Drawing a Global Color Line: "The American Negro Exhibit" at the 1900 Paris Exposition (original) (raw)
This essay is part of the open access edited volume Moving Bodies Displaying Nations (Trieste, EUT: 2014). The study of living ethnic expositions in Italy in the nineteenth and twentieth century allows some additional considerations on two main questions: the contributions of such cultural phenomena to the creation of a colonial culture in Italy; and their continuity in modified and adapted forms whereas current interpretations acknowledge their lesser recurrence and relevance in periods of time marked by globalization and dramatic media revolutions. The first point is analyzed with reference to the most recent historiography. With regard to this the A. criticizes G. M. Finaldi’s 2009 thesis on the pervasiveness of a mass colonial sensitivity in late nineteenth-century Italy on the basis of his comparative studies on Italian and European living ethnic expositions and spectacles. These cultural phenomena in the last decades of nineteenth-century Italy reveal weakness, superficiality, improvisation and amateurish character especially if compared to analogous events in France and Germany, with respect to which the Italian cases do not show comparable racist features. Only on the eve of the Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912 Italian colonialism and its social-cultural expressions assumed very aggressive nationalistic, expansionist and increasingly racist tones. This was the consequence, since the beginning of the twentieth century and the resumption of Italian colonial programs in Africa after the Adowa disaster in 1896, of the growth of a properly speaking colonial culture, with the birth of colonial societies and institutes, the development of colonial socioeconomic, geographical, statistical disciplines and of a scientific anthropological interest in the study of submitted African peoples. These developments had consequences also on the particular way the living exhibition of human colonial diversity continued to occur, making those practices an occasion for publicising not an image of radical and irreducible otherness, but rather a civilizing, assimilationist discourse. The second part of this contribution tackles the question whether the living human exhibitions disappeared in contemporary collective socio-cultural practices. It recalls several, recurring examples after WWII of what could be termed the visual perception of anthropological difference in support of discourses radically different from the typical ones of the age of colonialism and imperialism. The essay shows that the settings partly remained the same as previously, as in the 1958 Brussels Universal Exposition, and partly changed radically both in their physical locations and in their intended meanings. Several examples of different nature – from commercial publicity to ethno-ecological advocacy, from mass tourism to experimental performing arts – converge in giving support to the idea that all historical ages create and rest on, or remember and reproduce plural visual, or ‘optic’ regimes of representation of human (and cultural) differences, thus suggesting how the construction of (especially public) visual perceptions and representations directly derives from or just implies the exercise of physical submission and acts as a device for reducing to order and control the disturbing human diversities.
Wiener Weltausstellung 1873: A ‘Peripheral’ Perspective of the Triester Zeitung
A consideration of the phenomenon of international exhibitions in the political and cultural history of central-European powers as opposed to the models represented by the London and Paris great exhibitions o ers relevant insights into this topic. e Exposition organized in Vienna in 1873 – the rst in the German language area – should be studied in the light of the strategic urgency which impelled the Habsburg Empire to fashion or rede ne a representation of its multinational formation, in the wake of the military defeats it su ered on the French-Piedmont and Prussian fronts. As will become apparent in the later Berlin exhibition of 1879, the Wiener Weltausstellung already makes clear its desire to exhibit the network of global relations in which the central-European Empires were also trying to gain prominence, despite the essential irrelevance of their extra- European colonial enterprise, as compared to British and French imperialist ventures. e essay comprises a critical reassessment of the existing historiographies speci cally devoted to the Viennese Exposition (the most signi cant of which dates to 1989), to be revised in the light of updated interpretive paradigms, and a further analysis which aims at a rst systematic taxonomy of the most signi cant literary and journalistic echoes of this rst central-European Weltausstellung. More speci cally, the investigation will focus on the hundreds of articles, correspondence and notes which appeared in the Triester Zeitung, the principal newspaper in German in Habsburg Trieste. ese textual sources have not as yet received scholarly attention and they make it possible to investigate the reception of the Exhibition within the geographical and cultural context of the multilingual and multicultural port of Trieste which, despite its peripheral position, was, nonetheless, of primary strategic importance to the central Austrian government.
