Benedict_Ethnic Stereotypes and Colonized Peoples at World's Fairs_Fair Representations

2. RITUALS OF REPRESENTATION: ETHNIC STEREOTYPES AND COLONIZED PEOPLES

AT WORLD'S FAIRS

Burton Benedict

World's fairs can be seen as giant rituals-competitive national displays on a defined stage for a limited period. Major powers vie with each other to present fairs, although there is an international body which tries, rather unsuccessfully, to regulate such competition. Among the tokens of rivalry were colonies and their peoples. World's fairs showed the power of the imperial nation and were meant to impress both foreigners and the home population.1 Yet concentration on power relationships makes it is easy to forget that a chief reason for attending a world's fair is to be entertained. The popularity of exhibits of colonized peoples was not just about power relationships. Visitors flocked to them out of curiosity and because they wanted to learn about the way people from foreign lands lived, the skills they possessed and the objects they produced.

Showing living people and their artifacts fed into existing ethnic stereotypes, which world's fairs both elaborated and modified. During nearly 150 years of world's fairs, ethnic stereotypes, gradually altered, moving from manifestations of Buro-American superiority and imperialism towards expressions of nationalism in new nations. In this process new traditions were invented that incorporated elements from old cultural traditions, from former colonial masters, and from newer nationalisms.2

A characteristic of ethnic stereotypes often cited by social scientists is their rigidity. They are stubbornly maintained in the face of conflicting evidence (e.g., "Some of my best friends are Jews"). Stereotypes also over-simplify (e.g., "All Blacks are stupid"). Over the course of many world's

1 For an analysis of world's fairs as rituals see Burton Benedict et aI., The Anthropology of World's Fairs.: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition 1915 (Berkeley: Lowie Museum of Anthropology and Scolar Press, 1983), 6-12. Accounts of the power relationships manifested in world's fairs can be found in Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); A.E.S. Coombes, "For God and for England: Contributions to an Image of Africa in the First Decade of the Twentieth Century," Art History 8 (1985); John M. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire: the Manipulation of British Public Opinion 1880-1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); and Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).

2 See introductory essay in Eric Hobsbawm and Terrance Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

RITUALS OF REPRESENTATION 29

fairs, ethnic stereotypes became both less rigid and less simple. They were elaborated and modified and acquired quite new meanings. They moved from the display of a few ethnic types as oddities to the portrayal of many different cultural traditions. These traditions were not always old; they were sometimes invented; and they acquired new referents on the world's fair stage, but their very proliferation militated against the simplifying nature of stereotyping.

Displaying People and Their Artifacts

Few pastimes are more amusing than looking at other people. A study of visitor behavior in public parks shows that people spend more time looking at each other than at the beauties of nature. If the people observed differ in some striking fashion from the observer, interest is further stimulated. For centuries, entrepreneurs and showmen have been charging admission to see human oddities.

Three ways of displaying people and their artifacts are central for the analysis of colonial exhibits at world's fairs: the display of people and their artifacts as curiosities, as artisans with their products, and as trophies or booty.3

The display of people and/or their artifacts as curiosities has a long history deriving from fairs, carnivals and side shows. Objects are shown that are unfamiliar to the audience and preferably concern the shedding of blood. For people on show, ph ysiological characteristics are em phasized -enormous girth, armlessness, dwarfishness, hairiness. Often, however, the physiological characteristic is a difference in ethnicity-the wild man from Borneo, the hairy Ainu, the pygmy, the cannibal from Dahomey. Note that in the last case the criterion is behavioral. It is not just his pig-mentation; it is what he eats. Behavioral "freaks" can be created from one's own culture, especially if eating is involved---sword swallowers, fire eaters, people who chew glass. The main aim of the exhibition of curiosities is commercial. People have to pay to see them.

The display of people as artisans emphasizes the continuity of ethnic

3 The ethologist, Desmond Morris, has examined the human propensity for looking at other humans. See especially his Manwatching (New York: Ahrams, 1977). For an examination of behavior in parks and other public places see N.H. Cheek and W.R. Burch, Jr., The Social Organization of Leisure in Human Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1977) and Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places (New York: The Free Press, 1963). Accounts of the exhibition of exotic humans in London from 1600 to 1862 can be found in Richard D. A1tick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978). An account of American displays of human oddities can be found in Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). On types ot:.human displays at world's fairs, see Benedict, Anthropology, 43-45.

ERText BoxfromRobert W. Rydell & Nancy E. Gwinn, eds. Fair Representations: World's Fairs and the Modern World (Amsterdam : VU University Press, 1994).

ERText Box

30 BURTON BENEDICT

or cultural differences even where the artisan comes from the same broad culture as most visitors, e.g., for Westerners-Irish lace-makers, Italian glassblowers, Shaker furniture makers. Artisans are often dressed in tradi-tional costumes. The principal aim here is also commercial. Although the emphasis is on the products, showing people helps sell them. The people on show and their products form a unit.

In the displays of people and/ or their artifacts as trophies or booty won by conquest, the power relationship is naked. The conqueror displays the conquered and/or his arms. Greeks and Romans displayed their captives; so did Saddam Hussein when he showed British captives on television on August 23, 1990, at the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. An ethnic element is often involved because those conquered usually come from a dif-ferent society. Geronimo was shown at three American fairs. The main aim here is political, whether what is shown is in a trophy cabinet, a museum, a zoo, a prison, a world's fair or on television.

These three types of display are amalgamated and ritualized in world's fairs. A more recent fourth way is the display of people and/or their arti-facts as scientific specimens. This often masks their display as curiosities or trophies. At both the Chicago fair of 1893 and the St. Louis fair of 1904 "villages" ofliving peoples were placed in the fairgrounds in what were sup-posed to be evolutionary sequences from the most 'primitive," usually shown as pygmies or Philippine Igorots, to the more "advanced," who approximated Euro-American physical type and culture.

Power relations are often combined with and sometimes disguised by amusements or displays of crafts. In some displays this is deliberate, but we must beware of thinking that every exhibit is the result of a conspiracy, that every time we put some object on show in a museum or some person on show on a stage, or making a pot, power relations are being manifested. There are many reasons for people and things being on show, and not all have to do with power.

