Fair Encounters: Bulgaria and the “West” at International Exhibitions from Plovdiv to St. Louis

Abstract

By the late nineteenth century, world's fairs had captured the imagination of Bulgarian political and intellectual elites. Bulgarians were not only enthusiastic pilgrims to the major world's fairs in the west, but by 1892 they had staged their own international trade exhibition in Plovdiv. Here, as elsewhere, the fair phenomenon was an arena for broadcasting messages of national prowess and progress, as well as a context for the performance and contestation of national identity. But for Bulgarians the fair phenomenon at home and abroad was also part of a highly contested process of negotiating its unique place between east and west, politically, economically, and culturally. The tensions and dilemmas that characterized the Plovdiv fair experience were also palpable in Bulgarian participation in fairs abroad, such as the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and the St. Louis Fair of 1904, where both the nation and the west were yet again reimagined.