A Taste of Progress

Food at International and World Exhibitions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Nelleke Teughels, Peter Scholliers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138307032
• eBook ISBN: 9781317186427
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

World exhibitions have been widely acknowledged as important sources for understanding the development of the modern consumer and urbanized society, yet whilst the function and purpose of architecture at these major events has been well-studied, the place of food has received very little attention. Food played a crucial part in the lived experience of the exhibitions: for visitors, who could acquaint themselves with the latest food innovations, exotic cuisines and 'traditional' dishes; for officials attending lavish banquets; for the manufacturers who displayed their new culinary products; and for scientists who met to discuss the latest technologies in food hygiene. Food stood as a powerful semiotic device for communicating and maintaining conceptions of identity, history, traditions and progress, of inclusion and exclusion, making it a valuable tool for researching the construction of national or corporate sentiments. Combining recent developments in food studies and the history of major international exhibitions, this volume provides a refreshing alternative view of these international and intercultural spectacles.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Nelleke Teughels

The history of world and other large, international, exhibitions is closely linked to the rise of capitalism and industrial production. The concept of an international exhibition as an economic expedient appeared first in Great Britain and then in France around the middle of the nineteenth century, with the development of new and international markets for mass producers as the main objective.¹ The idea was first put into practice with the Great International Exhibition of London in 1851 which set the standard for later world and large international exhibitions. It welcomed thirty-four nations each of which was allocated a certain amount of space, and introduced four themes or sections: manufacturers, machinery, raw materials and fine arts.² Like the exhibitions that would follow its example, it gathered a huge number of exhibits from all across the globe to a central location specially designed and constructed for that particular occasion. Such enormous projects offered the ideal opportunity for reaching millions of potential customers and by presenting a comprehensive, international overview of the latest innovations and developments in the fields of industry, technology, science and arts and by appealing to national pride and sentiment they both stimulated and facilitated the modernisation of Western production, trade, consumption and socio-cultural organisation. Simultaneously, their international and highly competitive context would serve as an incentive for producers and entrepreneurs to embrace the innovations on display.³ After the turn of the century, the focus shifted towards the consumer, and the possibilities offered by the goods on display.

Apart from their economic purpose, the exhibitions were aimed at propagating among the public certain types of knowledge of the technology, industry, science and culture of different nations. The exhibitions were intended to construct and reproduce official government-endorsed narratives about the world and the way it was ordered, and Rydell for example identified World’s Exhibitions as ‘triumphs of hegemony as well as symbolic edifices’⁴ because they proliferated and endorsed the ideology of the contemporary political, cultural and social elite. Their educational goal included diffusing the ideology of progress among the inhabitants of the Western world,⁵ so that when the International Exhibitions Bureau was founded in 1928 it explicitly identified instruction of the public about ‘the progress achieved in one or more branches of human endeavour’ as its main objective.⁶ Indeed, at least some of the innovations on display at world exhibitions would inevitably alter the habitat of millions of people. Aware of the imminent societal changes they would prompt, organisers used their events and their discourse of progress as instruments to reconcile the public to the transformation of the familiar world they trusted. As van Wesemael states, that entailed the refurbishing of the individual to incorporate ‘a new set of collective norms and values, thus cultivating a new sense of community or national identity’.⁷

Thus, world and other large international exhibitions were (and still are) political rituals on a grand scale serving to bind individuals to society and expressing all sorts of power relations and struggles. They produced a discourse about nations and cultures that has both accentuated the interconnectedness of all participating countries and intensified competition between them. They were contests, in which rituals and symbols were used boldly to impress fellow participants and visitors whose acclaim was needed to impose legitimacy.⁸ They served as international diplomacy, being not only concerned with the exchange of goods but also with the exchange of courtesies and entertainment, with the goods displayed and offered at the events being indicative of the status of both the givers and the receivers. The exhibitions had an internationally conciliatory purpose but they were also meant to reconcile the population to the current political regime by forging a collective identity by exploiting (fictive) national traditions and characteristics – and they were successful in that.⁹ Yet, Benedict stresses that even though they presented themselves as peaceful solutions to political and social tensions, world exhibitions could also turn into rituals of rebellion instead of rituals of stabilisation.¹⁰

By propagating cultural modernity and industrial and societal progress, world exhibitions, especially in the nineteenth century, played an important part in the definition and development of the modern consumer society. Their layout and architecture was specifically designed to promote and accommodate consumerism. There were large halls for displaying, comparing and selling consumer goods, agreeable venues for consuming and purchasing food and drink; and extensive advertising. It is precisely the centrality of world exhibitions to the proliferation of a consumer culture which has attracted increasing attention from social scientists. World exhibitions have been characterised by scholars as the high mass of capitalism, as the commodification of heritage and culture.¹¹ When looking at the historiography of world exhibitions, we see that after the Second World War historians recognised the value of popular mass phenomena for gaining better insight into the social and cultural aspects of our history. Indeed, they offer a unique site and perspective from which to investigate the beliefs and worldviews of both the organisers and the international audiences who attended exhibitions. Moreover, such spectacular mass events would make a lasting impression and would influence both collective and individual memories. As ‘symbolic universes’, large international exhibitions like World Fairs functioned as structures of legitimation for ideologies of race, nationality, nature, culture and progress that underlay the multitude of symbols visitors encountered there. They ordered history, peoples, nature and objects into a cohesive whole, establishing a shared ‘memory’ and collective frame of reference.¹²

At first sight, the amount of literature on world and large international exhibitions seems enormous. The cultural turn in particular resulted in a boom in the existing literature on international exhibitions that has lasted until today. Yet the quality of studies is uneven, comparative studies are few, and the list of topics they cover is far from exhaustive. Generally speaking, three types of research can be identified: general historical overviews, monographs and topical studies. In addition, researchers should be aware of available bibliographies on international exhibitions and fairs.