The display of people is essentially theatrical and can be analyzed in theatrical terms. There is the setting which can be the fabricated village, the craftsman's workshop, the showman's stage. There are the props which include modes of dress, makeup, furniture, weapons, tools, etc. There is the performance itself-dancing, singing, drama, sporting contests, hunting, eating, religious ceremonies, the fashioning of objects, etc. Finally there is the interpretation furnished by labels, brochures, catalogues, programs and/or a narrator. The performances became rituals, stylized verbal and motor behavior that is habitual or customary in a particular social environment. Such rituals created or perpetuated ethnic stereotypes. Some were linked to existing stereotypes of ethnic minorities in the the countries giving the fairs. In the United States, for example, the stereotypes of -Africans from Africa fed into or sometimes took their reference from stereotypes of African -Americans. Examples can be seen in caricatures that appeared in the press at the time of the fairs. Such stereotypes served to


simplify and distance the peoples on display from their audiences and by extension from the societies from which the performers came. This was particularly the case in British and American fairs where visitors observed people on display from behind barriers. It was less true in France where visitors could mingle with the people on show.4

Colonial Pavilions

Nearly all the sponsoring nations of world's fairs were colonial powers: Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and the United States, the latter showing its overseas possessions acquired after the Spanish-American War as well as the internally colonized Native Americans. Even countries that were themselves colonies, such as Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, Indo-China and South Africa, exhibited their dependencies. Though all colonial powers stressed the economic ad vantages to be gained from their colonies by showing the raw materials and crafts they produced, along with what the metropolitan powers concei ved to be their enlightened policies toward their colonial dependents, there were significant national differences in the ways imperial powers displayed their colonies.

The first world's fair in the Crystal Palace in London in 1851 and suc-ceeding early world's fairs were housed in a single large building in which there were sections for each colony. They were usually decorated in indig-enous styles to attract attention and often displayed stuffed animals arid models or miniature dioramas of native life. By the time of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, fairs could no longer be contained in a single structure. There were buildings for each class of manufacture such as machinery, food and agriculture, liberal arts, etc. These too often had colonial sections displaying appropriate products. The multiplication of buildings led to the growth of national and state pavilions, and by the Paris fair of 1889 to separate colonial pavilions. Like the colonial displays in earlier fairs, they were designed and managed by Westerners. Colonial pavilions soon took on vernacular architectural styles-an Indian palace in the Mughal style or a West African mud fort. A single architectural

4 Pride of place for the theatrical metaphor belongs to Shakespeare's As You Like It ("All the world's a stage .... "), but the metaphor has become well established as role theory in anthropology and sociology notably by the writings of Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Selfin Everyday Life (New York; Doubleday, 1959); Encounters (Indianapolis; Bobbs Merrill, 1961); Interaction Ritual (New York: Doubleday, 1967); Stategic Interaction (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969). There is an extensive anthropologicialliterature on ritual; see Edmund R. Leach, "Ritual," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968). The definition used here derives from Meyer Fortes, "Religious Premises and Logical Technique in Divinatory Ritual," Philosophical Transactionsof the Royal Society of London Series B, no. 772, vol. 251 (1966): 409.

32 BURTON BENEDICT

representation stood for all the cultures that might be found within a single colony. It symbolized the colony as a whole and can be seen as a symbolic precursor to the growth of nationalism within colonies, although this was clearly not the intention of the colonizers. Such buildings became ritualized settings, invented traditions, which continued to represent these countries in post-independence world's fairs.5

Displays of Objects

Artifacts alone can create an impression of a culture. Europeans brought back the weapons of those they had conquered and colonized. These objects were entirely torn from their original contexts and arranged in patterns at international and colonial exhibitions. As Barbara M. Benedict has pointed out, such collections "celebrate the collector's power to subdue the meanings of objects into his own meaning, and to turn things to be used into things to be looked at." Such arrays of objects tended to promote and rigidify a stereotype of warlike savages and gave the impression of an unchanging primitive culture. The idea of unchanging primitiveness was also fostered by displays of simple agricultural tools and domestic implements and by static models and dioramas of dwellings and occupational pursuits. Such exhibits are still common in museums and have come under increasing criticism in recent years.6 [SEE PHOTO 2.1]

5 On differences in display in Britain, France and the United States see Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 82-142, and Burton Benedict, "International Exhibitions and National Identity," Anthropology Today 7 (1991): 5-9.

6 BarbaraM. Benedict, "The 'Curious Attitude' in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Observing and Owning," Eighteenth Century, 14 (1990): 75. On the use of Objects to assert colonial power with special reference to Fiji, see Nicholas Thomas, "Material Culture and Colonial Power: Ethnological Collecting and the Establishment of Colonial Rule in Fiji," Man 24 (1989). James Clifford has written on the notions of coUecting cultures as appropriation in his 'Objects and Selves---;An Afterword,' in Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George Stocking, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 236-46, later expanded in his Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography. Literature. and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 21S-Sl. AdrienneL. Kaeppler points to the use of displayed objects to create timeless cultural others in her "Museums of the World: Stages for the Study of Ethnohistory" in Museum Studies in Material Culture, ed. Susan M. Pearce, (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989), 83-96. Sally Price in Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) examines the consequences of the transfer of cultural objects from their indigenous surroundings into museums. Many of the essays in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, cds. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) critically examine the politics of museum display.

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PHOTO 2.1 The idols at the 1867 Paris Exposition. Christian images are absent. (From L'Exposition Universelle de 1867111ustree, ed. F. Ducuing. Paris, 1867)

34 BURTON BENEDICT

Amusement Zones

The amusement zone can be seen as a kind of counter-fair in which order is replaced by jumble and instruction by entertainment. The inipressive buildings in classical or Beaux Arts style give way to gimcrack structures in every conceivable style. Instead of contemplating the latest locomotive, the visitor is invited to ride the Ferris wheel. The main fair purported to deal with the real world (albeit idealized) with exhibits which would affect people's future. The amusement zone dealt with fantasy where the pleasure of the moment reigned supteme.

There were no amusement zones in the early world's fairs in London (1851), Dublin (1853), Paris (1855), Vienna (1873) or Philadelphia (1876), though plenty of showmen set up on the periphery of the fairs, and theaters and spectacles, including the exhibition of human curiosities, had record seasons in the host cities. Showmen played up the notion of native peoples as freaks, emphasizing their curiosity value by dressing them in "native" costume (or hardly any 'costume) and having them perform war dances, marriage ceremonies or other actions which would attract an audience. Before long such shows crept into world's fairs, especially when it was discovered that they they were money-makers.

The first people put on display at world's fairs seem to have been physiological curiosities. Chang the Chinese giant appeared at the Paris Exposition of 1867. [SEE PHOTO 2.2] He was shown in an engraving standing next to his normal-size wife and a Chinese dwarf. His size was more important than his ethnicity. He was taken up by P.T. Barnum whose 1881 printed handout increased Chang's size to such an extent that he was depicted holding a seated girl on his outstretched hand. As late as 1934 he was still being cited as a curiosity, able to write his name on a wall eleven feet above the floor. It was not long before the display of people whose only peculiarity was a difference in ethnicity became a standard feature on world's fair midways.7

People on Show

An imperfect survey of fifty-seven international and colonial exhibitions reveals that living peoples from sixty-seven colonies or parts of colonies were exhibited between 1867 and 1986. During this same period living people from sixteen independent nations or parts of nations were also shown (see Appendix).

