian state film archive in 2000. It doesn’t show the main ceremonies; the single reel shows a parade of British troops and an artillery display that took place two days later. It is marvellous that it survives, and was undoubtedly grand to experience at the time, but it is a sideshow. The greater part is lost.

'4688 Delhi Durbar, A Spectacle of Oriental Magnificence. 29 December 1902.' ; George Rose; Early 1900; CL19851087

Stereoscopic view of a an elephant, 'bejewelled witha cloth of gold covering and richly ornamented howda' for the state entry into Delhi of the Viceroy and Ruling Chiefs on 29 December 1902.

The Delhi Durbar elephant carriage of the Maharaja of Rewa

Native levies from Baluchistan, riding in the Delhi Durbar procession of 1902," a photo by W. G. Skinner, a British officer, c.1895-1904*

Garden party at viceroy's house 1911

Elephant Procession at Delhi Durbar 1903

Delhi Durbar, India 1911

Sir Charles Friswell became the sole distributor of Standard Cars in 1905, and became the first Chairman of The Standard Motor Company. In 1911 he was successful in persuading the Indian Government and The Vice Regal Department, to supply all the cars for the Delhi Durbar Celebrations to mark the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India. In all 70 Standard Cars were sent, of six different types including 10 lorries for the carriage of beaters in the tiger hunting expeditions.

My thanks to Steve Gallichan for finding this picture

THE FLEET OF MOTOR CARS BUILT BY THE STANDARD MOTOR Co. in 1911 FOR KING GEORGE V AND QUEEN MARY'S VISIT TO INDIA FOR THE DELHI ROYAL DURBAH TO COMMEMORATE THEIR CORONATION

This is a genuine original sepia print made by Newspaper Illustrations Limited of 161A Strand, London.

On the rear of the photograph is the following statement:

The first sign of the near approach of the Durbah at Delhi is the completion and dispatch of the fleet of motor cars that have been specially built for the convenience of their Majesties the King and Queen whilst they are at Durbah as the Emperor and Empress of India.

Messrs Friswells have just completed the order for the whole fleet, which may be detailed as follows. When their Majesties arrive at Bombay on the 2^nd Dec. where they will be received by the governor of the Province two 20 Hp 6 Cylinder Standard cars for the use of their Majesties and ten for the the Royal visitors will be at command. Arriving at Delhi on the 7^th Dec., another fleet of Standard cars, painted in royal blue with red lines and upholstered in blue leather with the Royal crown on the side panels will await the Royal visitors. Apart from this there is another fleet of Standard cars for the visitors of the Government of India. These are painted cream and upholstered in green leather. After the Durbah comes the Nepah Shooting Expedition taking place during the last days of December. For this purpose an entirely separate fleet has been built, comprising two 20HP Standard cars with luxurious landaulette bodies, two beautifully fitted double phaetons for the Royal visitors attending the shoot and several 20HP lorries to convey the beaters and the impediments of the shoot.They make a wonderful fleet of cars, are British made throughout being manufactured at the Coventry works of the Standard Motor Co. and Messrs. Friswells are to be congratulated upon having completed so large an order to time.

postscript (added 15th December 2013) My thanks to Mr W Vincent in New Zealand, who has identified that the Chauffeur in the picture bellow was his grandfather William Charles Vincent. Mr Vincent was employed by the Standard Motor Company so it would appear that as well as supplying all the cars for the Delhi Durbar, the Standard Motor Company also supplied the drivers. Following the visit, HM The King, presented Mr Vincent with a number of gifts including a ceremonial Kukri set carved to depict the King on the tiger shoot and a set of gold cufflinks from Garrards.
It is understood that Mr Vincent left the employment of The Standard Motor Company around 1914 and later ran the Three Horseshoes Public House at Bubbenhall.

The Sons of Maharajahs At Lord Curzon's Durbar, Delhi 1902.

King George V and Queen Mary in a chariot proceeded towards the Red Fort in Delhi in December 1911. This was the first time a British monarch came to India.

Alkazi Collection of Photography

CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL SLIDESHOW ON THE DELHI DURBAR.

Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon arriving at the Delhi Durbar, 1903.

The Heralds and Trumpeters

OIOC Photo 430/79(91),

The Heralds and Trumpeters at the Delhi Durbar. A formally posed group portrait of the Chief Herald, Major Alexander Gordon Maxwell (6th Bengal Cavalry), standing with the drummer and trumpeters. Probably photographed somewhere in the Durbar camp. Originally published/produced in c.Dec 1902.

078608

maharaja's of India BOWING IN FRONT OF BRITISH KING

Cavalry regiment at Coronation Durbar, 1903. An Indian cavalry regiment at the Coronation Durbar

GONE ARE THE DAYS OF POMP

NOW QUEEN ELIZABETH AT RAILWAY STATION DUE TO ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES ,AFTER INDIA BECAME FREE
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THE 'DELHI DURBAR from Google Images

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