ABSTRACT
The international exhibitions that took place during the nineteenth century attracted the attention of the world press. These events did not only celebrate the industry but also exerted every effort to present the colonies, then at the core of the disputes among the European powers. This chapter analyses the debates around Portugal’s participation in the international exhibitions that took place in Antwerp (1885) and especially in Paris (1889). In order to do so, the source is the magazine A Ilustração (1884-1892), a rather specific kind of periodical, whose origin dates back to the middle of the second half of the 1800s. Printed in Paris, the magazine arrived fortnightly in the harbours of Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, connecting the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The Portuguese young man Mariano Pina (1860-1899) was in charge of the editorial staff of the magazine and he took part actively in the group responsible for organizing the Portuguese representation in Paris, which ensured privileged access to a great quantity of iconographical material about the exhibition, soon published in his magazine. The set of engravings printed in A Ilustração contributed to create sensibilities, to prepare the eye and the taste, to spread values and the imaginary. Their readers, in Portugal or in Brazil, shared references, which naturalized hierarchies among the human being, notions of civilization and barbarism, progress and setback.