7 For Chang, see Fr. Ducuing, ed., L'Exposition Universellede 186711Iustree, vol. 1 (Paris, 1867): 350-52; Bogdan, Freak Show, 99; and Robert L. Ripley, Ripley's Believe It or Not (New York: Garden City, 1934), 199.


PHOTO 2.2 Chang, the Chinese Giant, with his wife and a Chinese dwarf at the 1867 Paris Exposition. Chang was later exhibited in the U.S. by P.T. Barnum. (From L'Exposition Universelle de 1867 Illustree ed. F. Ducuing. Paris, 1867)

36 BURTON BENEDICT

Sub-Saharan Africans were exhibited more than twice as frequently as peoples from any other part of the world. They were followed by South Sea Islanders, people of Southeast Asia, South Asia, North Africa and Native Americans and Eskimos. The French exhibited their colonial dependents most frequently, followed by the British and, at some distance, the Ame-ricans.

The supposed characteristics of third world peoples promulgated at world's fairs combined a number of features. Foremost was foreignness and strangeness. Linked to this were primitiveness and simplicity. A third characteristic was barbarity and savageness. At the same time as savagery was emphasized individuals on display were often described as chiefs or kings or princes, implying some sort of social order in their societies of origin, but also showing the power of Westerners who could even put chiefs on show.

Such exhibits promoted ethnic stereotypes, for what was being shown was a type (a Bushman, a Fijian) not an individual. Ethnic stereotypes did not originate in world's fairs, but the fairs emphasized them. Their images were spread far and wide by the thousands of flyers, pamphlets and especially picture postcards that were sent by fairgoers from the turn of the century onwards. Those in charge of exhibits, both on the midway and in government pavilions, drew ona well-established and prevalent folklore of ethnic stereotyping.

Stereotyping was not confined to the inhabitants of what we now call the third world. Europeans were exhibited in idealized village settings. Irish and Scottish 'villages" appeared in British fairs (where it could be argued that they were colonies), and life in various French provinces was shown at the Paris fair of 1937. The practice was particularly prevalent in American fairs which featured Bavarian, Tyrolian, Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, English, Irish and Belgian "villages." The attraction of European "villages" at American fairs stemmed, at least in part, from the European origins of most Americans who might see in idealized German or English villages what they conceived to be the backgrounds from which they sprang. Nostalgic "historic" villages were also on display such as "Old London" (London 1886), "Le Vieux Paris (paris 1900) and the "Old Plantation" (St. !-ouis 1904). From the exhibitors' points of view, apart from the immediate cash return, such displays tended to promote tourism as well as the sales of their goods.8

Africans

Africans were subject to the most prevalent negative stereotyping of any

8 Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 106ff. discusses this aspect of world's fairs.


exhibited ethnic group. From the time of the "Hottentot Venus," first ex-hibited in London in 1810 to the dozens of displays of African Pygmies throughout the nineteenth century, Africans were portrayed as sub-human freaks, missing links between man and animal and the epitome of primi-tiveness. Both genetic physiological differences, such as the small stature of pygmies and Bushmen, and induced physiological features, such as the lip plates worn by so called Ubangi women, were exploited on the amuse-ment zone. A sideshow at the New York world's fair in 1939 advertised: ... pygmies from Batwa, Central Africa (the smallest human beings known); genuine Duckbill Ubangis from Shari country, French Equatorial Africa, headhunters from Congo and Masambo .... "9 As more Africans were shown in colonial exhibits at world's fairs, and as colonial powers distinguished peoples from their various colonies from each other and from the inhabitants of colonies of other powers, the undifferentiated, freakish stereotype Was modified.

When colonial boundaries were drawn in Africa, they often ran through traditional cultural areas, so that a particular tribe might be partitioned among various colonial masters. Since the British, French, Belgian, Spanish and Portuguese had different colonial practices, distinctions based on the colonizing power rather than on indigenous differences in custom grew up, including colonial mandates that determined which European language Africans had to learn. When independence came, the boundaries of new nations were not based on traditional tribal or cultural areas but on colonial boundaries. Continuing wars and skirmishes show just how fragile is this arrangement. World's fair exhibits sometimes reflected traditional cultural differences among the peoples shown, and sometimes differences based on the culture of the occupying power.

Dabomeans

The Dahomeans of French West Africa were one of the most popular exhibits at world's fairs. [SEE PHOTO 2.3] Horror stories about the savagery of the Kingdom of Dahomey had circulated in Europe in the nine-teenth century. Two thousand virgins were reputedly sacrificed on the death of a king and there was a lake of blood big enough in which to paddle a canoe. Dahomean women were described as Amazon warriors. Sir Richard Burton visited the kingdom in 1863 and saw 2,500 female soldiers who were

9 On the Hottentot Venus, see B. Lindfors, "Courting the Hottentot Venus; Africa: Revista trimestrale di studi e documentiazionne deU'Isttituto Italo-Africano Anno XL, 1985. On African Bushman and Pygmies see Bogdan, Freak Show, 187ff. For displays of Africans in the amuse-ment zone in New York 1939 and Chicago 1933 see the Official Guide Book of the New York World's Fair (New York: Exposition Publications, 1939), 65, and Bogdan, Freak Show, 195-97.

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PHOTO 2.3 Dahomeans at the 1894 Midwinter Fair in San Francisco linking the stereotypes of dark pigmentation, nakedness and savagery. (From Sunset City, n.d.)


official wives of the king.10 The Anglo-French agreement of 1889, placed Dahomey within the

French sphere of influence, but the kingdom was not finally subdued until 1894. Although concessionaires had shown Dahomeans at previous fairs, the first government-sponsored exhibit was at the Paris fair of 1900. It consisted of a complex comprising a two-story Dahomean building designed by a French architect in "indigenous" style; it had mud walls and a thatched roof, a scaled-down replica of "the tower of sacrifices" from which, in the original version, victims were thrown to their deaths, and a "village" of thatched huts in which living Dahomeans pursued their domestic tasks under the eyes of world's fair visitors. There was a small lake as well on which Dahomeans could paddle their dugout canoes. The whole exhibit was meant to show how the French had put an end to Dahomean bloody massacres and' led the people toward peaceful production and civilization.

