“By 1938, Scotland had for nearly 200 years lived within a classic peripheral identity assigned to it by the artists and ideologues of the great European core cultures through the mode of Romanticism and their control of the means of (ideological) production. However, the brute fact of subsequent uneven economic development compelled the Scots to bring into collision with that historically assigned identity a new-fashioned identity more appropriate to a dynamic modern nation. Great national moments of self-presentation, such as the Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938, were the occasions when the ongoing dialectic of modern/urban against rural/ancient emerged in its most public and delirious form. Such occasions therefore hold a political lesson. The process of speaking with two voices - the fissures; the uncertainties; the grating shifts of gear from one discourse to another - assert once more, the fluid, unstable character of national identity. Such occasions proclaim that national identity is not a set of inborn, natural characteristic in a people, but the product of that people's history. With the realisation of instability comes the realisation of the possibility of change.” ScotlandRomanticismNational Identity1938Uneven DevelopmentGlasgow Empire ExhibitionPeripherality Book:Popular Culture and Social Relations Source: Popular Culture and Social Relations
“The outbreak of war and the hiatus in non-essential building that it necessitated meant that the Empire Exhibition came to be looked back upon as a period ensemble, rather than the springboard to a new Scotland that those who planned it had hoped for. The international political situation meant that the demolition of the tower was not unexpected, and the imminent war was causing more pressing worries. By the time thar economic and political will for radical updating returned in the 1950s, concepts of what was modern in architecture and planning had moved on. Nonetheless, several of those subsequently involved in Scotland's post-war development would have been visitors, retaining memories of spaciousness, cleanliness, coordination and colour.” DevelopmentScotlandWorld War 21938Glasgow Empire Exhibition Book:Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age Source: Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age