ABSTRACT
World expositions predate the Republic of Turkey. They came into existence 72 years
before the foundation of the Republic, in 1851, with London’s Great Exhibition. As
Timothy Mitchell has stated, these were events to which ‘the “whole world” was to
be invited in to see a fantastic and yet systematic profusion of material goods, all the
new necessities and desires that modern capitalism could order up and display’.1 The
nineteenth-century world expositions gave the opportunity to learn more about other
cultures – those of the colonies and of potential new markets. During the nineteenth
century, what accompanied the encounter with others was a curiosity to learn the
place of one’s own nation in the world and an expectation to be convinced of its supe-
riority over others. After all, world expositions were ‘great new rituals of self-
congratulation’.2 Consequently, while physically bringing different nations together,
expo grounds were conceptually setting them apart. From the placement of the display
grounds to the representations of other cultures, the world was hierarchically catego-
rized into a modern, progressive West and its others.