It was the bloody massacres that drew the crowds and led to Dahomean exhibits in fair after fair. Their propensity for human sacrifice was lampooned in a cartoon in the French comic paper, Charivari, which depicts a French woman seeking to buy a purse from a Dahomean: "How much", she asks. "Two louis", he replies, "but consider that it was made of my sister's skinl"[SEE PHOTO 2.4] Another shows an altar surrounded by native artifacts captioned "La table des sacrifices: grand restaurant anthro-pophagique," thus furthering the image of cannibalism.11

When Dahomeans were shown on the Midway at the World's Colum bian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the stereotype of the savage African was conflated with African-American stereotypes. Puck, the American comic magazine depicts a Dahomean intent on stealing chickens (a stereotype of American Blacks) from the neighboring Midway Javanese Village. The villagers outsmart him and put him in a cage with an orangutan, depicted in the last panel wearing the Dahomean's clothes while the latter languishes in the animal's cage. Children's literature perpetuated the negative stereo-type. Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair described the Dahomeans as "black as night and stupid as pigs," and Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his massive two-volume work on the Chicago fair, describes the Dahomeans as II all lean and lank and all supremely hideous. They wear nose and ear-rings of metal, and as little clothing as decency permits."12

10 See Fawn M. Brodie, The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 211ff.

11 Chiarivari. l'Exposition Comigue. 7 Juin, 1900: 4-5.

12 Puck 1893, No.6: 72; "Quondam", The Adventures or Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1893),209; Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Book or the Fair (Chicago: The Bancroft Company, 1893), ii, 878.

40 BURTON BENEDICT

PHOTO 2.4 Cartoon of a Dahomean at the 1900 Paris Exposition. "How much for the purse?" the Frenchwoman asks. "Two louis, but consider that it was made from my sister's skin!" (From L'Exposition Comique, 13 Sept. 1900)

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The Senegalese

In contrast to the Dahomeans the Senegalese were not presented as blood-thirsty savages, but as people whose domestic manners, arts and crafts were worthy of interest. Senegal had been under French influence since the seventeenth century, and was shown in virtually every French fair and, as a concession, in fairs in the United States, England, Scotland and Belgium. The Senegalese village at the Paris fair of 1889 was surrounded by a for-tified wall and contained a mosque, a market, a chief's house and a market garden. The inhabitants included a weaver, a maker of silver filigree, and men and women carrying out ordinary domestic tasks. At the 1908 Scottish National Exhibition in Edinburgh, postcards of the exhibit showed warriors, a blacksmith, a carpenter and his family, a chief, dancers, jewelers, musi-cians, a tailor with a sewing machine, a weaver at her loom and wrestlers. There were also comic postcards showing a kilted Scotsman doing the high-land fling with a Senegalese "medicine man" and an old maid being pursued by an African carrying an ethnographically incongruous Zulu shield.

In some fairs Africans were lumped together in a single exhibit even though they were often distinguished by tribal name. The 1911 Scottish International Exhibition in Glasgow had a concession called "West African Colonies" with 100 Africans from Dahomey, the French Congo, French Equatorial Africa and the Sudan. There was a similar exhibit at Buffalo in 1901. At other fairs separate exhibits distinguished one African people from another. At the Paris fairs of 1889 and 1900, for example, there were separate exhibits of Senegalese and Dahomeans. Visitors could observe the differences.

Bantus

Xosas and Zulus were exhibited in shows in London at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 where they were described as "Kaffirs", a name deriving from the Arabic word for infidel and applied to South African Bantus of several tribes. Zulus in particular gained western attention as fierce African warriors as a result of the Zulu-British and Anglo-Boer wars of the 1870s and 1880s. In carnival and circus jargon in the United States the word "Zulu" became synonymous with African.

A spectacle on the Boer war and "Savage South Africa," presented at the Greater Britain Exhibition in London in 1899, was brought to the St. Louis world's fair in 1904 where it met with considerable success. In addition to simulated battles between Britons and Boers there were sixty Africans from various Bantu tribes "exhibited here in Kraal and native huts .... All natives will appear in their native costumes, exactly as worn by them in Darkest Africa" (Anglo-Boer War Official Program). A different image of Bantus was shown in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London

42 BURTON BENEDICT

in 1886 and in later exhibitions, where they were shown as useful workers washing diamonds in the South African mines.13

The African Stereotype

Many other Africans were exhibited-Somalis, Congolese, Gabonese, Asantes, Malagassys, etc., but the nature of the African stereotype is clear: primitive, savage, uncivilized, animal-like. Yet the fact that so many different kinds of Africans were shown tended to unravel the simplistic undifferentiated notion of "The African." This was furthered by distinctive cultural performances and crafts that became the hall marks of the exhi-bitions put on by the new African nations after World War II.

South Sea Islanders

Fijians excited the interest of Europeans and Americans because of their warlike reputation. Formidable arrays of Fijian clubs and spears decorated many museums and colonial exhibits at world's fairs. The Fijian trait which most attracted showmen was cannibalism. P.T. Barnum exhibited four reputed Fij ian cannibals in 1872, em bellishing their appearance with stories such as their breaking open the coffin of one of their number who had died and consuming the corpse. So-called cannibal forks (iculunibakola) were in such demand that they spawned a small industry for their manufac-ture.14

A second stereotype of South Sea Islanders depicted them as beautiful and carefree, living in a Rousseauesque paradise. This stereotype was confined to Polynesians, whose appearance more closely resembles white Euro-American standards of beauty than does that of Melanesians or Micro-nesians. A visitor to the 1893 Chicago world's fair described them as:

the handsomest company of savages ever seen, or likely to be seen, in the civilized world. The young men are modelsofmanlybeauty; their bodies are superbly built and developed, but with a flexibility and grace of movement and a flowing smoothness of contour that our own athletes strive forin vain .... As to the girls, one of them is as beautiful at all points as any young woman I should care to see. Her complexion is a light brown, not much

13 Frank E. Gillis, The South African Boer War Exhibition: The Greatest and Most Realistic Military Spectacle known in the History of the World (St. Louis, 1904), 17. On diamond washing see Frank Cundall, ed., Reminiscenses of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1886), 86-89.

14 Fergus Clunie, Fijian Weapons and Warfare (Suva: Fiji Museum, 1977); Bogdan, Freak Show, 181ff.


darker nor different in tone as one of our maidens might get from a summer's yachting trip along our coast.1S

Thus not even her pigmentation is held against her. The South Sea Islands Village shown at this fair consisted of four Samoan houses contai.ning people from Samoa, Fiji, Rotuma, and Wallis Islands. In post-independence fairs the culture of each new Pacific nation was distinguished. Polynesian lures were held out to tourists, particularly in the United States where elaborate Hawaiian concessions formed part of nearly every fair. The French did the same with Tahiti, though less extensively.

