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World's Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism

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World's Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Honors Program in History (Senior Honors Theses) Department of History 5-10-2008 World's Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism Uri L. Friedman University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/hist_honors Part of the History Commons Friedman, Uri L., "World's Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism" (2008). Honors Program in History (Senior Honors Theses). 15. https://repository.upenn.edu/hist_honors/15 A Senior Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in History. Faculty Advisor: Antonio Feros This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hist_honors/15 For more information, please contact [email protected]. World's Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism Abstract Nineteenth-century international exhibitions served as platforms for national competition and self- expression. Though over 4,000 miles apart, both Chicago, Illinois and Barcelona, Spain were animated by "second city" politics and featured a thriving industrial economy in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Yet while Chicagoans swelled with pride about the city they had helped resurrect from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, they also displayed patriotism toward an American nation that had overcome the Civil War and was rapidly amassing power. A burgeoning Catalan nationalist movement, on the other hand, contributed to a widening disconnect between the capital of Catalonia and a sputtering Spanish nation. These pivotal differences - along with historical circumstance - have informed the historical interpretation of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and Barcelona's 1888 Universal Exposition. The ways in which the collective memory of these two world's fairs have diverged shed light on why, today, remembering Chicago's World's Fair has largely become an intellectual exercise while conjuring up memories of Barcelona's Universal Exposition persists as a critical tool for Catalan nationalists wishing to advance their interests and broadcast their nationalism to the global community. Keywords Chicago, nationalism, Barcelona, Spain, United States, world's fair, collective memory, nineteenth century Disciplines History Comments A Senior Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in History. Faculty Advisor: Antonio Feros This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/hist_honors/15 World’s Fairs in Chicago and Barcelona: Spectacle, Memory, and Nationalism By Uri Friedman A Senior Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors in History Faculty Advisor: Antonio Feros Friedman 1 Table of Contents Author’s Note …………………………………………………………………….. 2 Introduction : The Opening Act…………………………………………………. 4 Chapter 1 : The Mise-En-Scène of Exposition…………………………………. 20 Chapter 2 : A Spectacle and an Extended Encore, Chicago…………………... 46 Chapter 3 : A Spectacle and an Extended Encore, Barcelona………………... 75 Conclusion : Globalization and Communicative Nationalism………………. 113 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………. 123 Friedman 2 Author’s Note This thesis is a product not only of my last two semesters at the University of Pennsylvania but also of the six months that I spent in Barcelona, Spain as a foreign exchange student at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) during the spring semester of my junior year. I lived a minute’s walk from the Arc de Triomf, the Monument a Rius i Taulet, and the Parc de la Ciutadella, all prominent vestiges of Barcelona’s Exposición Universal (Universal Exposition) in 1888 and the years immediately afterwards. I gained an appreciation for the profound and far-reaching impact that the act of remembering has on Catalan and Spanish society as Spaniards passionately debated the ley de Memoria Histórica (law of historical memory), a bill sponsored by the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to honor victims of the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. The crux of this investigation thus derives as much from my day-to-day experiences in Barcelona as it does from the diverse texts that I have gathered for the purposes of the study. I’m an American who spent half a year in Barcelona taking courses on Catalan nationalism, chatting informally with peers and strangers about Catalan identity, and voraciously reading El País and La Vanguardia . I therefore admit that there may be certain intricacies, subtleties, and nuances intrinsic to Catalan nationalism that are beyond my ability to comprehend. When it comes to American nationalism, I know it when I see it but have always struggled to articulate its dimensions. What follows is simply an attempt to combine my anecdotal observations with as broad a sampling of the historical record as possible, and to analyze what this mixture yields. I decided to write my history honors thesis on Catalan nationalism while still in Barcelona. Once I had committed myself to the task, I began meeting with professors to discuss Friedman 3 my ideas and rummaging through city archives and libraries to dust off aspects of Barcelona’s past that only fortified my already-durable connection to the city. I would like to thank Barcelona’s librarians and photocopiers for their tireless support of my endeavors. More importantly, however, I would like to recognize the inspiration and guidance provided by my professors at UPF, Albert Garcia Balaña and Raimundo Viejo, and my professor at UB, Joan Lluís Palos, all three of whom fueled my interest in nationalism and cultural and intellectual history. I owe a debt of gratitude to Enric Ucelay da Cal, who, over coffee in Gràcia, challenged me to bridge the traditional divide between European and American history by using Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition as a counterpoint in my study of Barcelona’s Universal Exposition. Antonio Feros, my thesis advisor at the University of Pennsylvania, always found time to flesh out ideas with me and to allay my concerns when obstacles arose. I have learned a great deal about how to be an historian from his incisive and candid feedback to my drafts. My thesis instructor, Kristen Stromberg Childers, offered invaluable advice during the research and writing phases and was a superb instructor for our class, never failing to raise our spirits and encourage us to take pride in our work. A Note on Texts and Translations All translations of Spanish and Catalan texts into English are mine. I have refrained from translating certain Spanish or Catalan words that I believe lose much of their significance in English. Friedman 4 Introduction: The Opening Act And as the Greek philosophers said of man that he is a tiny cosmos, it is more correct in the last third of the nineteenth century to say that a Universal Exposition is a summary of the world that is germinating and flowering .1 - Saturnino Lacál, Catalan chronicler of Barcelona’s Universal Exposition, 1889 Ambling down the chaotic pedestrian thoroughfare known as Las Ramblas toward Barcelona’s bustling waterfront, one draws ever closer to a 187-foot monument constructed for the city’s Exposición Universal (Universal Exposition) in 1888.2 The soaring structure is capped by an intrepid Christopher Columbus extending his index finger and his gaze providentially toward the Mediterranean Sea. Ask someone in Barcelona—the capital of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia in northeastern Spain—where Columbus is pointing, and you’ll get a host of answers. Some Catalans argue that the explorer is directing people’s attention to the Catalan harbor and turning his back on Spain’s capital, Madrid, others declare that he is gesticulating toward his native Genoa, and still others claim that he is tracing the sea route to an American continent that served as the wellspring of Catalonia’s industrial wealth in the nineteenth century. When the tower was erected in the late 1880s, many Catalans believed Columbus was a fellow Catalan and that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had welcomed the discoverer in Barcelona upon his return from the New World. Five years after Barcelona’s Universal Exposition and over 4,000 miles away, sculptors in the Midwestern United States were putting the finishing touches on a massive statue depicting an emperor-like Columbus standing valiantly in a horse-drawn chariot and facing eastward 1 Saturnino Lacál, El libro de honor: apuntes para la historia de la Exposición Universal de Barcelona, premios concedidos y dictámenes que los productos expuestos merecieron del jurado internacional (Barcelona: Tipografía de Fidel Giró, 1889), 7. 2 Note : In Catalan, the event is referred to as the Exposició Universal . Friedman 5 toward Europe. The statue crowned a triumphal arch that adorned the Court of Honor at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Illinois. The memorials to Columbus in Barcelona and Chicago might still be engaged in transatlantic communication if not for the fact that Chicago’s monument was destroyed in a massive fire soon after the Columbian Exposition closed its doors. Building on Pierre Nora’s theory that the past is artificially recreated by society in the present through ‘realms of memory,’ French historian Stéphane Michonneau asserts that visitors who disembarked in Barcelona for the 1888 Exposition and confronted the Monumento a Colón (Columbus
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