First of all, there appeared numerous general overviews on world exhibitions. Mostly descriptive, they attempt to provide an outline of the historical evolution of world exhibitions. There is, however, an important pitfall to that approach. Since they are necessarily based on a limited number of mostly secondary sources, of which the official reports of the organisers form a large part, general overviews very often merely reproduce the success stories formulated by the organisers themselves. As a consequence, they tend to be overly positive and nostalgic in nature, ignoring the political struggles, financial constraints and public opinions that shaped the final result. Moreover, their broad scope, encompassing all world exhibitions – or a large number of them – leaves little room for the particularity of the socio-historical context of each individual exhibition.¹³

Nevertheless, there are some very valuable general historical overviews available to researchers. Adolph Démy’s voluminous Essai historique sur les expositions universelles de Paris, published in 1907 can still be regarded as one of the most complete historical overviews on the subject. Likewise, John Allwood’s The Great Exhibitions remains an indispensable source offering an overview of and basic statistics on international exhibitions from the one at the Crystal Palace in London in 1851 right up to the trade fairs of the 1970s. Raymond Isay has provided us with an excellent short overview of the French universal exhibitions in his Panorama des Expositions Universelles (1937) and in the mid-1980s Robert Rydell’s book All the World’s a Fair appeared, making him the first historian to recognise the potential value of studying world exhibitions. Moreover, Rydell strove to analyse the particularity of the American World’s Fairs from the Victorian age, paying close attention to their historical context, purpose and consequential cultural meaning. In a sequel, World of Fairs: Century of Progress Expositions which appeared in 1993, he included the numerous exhibitions held in Europe during the interwar period and clearly illustrated the differences in the ulterior motives for their organisation. His emphasis was on the economic and organisational aspects of those events, mostly overlooking their social implications. It is worth mentioning here too ‘Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expositions’ by John Findling and Kimberly Pelle which includes essays on more than 100 expositions, and statistical appendixes. Other publications approach the subject from a more theoretical viewpoint, underlining the parallels between world exhibitions and religious festivals¹⁴ or medieval fairs¹⁵. In 1988 Paul Greenhalgh published his ‘Ephemeral Vistas: the Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939’ in which he characterised international exhibitions as ideological constructions that endorsed and legitimated the existing social order in the West. An update of his book appeared in 2010, entitled Fair World. A History of World’s Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai, 1851–2010. Others have emphasised the ritualistic nature of these events, characterising them as ‘potlatches’¹⁶ or stressing their function of liminality.¹⁷ In the last two decades, the ordering aspect of international exhibitions has received a great deal of attention.¹⁸ Works of that type certainly offer valuable starting points, even though food does not often merit a mention in them.

Second, rising interest in international exhibitions has led to the publication of a large number of monographs, many of which offer careful reconstructions of the genesis, organisation and aftermath of one particular exhibition or another. Most of them are based on thorough research of primary and secondary sources and succeed in placing the exhibition they deal with firmly in its socio-historical framework, critically assessing its goals, success and impact. Many monographs deal with food as part of the logistical problem, referring to the difficulties of serving a large group of people within limited space and time constraints; or they focus on food as part of an innovative process, such as in the example of the introduction of the mass-produced ice cream cone at the 1904 Saint-Louis World’s Fair, examined by Pamela Vaccaro in ‘Beyond the Ice Cream Cone: the Whole Scoop on Food at the 1904 World’s Fair’ (2004).

However, something that many of the existing studies have overlooked is that by restricting themselves to a single exhibition they have overlooked ‘their’ exhibition’s formative transnational and interurban networks and its internal references. Yet the international exhibitions all founded traditions and created legacies in architecture, spaces of consumption and urban development, resulting in a shared ‘language’.

Finally, topical studies each focus on one particular aspect of the world exhibitions from a specific disciplinary perspective. Exhibition architecture is thoroughly covered, complete with many illustrations and site plans, in Wolfgang Friebe, Buildings of the World’s Exhibitions (1985) and Erik Mattie, World’s Fairs (1998). Peter H. Hoffenberg, in An Empire on Display (2001) examines nationalism, imperialism and other cultural themes in the context of expositions. John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, in Cities of Culture (2005) examine how fairs and other large international events changed their host cities. The experiences of the people on display in living exhibits have been examined by anthropologists like Nancy Parezo and Don Fowler.¹⁹ Over the last few decades visual representations have gained more scholarly popularity as a research topic, in recognition of the increased significance of visual communication and that the late nineteenth century saw the emergence of an ‘exhibition culture’.²⁰ The strategic use of visual representations at these mass ve...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 World’s Fairs in Perspectives. The Aggregation of Modern Times and Spaces at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Ghent 1913)
• PART I: CULINARY NATION-BUILDING
• PART II: NATIONAL APPROPRIATION
• PART III: CULINARY ENCOUNTERS: FOOD, IDENTITY AND CULTURAL MEDIATION
• PART IV: CATERING TO THE WORLD
• Index