Cristina Della Coletta. World's Fairs Italian Style: The Great Exhibitions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860-1915. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. x + 351 pp. $74.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8020-9115-4. Reviewed by Jonathan Morris Published on H-Urban (September, 2009) Commissioned by Alexander Vari (Marywood University) From the 1851 Great Exhibition at London's economies and consumption systems," Della Co‐ Crystal Palace onward, the World's Fairs interna‐ letta does not discuss the role of Italian World's tional trade expositions fulfilled dual roles as dis‐ Fairs in promoting consumer values or dissemi‐ plays of the latest products of the modern indus‐ nating new products and practices into Italian so‐ trial world and depictions of "national narratives" ciety (p. 4). Rather, her focus throughout the work that underlined the host nation's claim for consid‐ is on the second role of the World's Fairs as propa‐ eration as part of the avant-garde of international gators of national narratives, so that "by examin‐ capitalism. The huge number of visitors that such ing how Italian expositions masterminded Italy's fairs attracted made them as much instruments of process of nation formation from the margins of consumer education and political communication industrialised Europe yet within the ideological as of commercial exchange. As Cristina Della Co‐ context of modern nationalism and imperialism letta rightly recognizes, analyzing the staging of [it] offer[s] ways to individualise and diversify such World's Fairs in Italy, at a time when the what has often been constructed as the West's country was still situated on the edge of the global monolithic and univocal 'discourse of Empire'" (p. economic core, ought to provide a wealth of op‐ 3). portunities for rereading the ways in which Italy's Although this aim is somewhat more limited, initial transition toward a consumer society was it should at least have had the effect of focusing experienced. the analysis. Readers may not be as surprised as Disappointingly, despite acknowledging the Della Coletta appears to be by her fnding that role of World's Fairs as "catalysts of popular taste such expositions also "inspired the development and promoters of mass culture [that] ... gathered of subordinate discourses that challenged the ab‐ all social classes around bourgeois values and solute ideological unity and cultural hegemony drew the lower social strata into modern market that fairs presented" to the point that "hybrid H-Net Reviews scripts criss-crossed the imperial divide, under‐ of the evolution of the formats of World's Fairs in mined the binary logic governing its ethos and general, notably the national and imperial narra‐ shattered the topographical duality implied in the tive themes that were developed within them. The notion of a fxed metropolitan centre governing a Turin national exhibition of 1884 forms the cen‐ silent and subordinated periphery" (p. 5). They terpiece of this analysis, interpreted as an attempt will, however, I suspect, be taken aback by the by the city to "reconfirm [its] status as the cradle fact that it turns out that over half the book con‐ of the Risorgimento and initiator of the process of sists of two chapters deconstructing the colonially nation formation" in the wake of having lost its inspired outputs of two authors, Emilio Salgari status as capital city to Rome, spectacularly em‐ and Guido Gozzano, whose work has no more bodied in the funicular rising from the city to the than a highly tangential link with Italian World's royal mausoleum at Superga (p. 46). At the same Fairs. time, however, "by portraying itself as the Italian The publishers should have known better capital of labour, Turin aspired to share Manches‐ than to have allowed (persuaded?) Della Coletta ter's industrial might and Paris's cultural charis‐ into using a title that is, at best, an inaccurate de‐ ma, and as such expected recognition in Europe," scription of the book's full content from both a de‐ thus attempting "to correct the idea of Italy as the scriptive and disciplinary perspective. This is not country of 'dolce far niente' by adopting what had so much cultural history as literary criticism in‐ become the standard World's Fair tropes of the formed by a historical perspective. These two ap‐ display of work, productivity and competitive proaches are not (whatever their detractors might achievement as visible signs of a nation's standing think) the same. Furthermore, the format for the on civilisation's ladder, alongside a celebration of scholarly apparatus that the publishers have leisure, pleasure and cultural diversion as marks adopted renders the work close to unreadable. of civilized well-being" (p. 23). The many quotations