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143 Chapter 6 On the World Stage At the same time that the Siamese modernizing elite appropriated Western objects to refashion their self- and public images, they were also engaged in representing Siam by means of its material culture for the European and American audiences of international exhibitions—one of the prominent invented traditions of the second half of the nineteenth century .1 What the promoters of these events concocted by blending the profitmaking rationale of trade fairs, the classificatory approach of museums, and the entertainment of itinerant shows was an eminently modern kind of spectacle centered on the display of commodities. A crucial ingredient of their success was also the synergy with the printed media, which amplified the resonance of exhibitions by allowing those who could not physically pay a visit to do it vicariously via guidebooks, catalogs, illustrated periodicals, and ephemera. Even though in a reverse dynamic to that examined thus far, things produced and circulated—physically as well as symbolically—within the global capitalist marketplace at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made it possible for the Siamese elite to represent their rule as civilizing, both to themselves and to the wider Victorian ecumene. The vogue for international exhibitions started in 1851, with the Great Exhibition of the Work of Industry of all Nations, held in London. The Crystal Palace, the demountable glass and iron building erected on that occasion to house the universe of modern consumer goods, set the pattern for the ephemeral grandeur of subsequent events, which took place at regular intervals of a few years until the eve of World War II. Particularly in the relatively peaceful period 1870–1914, international exhibitions were a sublimated expression of rivalry between world powers, especially Britain and France. Seen first in London, exhibitions became closely identified with Paris, whose bustling image at that time earned the French capital the appellation of ville lumière. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the Atlantic the ascendancy of the United States as a major world power was fore- 144 Part III: Spectacles shadowed by the ever-increasing dimensions of world’s fairs, as international exhibitions came to be popularly known there. Promoted as ecumenical events, international exhibitions were, in fact, prime sites of nationalist representation by virtue of an exhibiting strategy of juxtaposition that “othered” all participating countries while situating them within the hierarchical order of (Western) civilization. EuroAmerican nations, culturally “other” among themselves, were represented by industrial products that demonstrated their level of progress and, conversely , artworks said to embody their distinctively “national” genius. Placed at various stages on the evolutionary yardstick of progress were the ethnically “other,” represented by artifacts and even “living exhibits.” The political reality and ideology of imperialism were as central to the idea of international exhibitions as nationalism and global capitalism. The governments of Britain and France spared no expenses to extol the importance of their imperial possessions in the eyes of metropolitan audiences, who were able to marvel at the Indian cultural artifacts and the replicas of Khmer monuments and even taste the dishes and smell the fragrances of their overseas colonies without ever setting foot there. International exhibitions also helped promote diplomatic ties, as with the Franco-British Exposition of 1908, which cemented the new friendly climate in the relations between the two countries following the Entente Cordiale of 1904. Siam’s participation at some of the grandest international exhibitions of the period is examined in this chapter: the expositions universelles held in Paris in 1878, 1889, and 1900; the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in 1893; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, in 1904; the Esposizione Internazionale in Turin, in 1911. In attempting to project a distinctive national profile by means of material culture, the Siamese authorities faced the dilemma, shared by a handful of non-Western sovereign states (including Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and a few others), of pandering to Western curiosity for the exotic and, at the same time, producing evidence of their accomplishments on the way to progress. Even Orientalistic representational styles could be appropriated and put to use by the exhibiting country. The case of Meiji Japan is most instructive in this regard. At Chicago in 1893, besides making a huge impression with their wooden pavilion, the Japanese were invited to attend the concomitant World’s Parliament of Religions where they promoted, as Japan’s national faith, a rationalistic form of Buddhism, which was the [3.17.6.75] Project MUSE...

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