Brass, 19mm. Pierced as issued.  Head of Australian aboriginal man left.  Rv. STRUCK IN COMMEMORATION OF THE COLONIAL & INDIAN EXHIBITION 1886 in six lines.   BHM 3213. Small stain, otherwise about EF, with much original lustre.

The exhibition was opened on the 4th of May in South Kensington and lasted six months. During these six months, around 5 million people visited the display of the colonial power of the British Empire. Many of the countries that nowadays form the Commonwealth, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, participated in the exhibition displaying their cultural traditions and their history. But the real highlight of the exhibition was the Indian pavilion.

During the Great Exhibition of 1851, held at the Crystal Palace, the Indian pavilion had made a great impression on the public, including people such as Karl Marx and Charlotte Bronte. But that pavilion was insignificant compared with the exhibition of 1886, it being five times larger. Although this exhibition was far from our modern times, in that epoque the media was very limited and the vast sub-continent of India was more than 4,000 miles away, with the various Indian cultures and hundreds of languages a complete mystery to most British inhabitants who were unlikely to have seen an Indian.