Imperialism, faith, and show: the participation of the Christian Churches at the colonial and international exhibitions of the 19th century

Abstract

Both International and Colonial Exhibitions were the most representative examples of the economic development and the overseas expansion of the most powerful European States during the second half of the 19^th century. The objective of this article is to analyze the way Christian Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, approached the organization of these events and to reexamine their channels of participation using the exhibitions that were organized in England, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Italy as reference. We will take a look at the initial difficulties that were documented, the different ways of interpreting the expositive phenomenon among the Churches and, finally, we will examine the most important international and colonial exhibitions which had an ecclesiastic presence. We found that this participation basically involved a display of the missionary work they carried out as a way to conciliate (partially at least) the interest of both the organizing States and the Churches.