1901 Rainbow City Expo, Buffalo World Fair, Consolidated material
This is the most organized World Fair I have come across. Pictures and descriptions all neatly put together. This never happens. Probly the assassination of Prez McKinley had something to do with it. Hopefully I can come back with a breakdown, there is some creepy-ass shit going on at this Fair. I thought the Jamestown Expo in 1907 was preety bad but this one might be even higher on the creep-meter, maybe its just better documented. Everything associated with these Fairs are some sort of tribute to false history or hidden deeds of the ruling class.
There is an article commenting on one of the more notable vistors, it includes some details about the fair but is not necessarily about the fair itself, which is what this will be as soon as I get back here to finish.
I have consolidated all the downloadable material into a single pdf. Its quite extensive and alot of material is repeated bc i merged 6 or 7 original sources; programs, catalogs, souvenirs, memoirs…
Ohio Valley Centennial
https://www.si.edu/object/centennial-exposition-ohio-valley-and-central-states:siris_arc_391795
Dublin Expo 1865
Vatican wins medal for proto-catacomd display
pre-history industrial expos in Paris
supposedly a series of events to help bring french out of the dark ages, really just a uniformitarian explaination to explain the beginning of the repopulation
Sanitary Commission Fairs
A series of fundraiser events for the Union Army during the Civil War. Taken place in cities like Philly, Boston, and Chicago. Sanitation Commission members include Sammy Howe and Dorothea Dix. The chicago fair featured Abraham Lincoln selling autographed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Funny considering both are fictitious.
San Fran 1896 ‘Oriental Fair’, bc the Chinese were here before Europeans
Colonial exhibitions are specifically geared human zoo’s
Zoological exhibitions of “exotic” peoples began in several European countries in the 1870s. The first was Germany in 1874, where Karl Hagenbeck, an animal dealer and future promoter of the main European zoos, decided to exhibit Samoans and Lapps as specimens of “natural” tribes. In 1876, following the success of these exhibitions, he sent an assistant to the Egyptian Sudan to bring back animals and Nubians as a further attraction. They were put on show in Paris, London, Berlin and “other” European capitals.
Between 1877 and 1912, about thirty ““ ethnological exhibitions ” of this type will be produced at the Jardin zoologique d’acclimatation, in Paris, with constant success. Colonial Exhibitions, in Marseille in 1906 and 1922, but also in Paris in 1907 and 1931.
Ironically, these groups of natives often stayed ten or fifteen years outside their countries of origin and accepted this staging… for a fee
Simultaneously, the inferiorization of “ exotics ” is reinforced by the triple articulation of positivism, evolutionism and racism. The members of the Anthropology Society — created in 1859, on the same date as the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris — went several times to these exhibitions for the general public to carry out their research oriented towards physical anthropology.
Putting into practice the ” Darwinian ” anthropological foundations of political science, illustrated and popularized by such exhibitions, very quickly gave resonance to the ” eugenics ” project of Georges Vacher de Lapouge and associates, whose program consisted of improving of the hereditary qualities of such and such a population by means of a systematic and voluntary selection. Very significantly, the exhibitions of ” monsters ” (dwarfs or Lilliputians as at the Zoological Garden of Acclimatization in 1909, hunchbacks or giants in the many itinerant fairgrounds, macrocephals or ” negroes» albinos as in 1912 in Paris) experienced a very strong popularity at the turn of the century, which accompanied and interpenetrated the overwhelming success of human zoos.
the ” supply of these natives closely follows the conquests of the Republic overseas, received the agreement (and the support) of the colonial administration and contributed to explicitly support the colonial enterprise of France.
Thus, Tuaregs were exhibited in Paris during the months following the French conquest of Timbuktu in 1894 ; similarly, Malagasy people appeared a year after the occupation of Madagascar ; finally, the success of the famous amazons of the kingdom of Abomey follows the highly publicized defeat of Behanzin before the French army in Dahomey. Not all ” imported ” groups had an exclusive and unique status. The Fuegians, for example, inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, at the extreme south of the South American continent, seem to have been ” transported ” like zoological specimens properly speaking ; while the gauchos, a sort of contracted artist, were fully aware of the masquerade they were putting on for visitors.
Their actions and movements must be strictly controlled. They are presented as absolutely different, and the European staging obliges them to behave as such, since they are forbidden to show any sign of assimilation, of Westernization as long as they are shown. Thus, it is unthinkable that they mix with the visitors. Made up according to prevailing stereotypes, their attire is designed to be as unique as possible. Exhibitors must also remain within a precisely defined part of the exhibition space (under penalty of a fine deducted from their meager pay),
During these years of daily exhibitions, very few journalists, politicians or scientists were moved by the sanitary and penning conditions – often catastrophic – of the “ natives ” ; without even mentioning the numerous deaths of populations as during the presence of the Kaliña Indians (Galibi) in 1892, in Paris, unaccustomed to the French climate.
From the Universal Exhibition of 1889 until the end of the inter-war period, exhibitions multiplied, especially colonial exhibitions. In almost all of them, a ” Negro “, ” Indochinese “, ” Arab ” or ” Kanak ” village is offered to the curiosity of visitors. Simultaneously, these ” negro ” and then ” black ” or ” Senegalese ” villages.
The staging here is much more “ ethnographic ”, and the “ villages ” look like pasteboard sets worthy of Hollywood productions of the time on “ mysterious Africa Negro villages replace human zoos. The native remains an inferior, of course, but he is ” docilized “, domesticated, and we discover in him potentialities of evolution which justify the imperial gesture.
International Colonial Exhibition of Vincennes in 1931,
Its All Fake 