Colonies at the 1900 World Fair
Mysterious, exotic, colourful.... this was the view of their colonies that the 1900 Paris Fair presented to the French. William Schneider argues that this image was to persist and hamper an understanding of colonial development.
During the last three decades of the nineteenth century France added great new tracts of land in Africa and South East Asia to her colonial empire. And at the Paris World Fair of 1900 those who knew about her colonies - or thought they did - tried to show their fellow countrymen what had been happening during the three preceding decades of imperial expansion. The colonial display at the Fair served as a three-dimensional snapshot of France's overseas possessions at the time. But a close examination of the picture presented by the organisers of the colonial exhibition showed that they intended to convey an image of France's colonies as lands of wealth with potential for economic development. But visitors to the exhibition apparently came away with another, very different impression of the colonies as exotic lands of mystery and barbarism.
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