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Newspapers and National Identity at the World Expositions

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Newspapers and National Identity at the World Expositions Putting Great Britain on show at the world exhibitions Master Thesis History Revised Master Program: Present(ed) British identity, Britishness and History Englishness at post-war world Colette Pracca s4061470 exhibitions according to British Supervisor: Prof.dr. Jan Hein newspapers Furnée Second examinator: Dr. H.G.J. Kaal Radboud University, Faculty of Arts June 2nd, 2016 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter 1: The evolution of national and British identity at world expositions after the Second World War ................................................................................................................................ 10 National identity ................................................................................................................... 10 British national identity ........................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 2: Changes in newspapers’ interest in world expositions ........................................... 22 Chapter 3: Newspapers and national identity at the world expositions ................................... 33 Chapter 4: Newspapers and British identity at the world expositions ..................................... 41 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 57 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 61 Primary sources .................................................................................................................... 61 Secondary literature .............................................................................................................. 62 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 65 2 Introduction World expositions have a long history spanning well over 160 years. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations held in London in 1851 is considered to be the very first universal world exposition. This has given the British the unofficial status of the inventors of these world events. In reality however, the exhibitions’ history is more nuanced than this image suggests. Paul Greenhalgh1 has looked beyond the Great Exhibition to the origins of the expositions themselves. Greenhalgh has identified a simultaneous process that took place in Great Britain and France during the Industrial Revolution. Institutions in both nations were formed with one specific goal: promoting the principle of display. French and British national expositions evolved along different paths. Nevertheless, both nations wanted the displays to enhance trade, promote new technology, educate the middle class and present political stances.2 Other countries in the early nineteenth century as well had started to follow the example set by Great Britain and France. There was one limitation to these early forms of the expositions: they were national events as many countries feared the economic competition too much to turn them into international events. By mid- nineteenth century, France had begun to toy with this idea more and more. However, Britain was the first nation that gave the expositions an international dimension by organizing the Great Exhibition. Soon after, a competitive spirit began to take over as first France, and by the 1870s the United States too started to hold their own international expositions in a struggle to outdo the other. The expositions also gained new purposes along the lines of showcasing industrial progress, national prestige and national identity to the visitors. Flamboyance and monumentality were key in presenting all of this. By the end of the nineteenth century, entertainment had also become an important factor for attracting the crowds as technological exhibits no longer sufficed.3 After the Great War, the exhibitions remained very important as they gave the recovering governments opportunities to show their citizens positive images of the future. The same is true for the depression-era expositions. There was one problem though: the 1 Paul Greenhalgh is Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia 2 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas: the expositions universelles, great exhibitions and world’s fairs, 1851 1939 (Manchester, 1988), 3, 6, 7. 3 Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 8-11, 15; Bureau International des Expositions, ‘The Expos’ <http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/expos/about-expos/expo-categories> [Last visited 8-1-2016]; Paul Greenhalgh, Fair world: a history of world’s fairs and expositions, from London to Shanghai, 1851-2010 (Winterbourne, 2011), 73. 3 unorganized frenzy with which these events were being held. About twenty world expositions and countless specialized and national expositions had been held by then. Something had to be done in the way of regulating these events. With this purpose in mind, a Convention Relating to International Exhibitions was called in Paris in 1928. Although it had little success at the time, the Convention did establish several ground rules such as duration, the rotation between countries and contents. Most importantly, it had laid the foundations for the Bureau International des Exposition (BIE), the official organization overseeing the exhibitions.4 The Second World War stopped the frenzied growth of these events, and it would not be until 1958 that a new world exposition was held. Since then, eight BIE approved world expositions have been held starting from the Brussels World Fair in 1958 or Expo 58, the Century 21 Exposition of Seattle in 1962, Expo 67 or the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, Expo ’70 or Nihon bankoku hakurankai ( 日本万国博覧会 ) in Osaka, the Universal Exposition of Seville or Expo ’92, Expo 2000 in Hannover, Expo 2010 Shanghai China and Milan’s Expo 2015. Throughout their history, the world expositions have constantly evolved, resulting in new themes and new goals. The latest was held last year in Milan. It ran from May 1st, 2015 to October 31st, 2015. The slogan Feeding the planet, energy for life was its main theme. Food was certainly one of its core attractions, but the exposition’s theme also has deeper meanings. It reflects the BIE’s assigned function to the world expositions of ‘discussion platforms aimed at finding solutions to universal challenges of our time.’5 Nevertheless, this has not always been the universal exhibitions’ main function. For most of their history, these world events have focused on shaping and presenting national identities, and only in the second half of the twentieth century did they gain this new global dimension.6 The secondary literature has embraced the world expositions due to the numerous subjects that can be studied in relation to them, for example: architecture, consumerism, capitalism, national identity, imperialism, representation and modernity. The variety of these subjects means that scholarly interest spans many disciplines, some of the major ones being history and art history, anthropology, ethnology, communication studies, gender studies, and 4 The BIE officially recognizes four types of expositions: world expositions; international specialized expositions, horticultural exhibitions and the Triennale di Milano. Source: Bureau International des Expositions, ‘The Expos’ <http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/expos/about-expos/expo-categories> [Last visited on 8-1-2016]. 5 BIE, ‘The Expos’ <http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/expos/about-expos/expo-categories> [Last visited on 8-1 2016]. 6 BIE, ‘World Expos’ <http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/expos/about-expos/expo-categories/world-expos> [Last visited on 8-1 2016]. 4 even linguistics. New questions are constantly being raised forcing new theories to be developed and new areas to be explored. But there are some enduring subjects that continue to attract a lot of attention. One of them is the question of national identity at the world expositions. For the countries hosting and participating at the nineteenth century exhibitions this was a very important goal. Historians have recognized the importance of national identity at the world expositions and study them for further understanding the cultural history and symbolic representation of nation-states.7 The biggest shift has been to move past the early phase of merely chronicling the exhibitions and placing them within their historical contexts. The awareness that universal exhibitions were much more than just historical events quickly grew in the second half of the twentieth century. Scholars are thus researching the multiple functions of exhibitions, leading to new insights. Since the 1980s there has been an increased concern with the representation and construction of reality taking place at the exhibitions, with Burton Benedict8 having expressed interest in the experience of not only the visitors, but also those of the people on display. Another though still marginal subject, is the increased interest for the criticism surrounding the expositions throughout their 160 years long tradition.9 Depending on the chosen research subject within the corpus of world expositions studies, there are specific theories a scholar can make use of. Any study examining world expositions and imperialism would refer to Edward Said’s concept
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