International expositions as representative cultural phenomena which contributed to shape world history in the modern and contemporary age are currently approached from combined spatial points of view (in a geographical, material, and cultural sense). It is argued here that they may be better studied, and understood in the classroom, by also taking into account their temporal and historical dimensions. The symbolic and discursive structure and modules of exhibition-style events such as the "Great Expositions" during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the living human expositions, have in fact been organized along temporal and historical coordinates as well as spatial ones. The following two sections will explain the functioning of expos as "time-machines," putting forward a temporal perspective and analytical dimension that can contribute to the advancement and teaching of World History in an innovative way, also beyond the specific study and teaching object of world expos and fairs – which nonetheless remain among the most significant and fascinating phenomena of historical and historiographical globalization. As the first part of this essay will argue, nineteenth and early-twentieth century expos and fairs visually represented the human ways of living, activities, products and achievements diversities in the historical past and future, hence presenting them in a temporal dimension. Elements of this temporal representation included the effort to reproduce ancient Greek or Roman temples and monuments, Oriental palaces, decorative details and typical settings such as harems and cafés, and, most of all, medieval streets, quarters, castles and whole villages, example not just of the pursuit of the picturesque, but of the intention to make possible the visual experience of temporality and a material, emotional and empathetic understanding of history. Also the living ethno-expositions, through the physical presence of alien humans, put on stage historical temporality, offering to the gaze of Western observers the conflation of present savage societies and primitive or ancient societies, seen as the progenitors of contemporary societies, conveying the idea of a temporal gap – whether bridgeable or unbridgeable, depended on theories on the origins, characters and abilities of human varieties or 'races' – between a more or less primitive past and a present embodying progress and modernity: the provisional arrival point of a relentless process culminating in the scientific and technological wonders visible in other sections of the expositions. Therefore, living ethno-exhibitions cannot be fully understood without consider them as an essential part of the mechanisms, apparatuses, and discursive-performative structures that have transformed, and to a certain degree still continue to transform at the present day, the great expositions into powerful time-machines. As the second part of this essay will further suggest, the exposition can be deciphered, in this respect, as a time machine as well as a teaching device, with significant parallels with the development of modern museums in the hierarchical organization of displays according to evolutionary paradigms, and their educational function. With 1889's Eiffel Tower, Alva Edison's pavilion of electric light, and the Hall of Machines, the technological sublime and the thematization of the future became central features of expositions: the time machine began to be set on a date yet to come, offering the visitor "an early encounter with tomorrow." Exhibitions increasingly worked as science-fictional devices. Expos, through their richness as material objects and communicative circuits – exploiting specific treatments of space, visual representations and stagings, and the cinematic dimension of theatrical performances and the movement of viewers – embodied a sense of wonder and produced in spectators' mechanisms of cognitive estrangement which prepared the ground for the emergence of science fiction as a codified and recognizable genre.
Italian wine in the United States
During the second half of the 19th century, the world fame of Italian wine began to form. The international exhibitions, the foundation of specialized scholastic institutions, the birth of companies and the technical-scientific divulgation created the conditions of production and marketing of quality wines. The diffusion of Italian wine in the United States is an eloquent example of the changes produced by the internationalization of markets between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. For Italian wine, the United States became a point of comparison and encouragement. A central role was played by the winemaking office created by the Italian government in New York. The objective of the office was to favor wine imports and the circulation of news. The head of the office did an intense job of information but also devoted himself to the analysis of the wine that came from Italy to ensure that it was not adulterated and respected the sanitary norms in force in the country. The action of the office, which even gave advice on the characteristics of the wines, contributed to the formation of a more modern oenological culture among the Italian winemakers who opened themselves to the United States market. All this favored the increase in imports and consumption of Italian wine as shown by the menus of the restaurants. Following the historiographical debate on the effects of the first phase of the globalization of the economy, the objective of the work is to demonstrate that in addition to the massive Italian immigration, the Italian quality wine was consolidated in the United States thanks to a series of initiatives and public and private strategies. Resumen Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX comenzó a gestarse la fama mundial del vino italiano. Las exposiciones internacionales, la fundación de instituciones escolásticas especializadas, el nacimiento de empresas y la divulgación técnico-científica crearon las condiciones de producción y comercialización de vinos de calidad. La difusión del vino italiano en Estados Unidos constituye un caso elocuente de los cambios que produjo la internaciolización de los mercados entre
2018
During the second half of the 19th century, the world fame of Italian wine began to form. The international exhibitions, the foundation of specialized scholastic institutions, the birth of companies and the technical-scientific divulgation created the conditions of production and marketing of quality wines. The diffusion of Italian wine in the United States is an eloquent example of the changes produced by the internationalization of markets between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. For Italian wine, the United States became a point of comparison and encouragement. A central role was played by the winemaking office created by the Italian government in New York. The objective of the office was to favor wine imports and the circulation of news. The head of the office did an intense job of information but also devoted himself to the analysis of the wine that came from Italy to ensure that it was not adulterated and respected the sanitary norms in force in the country. The action of the office, which even gave advice on the characteristics of the wines, contributed to the formation of a more modern oenological culture among the Italian winemakers who opened themselves to the United States market. All this favored the increase in imports and consumption of Italian wine as shown by the menus of the restaurants. Following the historiographical debate on the effects of the first phase of the globalization of the economy, the objective of the work is to demonstrate that in addition to the massive Italian immigration, the Italian quality wine was consolidated in the United States thanks to a series of initiatives and public and private strategies. Resumen Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX comenzó a gestarse la fama mundial del vino italiano. Las exposiciones internacionales, la fundación de instituciones escolásticas especializadas, el nacimiento de empresas y la divulgación técnico-científica crearon las condiciones de producción y comercialización de vinos de calidad. La difusión del vino italiano en Estados Unidos constituye un caso elocuente de los cambios que produjo la internaciolización de los mercados entre
Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900, XVIII-1 (2015), 134-140 pp.
The London International Exhibition of 1851 shows for the first time to the world a new and powerful kind of propaganda. From that moment onwards, the «exhibition format» dramatically materializes Western technological and commercial progress and becomes the best available showcase for each host country to show to the world – particularly to rival countries – its economic, scientific, artistic and industrial power. Do the Christian Churches participate in these impressive industrial, recreational and commercial events of the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries?