The brainchild of Prince Albert, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was intended as a celebration of the British Empire and advance in technology. Events were prompted by the success of the French Industrial Exposition of 1844, and British industry was to receive a similar competitive boost.  It set Great Britain as the world market place for the exploitation of natural resources from all corners of the globe.

In 1851 Great Britain was arguably the leader of the industrial revolution and feeling very secure in that ideal. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London was conceived to symbolize this industrial, military and economic superiority of Great Britain.  Just representing the feats of Britain itself would have excluded many of the technological achievements pioneered by the British in its many colonies and protectorates, so it was decided to make the exhibit truly international with invitations being extended to almost all of the colonized world. The British also felt that it was important to show their achievements right alongside those of "less civilized" countries. The prevailing attitude in England at the time was ripe for the somewhat arrogant parading of accomplishments. Many felt secure, economically and politically, and Queen Victoria was eager to reinforce the feeling of contentment with her reign. It was during the mid- 1850s that the word "Victorian" began to be employed to express a new self-consciousness, both in relation to the nation and to the period through which it was passing.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, from 1st May to 15th October 1851. It was the first international exhibition of manufactured products and was enormously influential on the development of many aspects of society including art and design education, international trade and relations, and even tourism. The Exhibition also set the precedent for the many international exhibitions which followed during the next hundred years.

Prince Albert, Victoria's consort, was very much in favour of a self-financing Exhibition of All Nations. But even though this meant that the exchequer would have to pay no money, there was a lukewarm reception from Parliament. Albert's plan was for a great collection of works in art and industry, 'for the purposes of exhibition, of competition and of encouragement', to be held in London in 1851. Such an Exhibition, he said,

would afford a true test of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations would be able to direct their further exertions.

Among the results of the Exhibition were the establishment of the pre-cursor to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Ornamental Art, in Marlborough House in 1852; and the reorganisation of the national Schools of Design. The Museum's first objects were selected from exhibits in the Great Exhibition and one of the key organisers, Henry Cole, became the first General Superintendent of the Department of Practical Art, the government body responsible for art education including the new museum.

The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, the body set up in 1850 to organise and administer the Exhibition under the Presidency of Prince Albert, made a number of recommendations for improving science and art education in the United Kingdom in their Second report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 submitted in November 1852.

The profits (£170,000) from the Exhibition were invested in land in the South Kensington area, close to the site of the Crystal Palace. A number of science and art institutions subsequently developed here, not least the V&A, which moved from Marlborough House and opened on its current site in 1857 as the South Kensington Museum.