within the text are given in The site of the fair in the Valentino Park will the original Italian with an English translation in‐ be well known to visitors to the city today as the serted immediately afterward in parenthesis, fol‐ location of the faux medieval castle and village lowed by a Harvard style short citation that then built for the exhibition by the architect Alfredo needs to be located in the bibliography. Of course D'Andrade. As Della Coletta presents it, this was textual analysis of translated material needs to be an attempt to rewrite the city's local medieval his‐ verifiable against the original, but using this for‐ tory into a "national past" as an alternative to that mat means that any sense of fow on the page is of Rome, focusing on "reproductions of a canon‐ lost, as the reader is constantly skipping over one ized and concluded world, rather than a colonial or other version of the quotations and has fre‐ reality that was still somewhat fuid" (p. 39). In quently forgotten the beginning of the sentence fact, as her citation from a description of the time by the time s/he reaches the end. Meanwhile, all makes clear, rather more was going on at the cas‐ those references that do not include direct quota‐ tle. She writes: "Workers of the Issel factory from tions take the form of endnotes, which are located Genoa and the Farina factory from Faenza, at the end of the volume. Surely it would have dressed in rough cloth, make terracotta pitchers made sense to have placed the original quotations with a primitive wheel they turn with their foot. here too. At the same time other workers paint vases with The frst of the two chapters that do deal with rough fgures and a blonde heavy-set female vil‐ the World's Fairs is an analysis of expositions in lager takes care of sales. This is the modern world Italy prior to 1911, interspersed with an account that enters the Middle Ages. This is the nineteenth 2 H-Net Reviews century that fantastically returns to the 15th" (p. sior in conjunctions with exhibitions in 1881 and 39). One would have liked, and the author could 1882 respectively), yet there is no mention, let have done, so much more with this: more infor‐ alone any analysis, of Milan's hosting of the mation about the respective factories and their World's Fair in 1906: an inexplicable omission giv‐ products, the workers, the role of contemporary en the objectives of the book. commerce and consumption within this historical Chapter 2 is primarily concerned with the display, and, indeed, the exposition as a whole. staging of the World's Fair in Turin fve years lat‐ Above all, one would have liked to know more er in 1911. The Italian organizers recognized an about the people who bought these items. Accord‐ opportunity for "creating that sense of collective ing to Della Coletta, there were over three million national identity that would overcome (the coun‐ visitors to the exhibition, an extraordinary num‐ try's) endemic regional, historical and cultural ber equivalent to the entire population of Pied‐ fragmentation," while "proposing itself as a viable mont. Who were these people? Why did they member of a larger 'civilisation' of which Great come? How did they consume the exhibits, or Britain and France constituted the models" (p. read the narratives laid out in front of them? On 103). This civilization was exemplified in imperi‐ all of these issues, the book is virtually silent, alism as much as industrialism, leaving Italy making one wonder if the author is not guilty of again anxious to utilize an opportunity to ad‐ casting these visitors as mere "passive readers" of vance its own claims to already be a colonial pow‐ the narratives she wishes to lay out before us. er, even as the military convoys were leaving Similar questions, nearly all to do with issues Turin to secure Italy's "Fourth Shore" in Libya. of context, are raised by consideration of other This was underlined in three exhibits, each em‐ fairs in Italy during the period and the themes phasizing the degree of authority and structure that emerge from these. An analysis of Edmondo within the existing Italian enclaves in Eritrea and De Amicis's 1880 guide to Turin reads more like a Somalia--a notable departure from previous dis‐ formulaic exercise in the application of the theo‐ plays that tended to contrast chaotic native vil‐ ries of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the lages with the order of the West. A war exhibit, use of description to sort, categorize, and classify situated close to the Somalian village, featured the urban landscape into "harmonious hierar‐ "indigenous policemen, all cleaned up European chies," rather than investigating the degree of cor‐ style," embodying the success of Italy's colonial relation or contradiction between De Amicis's pre‐ mission (p.