World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities: International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851-1958

This volume examines the role of the broad variety of international exhibitions between 1851 and 1958 in two programmatic essays and twelve case studies, covering not just France and the United States, but also, among others, Sweden, Romania, Colombia, Japan and the nascent European Community.

World fairs were global platforms for the construction of national identities. The mix of national self-profiling and commercial exoticism turned the nation into a ＂brand＂, while reframing the nation-state from its nineteenth-century positioning amidst neighbouring enemies towards being a competitor in a global, consumer-oriented trade and entertainment economy. By presenting national identities in ＂banal＂ form as feelgood factors, world fairs helped the nation to maintain its grassroots appeal across the century of totalitarianism and internationalism.

Contributors are: Joep Leerssen, Eric Storm, Florian Gro , Anthony Swift, Cosmin Minea, Claire Hendren, Taka Oshikiri, Robert W. Rydell, Sven Schuster, Miriam Oesterreich, Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk, Christina Romlid, Jonathan Voges, and Anastasia Remes.

Joep Leerssen is Professor of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Among his recent publications are National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (2018) and the Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe(2018, ernie.uva.nl).

Eric Storm is Senior Lecturer European History at Leiden University. He is author of The Culture of Regionalism: Art, Architecture and International Exhibitions (2010) and co-editor of Writing the History of Nationalism (2019).