Arctic Peoples

A life-sized model of a Laplander in his reindeer sleigh was shown in 1876 at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia; there was a Lapp village in Chicago in 1893, and a Lapland village concession called the "North Pole" at the Glasgow exhibition of 1911, but Lapps seem to have been replaced by Eskimos in later fairs. Eskimos represented another kind of primitive. Whereas savagery seems to have been the overriding characteristic of the African stereotype, resourcefulness was attributed to the Eskimo with his harpoon, sled and igloo, for part of the stereotype was that all Eskimos lived in snow houses. Eskimos had been exhibited in England as early as 1501. In 1773 Boswell claimed to ha ve comm unicated by signs with some Eskimos on show in London though Dr. Johnson did not believe him. Mannequins of an Eskimo man and his wife were shown at the 1876 Centennial Expo-sition in Philadelphia and living Eskimos were a feature on the Midway Plaisance in Chicago in 1892. There they lived not in igloos but in moss-covered log cabins and demonstrated fishing, boating and seal-hunting techniques on the adjoining lagoon. Reputed great age added to their curiosity value. Bancroftreports that the "king" (Eskimos do not have kings) was 112 years old with a son of 90, a grandson of 73 and a great grand-daughter of 59!

Yet some differentiation of various arctic groups began to appear as early as the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, in which three Eskimos tribes were represented in an ice grotto where they presented dances, games and dog races. They demonstrated how to cure skins and carve ivory. Perhaps the most extensi ve Eskimo display took place in Seattle in 1909 for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition where inhabitants of Alaska, Labrador and Siberia were on show. The many postcards of Eskimos issued for this fair differentiated Alaskan, Labradorian and Siberian peoples, and some depicted named individuals, thus eroding the undif-

IS Julian Hawthorne, Humors of the Fair (Chicago: E.A. Weeks, 1893), 168-69.

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ferentiated stereotype of the Eskimo.16 In the Northwest Territories pavilion at the Vancouver fair of 1986,

arctic peoples were accorded much more dignity and individuality than in pre-World War II expositions. There were extensive displays ofInuit soap-stone carvings in surroundings which explained the way Inuit live today rather than in some idealized version of the past. Native Canadians per-formed songs and dances in front of the building in which they explained what they were doing and invited members of the audience to join them thus breaking down barriers and engendering an appreciation of their way of life.

Native Americans

From the European discovery of the new world, American Indians exercised a fascination on Europeans and successively elicited antagonism, paternalism and guilt in Euro-Americans. These attitudes were manifested in the dis-plays of Native Americans at world's fairs. Indians have a long history of exhibition in Britain where, as J.C.H. King has pointed out, two North American Indian stereotypes succeeded each other. The first was the Woodland Indian of Eastern America with a roach headdress, shaven head and painted body; the second was the feather- bonneted Indian of the Plains. Impetus was given to this latter stereotype by the wild west show. Buffalo Bill and his troop took London by storm at the American Exhibition of 1887, and he repeated his triumphs on the Continent. Although wild west shows were featured at virtually every American world's fair from 1892 onwards, there were other exhibits that differentiated Native Americans by tribe by showing them in different settings such as wigwams (Chicago 1892) and reconstructions of terraced pue blo villages (San Francisco 1915), as well as in distinctive performances. Fourteen different tribes were distinguished at the St Louis fair of 1904. [SEE PHOTO 2.5] Despite the distinctions made among Indian tribes, Native Americans were presented as uniformly primitive whose best hope lay in American government efforts _ to "ci vilize" them and assimilate to the dominant Euro-American culture.17

16 Altick, Shows, 45; Boswell's Life of Johnson (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 537; J .S.Ingram, The Centennial Exposition Described and Illustrated (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1876), 151; Official Catalogue and Guide Book to the Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo: CharlesAhrhart, 1901),42. For a discussionoftheEskimostereotypeseeJ.C.H. King, Living Artic: Report and Catalogue (London: British Museum, 1989), 21.

17 For Indian stereotypes in Britain, see J.C.H. King, "A Century of Indian Shows: Canadian and United States Exhibitions in London 1825-1925," Native American Studies 5 (1991): 35-42. For the role art played in creating Indian stereotypes in America see Julie Schimmel, "Inventing 'the Indian'" in The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the

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PHOTO 2.5 Pueblo Indian dwelling at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. Note the inap-propriate feather bonnet, not worn by these tribes, but a stereotype of the Indian. (From D.R. Francis, The Universal Exposition of 1904 St. Louis. St. Louis, 1913)

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Frontier 1820-1920, cd. William H. Truettner (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). For Buffalo Bill and the American Exhibition, see Burton Benedict, "The American Exhibition of 1887: How Buffalo Bitt Captured London," World's Fair 5, no.2 (1985) and Charle& Lowe, Four National Exhibitions in London and their Organizer (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892). Discussions of the displays of Native Americans at world's fairs emphasizing their explOitative and derogatory aspects can be found in Robert Rydell, "The Culture of Imperial Abundance: World's Fairs in the Making of American Culture" in Consuming Visions: Accumulation and the Display of Goods in America 1880-1920, ed. S.J. Bronner (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985) and Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 82-112.

46 BURTON BENEDICT

In marked contrast were the displays of Indians and sub-arctic peoples at the Vancouver fair of 1986. Named Native American artists created dis-plays which combined traditional myths with the techniques of the elec-tronic age. In one, for example, mechanical mobile carvings demonstrated the transformation of one being into another as related in Northwest Coast myth and legend and performed in rituals. A fifty-six-foot carved Haida canoe built in 1907 was the central feature of the Canadian pavilion and a giant reproduction of a Northwest Coast thunderbird graced the open space before the building. Indian symbols had become national symbols.

Southeast Asians

Four groups of Southeast Asians were exhibited at world's fairs by the nations which had conquered and colonized them: the inhabitants of the Philippine islands were shown principally at American fairs; Javanese and Balinese were featured in exhibits from the Netherlands; the people of the various states of Indo- China were to be found chiefly in French fairs; and the inhabitants of Burma and what is now Malaysia appeared at British fairs. At post-independence fairs the successor states of these colonies have been trying to present images of national unity of their various peoples rather than to differentiate them.

The American conquest of the Philippines in 1898 was soon reflected in world's fair exhibits. Filipinos appeared at the Trans-Mississippi Expo-sition in Omaha late in 1898 and in Buffalo in 1901. But it was in the st. Louis fair of 1904 that the more enduring Philippine stereotypes were created. The Philippine exhibit, which extended over forty-seven acres, was advertised as including 1,200 people from forty tribes, six villages, 70,000 exhibits, 130 buildings and 725 native soldiers. The people on show were presented in a social Darwinian context with "the least civilized in the Negritos and Igorots, the semi-civilized in the Bogobos and Moros and the civilized and cultured in the Vasayans as well as in the constabulary and scout organizations." It was the scantily clad, dog-eating Igorots who attracted the most attention. [SEE PHOTO 2.6] They soon became a side-show appearing on the midway in Portland in 1905, in Seattle in 1909, in' New York in 1939, again in Seattle in 1962, and once more in New York in 1964. The Igorots have all but disappeared from post-independence exhibits from the Philippines where the emphasis has been on a unified national and modernizing culture.

