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World's
Fairs as History
It
is curious that in our current age of globalization, world's fairs
have largely disappeared. Since World War II, there have only
been four official world's fairs: in Brussels, Belgium, in 1958,
Montreal, Canada, in 1967, Osaka, Japan, in 1970, and Seville,
Spain, in 1992.
NOTE:
The Bureau of International Expositions (or Bureau International
des Expositions) is the organization responsible for sanctioning
World's fairs. It is based in Paris, France and was established
as an international convention in 1928. However, many fairs
take place unsanctioned, e.g. the 1964/1965 New York World's
Fair. (see http://www.bie-paris.org)
Although there
would be influential world's fairs in the 20th century - such
as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 and
the 1939 New York World's Fair, centered on "the world of
tomorrow" - the second half of the 19th century was the golden
age of world's fairs. The prototype for later fairs was the Crystal
Palace Exposition in London in 1851, which drew more than 6 million
visitors who came to celebrate the industrial revolution and view
some 13,000 exhibits. The symbol of the 1889 Paris Exposition
Universelle was the Eiffel Tower.
Three late-nineteenth
century American expositions were of particular significance.
The Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in
1876 commemorated a century of American independence. The World's
Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 marked the 400th
anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World. The Cotton
States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895
sought to attract northern investment into the New South three
decades after the end of the Civil War.
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