ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore the distinctiveness of the late nineteenth-century exhibitionary order in the US, most notably by revisiting the case of the Chicago Worlds Columbian Exposition in 1893. It constitutes in part a reflection on the apparent absence of Haiti from the global phenomenon of the international exhibition, but explores primarily the meanings of the countrys key presence in Chicago in 1893, highlighting its importance not only for the perception of Haiti in an external gaze. The African American response to this exclusion was itself divided, with a clear split between those who sought separate exhibits and insisted on the need for distinctive Black representation, and others who favored the integration of evidence of the success of the Black population into a unified national narrative. The contrast between the visual rhetoric of the human zoo underpinning the Dahomey village and the ambitions of the Haytian Pavilion was, therefore, stark.