In contrast to the rather savage image of the Igorots, the Javanese were seen as small, primitive and somewhat incomprehensible innocents. The Javanese village at the 1893 Chicago exposition consisted of some forty-six buildings made mostly of bamboo and surrounded by a bamboo fence. This led one observer to see the Javanese as living in baskets. The dancers reminded him of "a new and beautiful insect in human form." Javanese

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PHOTO 2.6 Igorots eating dog under the eyes of visitors at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. (From J.W. Hanson, The Official History of the Fair: St. Louis 1904. Chicago, 1904)

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48 BURTON BENEDICT

dance and drama became an exposition ritual which represented inde-pendent Indonesia in post-World War II fairs. With their many cultural groups the Indonesians have placed even greater emphasis on a national culture than the Fili pinos.18

French Indo-China comprised the protectorates of Annam, Tonkin and Cambodia, the colony of Cochin China and part of Laos. In French fairs, although there were pavilions showing the products of Indo-China as a whole each protectorate or colony was also represented in a separate exhibit in indigenous style, ranging from a Cochin - China theater to Annamese and Tonkinese villages to the reproduction of the Cambodian temple of Ankor Wat. Dancing and drama were prominent features in the presentation of Cam bodians and other inhabitants ofIndo-China. These same sorts of per-formances became national representations of independent Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (made up of Cochin-China, Annam and Tonkin).

A Burmese temple was constructed by native craftsmen forthe British Empire Exhibition of 1924. This setting and the dances which went with it represented independent Burma in Osaka in 1970. Malays were presented as craftsmen rather than artists. The independent nation of Malaysia ab-sorbed the colonies of Sarawak and Sabbah on the island of Borneo, but was separated from Singapore with its largely Chinese population. Each of these two nations now stresses its own national culture.

South Asians

India featured in every British exhibition and in British exhibitions abroad. Several images were projected. The first was the opulence of India, the jewelled scimitars, the ivory throne, the'tissues woven with gold thread. The second was the exotic religions, the pantheon of Hindu gods, the image-encrusted temples, the Taj Mahal. The third was the backward state of the masses and the strides they were making under British rule. Huge collections of Indian artifacts were amassed in London for the exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 and were transported to Paris for the exposition of 1878. The collection of these objects in themselves demonstrated British domi-nance over India, as Breckenridge has noted. Lest there should be any doubt about whose art was superior, the author of the Handbook to the British Indian Section of the 1878 Paris exposition states: " ... it is impossible to rank the decorative art of India, which is a crystallized tradition, although perfect in form, with the ever-living progressive arts of Europe, wherein the inven-tive and creative genius of the true poet, acting on his own spontaneous inspirations, asserts itself and which constitute the Fine Arts .... " Indi-

18 David R. Francis, The Universal Exposition of 1904 (St. Louis: Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, 1913),565; Hawthorne, Humors of the Fair, 178.


vidualism is to be preferred over anonymous communal effort.19 In post-independence fairs both India and Pakistan have made strenuous

efforts to differentiate themselves from one another. This has been more difficult for Pakistan which tries to show its history and culture without mentioning India.

The representation of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was largely in the hands of the tea industry. Not surprisingly it took the forma a Ceylon tea room where the beverage was served to thirsty fairgoers. The post-independence exhibits of Sri Lanka have placed more emphasis on national art and culture.

The Middle East

Palestine figured as a quasi-colony, a protectorate, in British fairs. Syria and Lebanon had similar statuses in French expositions. Their pavilions displayed their crafts and products in the colonial sections of these fairs. But it was as a sideshow that the middle eastern image was most forcefully projected. "The Streets of Cairo" was a perennial at world's fairs. First appearing at the Paris fair of 1878, it grew and proliferated adding camels, dancing girls, donkey rides, theaters and bazaars for the Paris fair of 1889 and the Chicago fair of 1893 where the undulating "Little Egypt" was a sen-sation. Versions of the Streets of Cairo appeared in Omaha in 1898, London 1899, Paris 1900, Buffalo 1901, St. Louis 1904, San Francisco 1915, and Chicago 1933. The denizens of the Streets were not confined to Egypt; Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Syrians and other middle Easterners were included. Arabian Nights images of the exotic, luxurious and sensual were presented along with the bazaars of wily, haggling traders. This feature has been almost entirely absent from recent fairs. Perhaps it does not go with oil wealth and the assertion of political autonomy. At Vancouver in 1986 Saudi Arabia not only showed models of oil refineries and economic development projects, but extolled the values of Islam. Israel and Egypt have both been at pains to show their national cultures. The polyglot bazaar has given way to solemn national pavilions.

The Chinese and Japanese

China and Japan were not colonies and had national pavilions of their own at many fairs. In addition oriental concessions appeared at nearly every fair.

19 Carol A. Breckenridge, "The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at World's Fairs," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 195-216; George C.M. Birdwood, Paris Universal Exbibition of 1878: Handbooktotbe Britisblndian Section (London: Offices of the Royal Commission, 1878), 56.

50 BURTON BENEDICT

In the popular culture of the west, the "mysterious orient" image clung to both Far Eastern nations and was exploited by both western and oriental entrepreneurs in the amusement zone with Chinese and Japanese villages, souvenir stands, restaurants and tea gardens. These features have persisted in post-World War II fairs, though both nations now stress their techno-logical achievements as well as their ancient cultures.

Japan presented its own colonies, Formosa, Korea and the internally colonized Ainu, in the st. Louis fair of 1904 and the Japan-British Exhi-bition of 1910 in London. The Ainu display followed the established world's fair tradition with a village of people in native costume, a blacksmith, and such ,entertainments as fencing, stilt-walking and a performance of the "Feast of the Bear," a traditional Ainu ceremony that involved the ritual killing of a bear.

The Ethnlcity of Fair Goers

The ethnic types on exhibition were only part of the ethnic show at world's fairs. Another part was played by the visitors themselves. Because fairs drew visitors from all over the world, there was ample opportunity for the nationals of the sponsoring nation to observe foreigners and poke fun at the'm. A Punch cartoon at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 depicts Rotten Row where the elite of Britain promenade. Among the fashionable English carriages are Lapps in a sled being pulled by a reindeer, an African in a top hat and monocle riding an ostrich, an Indian on an elephant and an Arab on a camel. Seventy-three years later, at the time of the British Empire Exhibition, another Punch cartoon shows an English singer on stage surrounded by a Turk, an Oriental, an Indian, an African and three assorted Europeans of non-English nationality. It bears the caption: "In view of the exceptionally cosmopolitan nature of London audiences during the Wemble~ season, a really enterprising theater would have its corps of interpreters.,,2

During the Paris exposition of 1900, Charivari published a weekly expo-sition supplement which caricatured both people of differing ethnicity on show and foreign visitors. A set of eight cartoons shows a German drinking beer, an Italian eating macaroni, a Belgian flirting, Russians fraternizing, an American motorist running over a pedestrian, an English pickpocket, a Chinese having his pigtail pulled by a little boy, and a Parisian leaving Paris. Blacks are lampooned by showing them dressed in top hats, and putting on European airs. [SEE PHOTO 2.7]

The cartoons published in the American magazine, Puck, during the 1893 Chicago fair did not just mock foreigners but also American

20 ' Punch's Almanack for 1851 (London: Punch, 1851); Punch, June 25, 1924 (London,

1924): 701.

