A colonial exhibition was a type of international exhibition intended to boost trade and bolster popular support for the various colonial empires during the New Imperialism period, which started in the 1880s with the scramble for Africa.
The British Empire Exhibition of 1924–5, held at Wembley Park in north-west London, ranked among these expositions, but perhaps the most notable was the rather successful 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, which lasted six months and sold 33 million tickets. Paris's Colonial Exhibition debuted on 6 May 1931, and encompassed 110 hectares of the Bois de Vincennes. The exhibition included dozens of temporary museums and façades representing the various colonies of the European nations, as well as several permanent buildings. Among these were the Palais de la Porte Dorée, designed by architect Albert Laprode, which then housed the Musée permanent des Colonies, and serves today as the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration.
An anti-colonial counter-exhibition was held near the 1931 Colonial Exhibition, titled Truth on the Colonies and was organized by the French Communist Party. The first section was dedicated to the crimes made during the colonial conquests, and quoted Albert Londres and André Gide's criticisms of forced labour while the second one made an apology of the Soviets' "nationalities' policy" compared to "imperialist colonialism".
Germany and Portugal also staged colonial exhibitions, as well as Belgium, which had a Foire coloniale as late as 1948. Human zoos were featured in some of these exhibitions, such as in the Parisian 1931 exhibition.
Exhibitions which may be described as colonial exhibitions include:
|Name of exhibition||Date||Location||Country||Image||Notes|
|Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia (1866)||1866||Melbourne|
|Intercolonial Exhibition (1870)||1870||Sydney||Included printwork by Helena Scott|
|Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition||1875||Melbourne|
|Intercolonial Exhibition (1876)||1876||Brisbane|
|Internationale Koloniale en Uitvoerhandel Tentoonstelling||1883||Amsterdam|| |
|Colonial and Indian Exhibition||1886||London|| |
|Exposition internationale et coloniale (1894)||1894||Lyon|| |
|Exposição Insular e Colonial Portuguesa||1894||Oporto|
|Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin||1896||Berlin|| |
|Brussels International||1897||Brussels|| |
|Hanoi exhibition||1902||Hanoi|| |
|United States, Colonial and International Exposition||1902|
|Exposition coloniale||1906||Marseille|| |
|Franco-British Exhibition||1908||London|| ||The exhibition celebrated the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 by the United Kingdom and France.|
|Exposition Universelle de Bruxelles||1910||Brussels|| |
|Colonial Exhibition of Semarang||1914||Semarang, Java|| ||Intended to "give a comprehensive picture of the Dutch Indies in their present prosperous condition".|
|International Exhibition of Rubber and Other Tropical Products||1921||London|| |
|Festival of Empire||1911||London|| |
|Exposition nationale coloniale||1922||Marseille|
|British Empire Exhibition||1924–5||London|| |
|Exposition internationale coloniale, maritime et d'art flamand||1930||Antwerp|
|Paris Colonial Exposition||1931||Paris|| ||A six-month exhibition that attempted to display the diverse cultures and immense resources of France's colonial possessions.|
|Exposição Colonial Portuguesa||1934||Porto|
|Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg||1936||Johannesburg||Union of South Africa||A continuation of the Empire Exhibition held in Wembley in 1924-25|
|Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938||1938||Glasgow|| |
|Deutsche Kolonial Ausstellung||1939|
Japanese colonial exhibitions
During the early 20th century, the Empire of Japan was noteworthy in that it not only hosted colonial showcases in exhibitions within the Home Islands, but also held several full-scale expositions inside its colonies of Korea and Taiwan. These exhibitions did however have objectives comparable to that of their European counterparts, in that they highlighted economic achievements and social progress under Japanese colonial rule to Japanese and colonial subjects alike.
Expositions held in Japanese colonies included:
- Korea Trade Fair to Commemorate 5 Years of Government (Seoul, 1915)
- Korea Exhibition (Seoul, 1929)
- Taiwan Exhibition to Commemorate 40 Years of Government (Taipei, 1935)
- Blevis, Laure; Lafout-Couturieur, Hélène; et al. (2008). 1931: Les Étrangers au temps de l'Exposition Coloniale. Paris: Gallimard.
- "From human zoos to colonial apotheoses: the era of exhibiting the Other". Centro de Estudos Sociais. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
- Pelle, Findling, ed. (2008). "Appendix D:Fairs Not Included". Encyclopedia of World's Fairs and Expositions. McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 423. ISBN 978-0-7864-3416-9.
- "Calendar". The Independent. 13 Jul 1914. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
- Pelle, Findling, ed. (2008). "Appendix B:Fair Statistics". Encyclopedia of World's Fairs and Expositions. McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 415. ISBN 978-0-7864-3416-9.
- "Lexicon - Empire Exhibition". Retrieved December 5, 2013.
- Alexander C.T. Geppert, Fleeting Cities. Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
- Exposition Coloniale of Paris 1931 photographs
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