ABSTRACT
World’s fairs of the nineteenth century offered a magnificent but fleeting stage for self-presentation by modern, industrial nations, and by those who aspired to that status. Their vast collections juxtaposed the latest European technology with seemingly primitive colonial ethnographic exhibits, thereby displaying a progressive Victorian view of world history and geography. Latin American visitors found such a perspective disconcerting, for even as they fantasised about progress through imported technology, they were reminded of the supposed backwardness of their own indigenous compatriots. Moreover, the world’s fair experiences were not easily carried home except as memories. Once the crowds had departed, the pavilions were torn apart and the collections dispersed, leaving behind only a memorial landmark, most famously, the Eiffel Tower from Paris 1889. 1 The world’s fairs were, in short, a lot like Victorian banquets: they delighted and overwhelmed the participants, consumed vast but unseen raw materials and skilled labour, caused some indigestion and then were gone forever.