RITUALS OF REPREsENTATION 51

PHOTO 2.7 National stereotypes of fair visitors at the 1900 Paris Exposition. (From L'Exposition Comique, 3 May 1900)

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minorities, especially Jews, Blacks and the Irish.21 Blacks are seen as stupid. A two-page color cartoon shows "Darkies' Day at the Fair," a lampoon on "Jubilee" or "Colored Peoples" day that was celebrated at the fair. The cartoon depicts a long procession of blacks, both African and American, thus amalgamating the two stereotypes. An accompanying set of v.erses relates how they have been diverted from the the grand parade by a discontented African-American who distracts them with watermelons which they gobble up without paying him. (SEE PHOTO 2.81 Blacks were not just ridiculed in cartoons. Antipathy toward them could take a more literal form. They featured as targets in sideshows called "Soakum" at the 1915 San Francisco fair and "Ie negre a reau" at the 1925 Paris fair. For a fee customers could throw balls at atarget. If they hit it, a black man was dumped into the water. An article on the amusements at the 1925 fair com-mented "there is a society for the protection of animals, but there still isn't one for ... blacks.,,22

The Amalgamation of Ethnic Shows and the Main Fair

The French did not make the sharp distinction between the amusement zone and the main fair that characterized British and American expositions. Perhaps the Protestant ethic does not run so strongly in France. In the Paris expositions of 1867, 1889, 1900, 1931 and 1937, ethnic exhibits and per-formances were not placed among Ferris wheels and carousels but formed an integral part of the main fair. Moreover visitors were free to mingle with the inhabitants of the exposition villages, which militated against their being seen as lluman curiosities on a par with ph ysiological monsters. In the 1889 Paris fair there were processions of all the indigenous people through the exposition grounds, which were virtual parades of colonized peoples. The nightly procession was so popular that it was imported to Chicago in 1893, where it was more of a fun fair attraction and lacked the overt coloniali-zation theme.

In Britain the amalgamation of colonized peoples into the main fair began at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London, where some ninety-seven people were on show from twelve districts ofIndia, and from Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), British Guiana (Guyana), Cyprus, the Cape (South Africa), the Straits Settlements (Malaysia) and Hong Kong. They

. were displayed principally as craftsmen in fabricated indigenous settings with what seems to have been a minimum of sideshow trappings. The same could not be said for the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908. Here the ethnic

21 World's Fair Puck (Chicago, 1893).

22 1'l11ustration, 8 Aout 1925, 147.

RITUALS OF REPRESENTATION 5~

PHOTO 2.8 Conflating Africans and African-Americans at the 1893 Chicago Exposition Both are readily distracted from the fair by a wily African-Americat offering watermelons. (From World's Fair Puck. Chicago, 1893)

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villages from both French and British colonies were side-show attractions. The Singalese concession had jugglers, dancers, musicians and "beautiful nautch-girls." The Indian arena had acrobats, tightrope walkers, wrestlers, snake charmers and elephants that slid down a forty- foot incline into a lake. The French Senegalese village featured over 100 natives in a stockade engaged in "weird chants and rhythmic dancing." The whole was put on by Imre Kiralfy, a Hungarian entrepreneur who mounted a series of similar shows in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Ethnic shows were often to be found in London in the exhibition halls at Earls Court and at the nearby Olympia. It was not until the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25 that colonial people were again integrated into the main fair.23

In the United States the amalgamation began with the Chicago fair of 1893. Here, despite the efforts of anthropologists who were supposed to be in charge of the ethnographic exhibits, most ethnic "villages" ended up on the midway, where they remained in subsequent fairs until after World War II.

Decline of the Ethnic Sideshow

Criticism of displays of dependent people increased after World War I as independence movements in the colonies grew and people became more aware of the racist element in ethnic displays. Criticism was particularly vociferous in France where the advisability of having colonies had become a political issue. "Ne visitez pas l'exposition coloniale" proclaimed Andre Breton, Paul Eduard and other French surrealists at the time of the huge 1931 colonial exposition. Leon Blum, leader ofthe Socialist Party and after-wards Premier of France, noted that behind the gorgeous colonial buildings at Vincennes ran blood, misery and the force of French arms.24

Although there were extensive colonial displays in the Paris fair of 1937, the display of living colonial dependents in villages or on midways was definitely on the wane. Audiences too began to change. The spread of infor-mation through films, radio and especially television has made visitors to world's fairs a good deal more sophisticated about other cultures. Increased media attention has engendered an atmosphere in which the exhibition of humans as freaks, oddities or curiosities is no longer acceptable.

Since the end of World War II political and cultural changes have eclipsed ethnic sideshows at world's fairs. They have not entirely dis-appeared but have been transformed into what are now seen as manifesta-

23 Franco-British Exhibition,London 1908: Official Guide (London, 1908),48,57.

24 Le Livre des Expositions Universelles 1851-1989 (Paris: Editions des Arts Decoratifs, 1983),137-38.


tions of national cultures. Former c-olonies are now independent countries. The kinds of displays they mount at world's fairs are under their control not that of a metropolitan power. Their inhabitants, instead of being pre-sented as savage and backward or even as benighted craftsmen, are now seen as carriers of a national cultural heritage with art works and perform-ances. 1m perial ethnocentrism has been replaced by national ethnocentrism. This too has become ritualized with particular performances and displays becoming assertions of nationalism, of a national culture which differen-tiates a particular nation from all others. Many of these representations show continuity with the colonial displays of the past and like them often fail to convey the cultural diversity to be found in many new nations. Some countries have taken care to show the cultural variety within their borders by noting that a particular dance or drama or craft typifies a particular group; others simplify either by presenting the performance of a particular ethnic group as representative of the national culture as a whole or by the amalgamation of several ethnic traditions into a single performance.

At the same time that the nationalisms of newly independent countries were being paraded at world's fairs, the national displays of the older colonial powers were being eclipsed by the pavilions of the multinational corporations. IBM, General Motors and the Mitsui group mounted the most innovative post-World War II displays, not Britain, France and the United States. When American corporations were approached to help finance the United States exhibit at the 1992 world's fair in Seville, they declined because they did not wish to be identified as American companies.25

From Imperialism to Nationalism

The transformation of ethnic displays at world's fairs--from manifestations of imperialism to manifestations of nationalism-can be observed in three buildings which are the remnants of exhibitions in London, Paris and Chicago. In Paris and Chicago these buildings have become metropolitan museums showing world cultures. In London, however, it is the former colonies themselves that determine what shall be shown.

