Continuities and Ruptures

From their early days in the 1840s and 1850s, international exhibitions developed into complex events with the participation of many countries. The increasing size of exhibitions, as well as the need to distinguish between various national economies and cultures, lead to the construction of national pavilions. The Exposition Universelle in Paris of 1867 was the first event that saw such distribution of nations into separate buildings. ¹ Such division instilled order at the exhibition ground and was adopted by most later fairs. Clear national differentiation became particularly important at specific moments linked to a political rupture, such as a redrawing of state frontiers after world wars or the dissolution of empires. Soon after Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, it started using world’s fairs to find its own trading opportunities. These events were also used to project, and to an extent consolidate, the country’s image of a new state to the rest of the world.