In All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916, Robert W. Rydell argues, “The web of world’s fairs that stretched across the widening economic fault lines of American society between 1876 and 1916 reflected the efforts by America’s intellectual, political, and business leaders to establish a consensus about their priorities and their vision of progress as racial dominance and economic growth” (pg. 8). To this end, Rydell examines the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, the New Orleans, Atlanta, and Nashville Expositions, the 1898 Omaha Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, the 1901 Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, the 1904 Saint Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the Expositions in Portland and Seattle, and the Expositions in San Francisco and San Diego. Rydell backs up his claims about the fairs’ influence with attendance figures, excerpts from letters and diaries, and promotional materials that circulated around the country.
Of the 1876 Centennial Expo, Rydell writes, “Rather than merely offering an escape from the economic and political uncertainties of the Reconstruction years, the fair was a calculated response to these conditions. Its organizers sought to challenge doubts and restore confidence in the vitality of America’s system of government as well as in the social and economic structure of the country” (pg. 11). He continues, “In the course of planning the exposition, the role of scientists, especially those of the Smithsonian, expanded until, at crucial junctures, the histories of the Centennial and American science became interwoven” (pg. 20). The Smithsonian’s propagation of scientific racism continued through subsequent fairs and helped establish the defense of American imperialism. In this way, Rydell concludes of the Columbian Exposition, “The fair did not merely reflect American racial attitudes, it grounded them on ethnological bedrock” (pg. 55). The southern fairs helped to heal sectional differences lingering after the Civil War, even going so far as to include Civil War reunions. Further, the creation of hierarchical displays of “types” of humanity reinforced existing racism (pg. 101). Rydell writes of them, “In the closing decades of the century, the southern fairs succeeded in reintroducing antebellum imperial dreams to millions of fairgoers” (pg. 104). The Omaha fair, following the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, “provided ideological scaffolding for mass support of the government’s imperial policies” (pg. 108). This continued in Buffalo, where “the colonial exhibit at the exposition, in short, would generate support in the United States for maintaining and extending America’s colonial empire” (pg. 139). Rydell writes, “Inside the exposition, ethnological displays and midway attractions with ethnological attributes gave this historical and utopian narrative a basis in received scientific and pseudoscientific wisdom” (pg. 131). The Saint Louis exposition continued this, where, according to Rydell, lectures from W. J. McGee, an anthropologist, “vindicated American national experience and synthesized the works of leading evolutionary thinkers including Darwin, Powell, and Spencer. The lectures offered a vision of racial progress that made cultural advance synonymous with increased industrial expansion” (pg. 161). This advance appeared in exhibits arranged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that portrayed Native Americans as a once-great civilization now disappearing to make way for industrialism. The Pacific-Northwest expositions “focused national attention on the possibilities for economic growth through the development of trans-Pacific market while providing the region and nation with visions of racial progress” (pg. 185). The California fairs continued this utopian vision, but “at California’s fairs, however, the vision of utopia rested squarely on the application of scientific racial categories to selected white and nonwhite populations alike” (pg. 219). Rydell concludes, “Largely as a result of the expositions, nationalism and racism became crucial parts of the legitimizing ideology offered to a nation torn by class conflict” (pg. 236). Furthermore, “Far from simply reflecting American culture, the expositions were intended to shape that culture. They left an enduring vision of empire” (pg. 237). ( )