The Commonwealth Institute in Kensington developed from the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. It began as the Imperial Institute, a vast pseudo-gothic building intended to edify the populace as to the immense commercial potentialities of the colonies and India.26 It was never very

25 John B. Judis, "Seville Postcard: Show and Tell," The New Republic 20 Jan. 1992, 15.

26 For the early history of the Imperial Institute, see William Golant, Image of Empire: The Early History of the Imperial Institute 1887-1925 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1984). For its role in the propaganda of empire, see Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire,.121-46.

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successful in attracting either maintenance funds or an audience, apart from captive school children. Its dimly lit interior abounded with stuffed animals, piles of raw material, dusty dioramas and examples of native crafts. The building was torn down (except for the tower) in the 1950s, and a new more "democratic" or perhaps just less imperial structure was built in a new location. Renamed "the Commonwealth Institute," it was not meant to dis-play imperial grandeur but to show off the products and cultures of the new Commonwealth nations. Today each nation is responsible for its own dis-play, and the displays, indeed their very presence or absence, reflect the changing political and economic relations within each nation and among members of the Commonwealth. They are also affected by the internal politics of each exhibiting nation.

The displays in the Commonwealth Institute show continuity with the past. The concept of the Commonwealth itself derives from the Empire which preceded it. British colonial history figures in the exhibits of many nations, especially those of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and some of the nations of the West Indies. It also features in the displays of some of the African nations, but here the tone is critical of colonization. The exhibits in the Commonwealth Institute are addressed to the general public and especially to school children. The exhibitors aim to show themselves off as nations. They want to display their new industries, their dams and airports, but these do not attract British audiences who prefer more exotic fare. The result is an uneasy compromise with many nations trying to show both traditional culture and models of new industrial plants. Despite the varied national exhibits the building itself with its introductory section featuring a portrait of the Queen and a map of commonwealth countries still radiates an aura of empire.

By contrast the exhibits in the Musee des Arts Africains et Oceaniens show little continuity with the French colonial empire. Constructed for the Exposition Coloniale of 1931, the building was originally known as the Musee Permanent des Colonies. Its entire facade is a bas relief depicting industrious natives from every part of the French Empire pouring produce into France.

Today it is simply a museum of ethnographic art. The objects presented (many of which are on loan from the Musee de I'Homme, itself housed in a relic of the Paris Exposition of 1937) are decontextualized from their cultures of origin and recontextualized as art objects. They do not even all come from former French colonies. The museum is financed by France, not by former colonies as is the case with the Commonwealth Institute. There is no reference to French colonial history within the building except for two rooms at either end of the ground floor gallery. One is the office of Marechal Lyautey, the "hero" of French Morocco and commissaire generale of the Exposition Coloniale of 1931. The other is the office of Paul Reynaud, minister of colonies at that time. They too are objects of art. They are preserved, one suspects, less because they are remnants of the


French colonial empire, than because they are fine examples of the art deco style of the 1930s.

The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was originally incor-porated as the Columbian Museum of Chicago. A large endowment from Marshall Field brought about a change in the museum's name to the Field Columbian Museum. It also reflectedthe way in which American exposi-tions and museums are financed, largely by private eJ;lterprise rather than by government grants. The original museum housed historical relics, memorial statuary, industrial arts 'and much material on the railways in addition to departments on zoology, botany, ornithology, geology and anthropology, all containing exhibits that had come mostly from the World's Columbian Exposition. The building deteriorated to such an extent that it was decided to construct an entirely new museum. Opened in 1921 as the Field Museum of Natural History, its name preserved that of its family of benefactors, but lost its connection with the World's Columbian Exposition. Today it is a natural history museum with a large professional staff and an extensive research program.27 It contains some 14 million specimens. Like many American museums it places Native American and other non-Western cultures in the same building with geology, botany and zoology, not in a building devoted to history or even ethnography. This reflects a nineteenth-century evolutionary view which progresses from rocks to plants to animals toearly hominids to non-western humans.

Conclusion

The displays of colonized peoples at world's fairs became rituals within a ritual in which the settings, props, and acts performed became stereotyped both on the midway and in government exhibits. But the meanings of these rituals have undergone changes from the time they were introduced until the present. War dances, marriage ceremonies, etc., were life cycle rituals in their cultures of origin, but at world's fairs they were presented theat-rically. For those performing them they lost their original meanings and became make believe. For those observing them, they did not symbolize war or marriage, so much as they symbolized a particular ethnicity, such as Native American or Dahomeans. In this way new traditions were in-vented, drawing on elements in native cultures and adapting them to the

,27 The Field Museum was constructed in a new location in Grant Park near the University of Chicago. The original building in Jackson Park, site of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, was reconstructed in more permanent materials and is today the Museum of Science and Industry, perhaps a more fitting memorial to an American world's fair than a natural history museum. See Field Museum of Natural History, The 1979-80 Bienniel Report (Chicago, 1980). For an account of another museum which derived from the 1893 Chicago fair, the Commercial Museum of Philadelphia, see Rydell, 'Culture of Imperilll Abundance,' 210ff.

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midway and the colonial exhibit. The same sorts of exhibits were repeated in fair after fair so that the public came to associate certain rituals with certain ethnic grouP!!. These meanings of cultural identity became so well established that they carried over into post-independence world's fairs, changing their meanings once again to become symbols of a new nation-alism.

APPENDIX

FREQUENCY OF DISPLAYS OF COLONIZED PEOPLES AT WORLD'S FAIRS

Colonized People Colonial Power Number of Displays Native Americans U.S. and Canada 13 Indians from India British 13 Algerians French 9 Arctic Peoples U.S. and Canada 9 Senegalese French 9 Tunesians French 8 Congolese French 7 Dahomeans French 7 Javanese and Balinese Dutch 7 Africans (unspecified) British or French 6 Annamites French 6 (Vietnamese) Filipinos U.S. 6 West African British or French 6 (unspecified) Hawaiians U.S. 5 Laotians French 5 Malagasies French 5 Sudanese French 5 Burmese British 4 Ceylonese (Sri Lankans) British 4 Guadaloupe & French 4 Martinique Indian colonies French 4 Igorots (philippines) U.S. 4 Kaffirs (Bantu) British 4 Moroccans French 4 Samoans U.S. 4 Somalis French 4 Tahitians French 4 Maoris (New Zealand) British 3 Kanakas (New French 3 Caledonia) Ainu Japan 2 British Guianians British 2 (Guyana) Cambodians French 2 Cameroonians French 2

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