World's Fair Research Articles

Giving voice to Anna Mahler, sculptor in exile

In his introduction to the catalogue published for a retrospective exhibition at the Salzburg Festival on the work of Vienna-born sculptor Anna Mahler (1904–88), which she did not live to see, Ernst Gombrich reflected on the fragmented career of an artist in exile: ‘We cannot hope ever to see the full range of [her] works. Many were destroyed in an air-raid on her abandoned studios in Vienna.’ Due to her transitory life between London, Los Angeles and Spoleto, Italy, following her forced flight from Vienna in 1938, Mahler’s works have been ‘scattered to the world, or have disappeared from sight’. Her Grand-Prix winning figure of a standing woman installed at the entrance to the Austria Pavilion at the Paris World Fair in 1937 is currently inaccessible (or has disappeared), as is Woman with Pitcher, commissioned for the Festival of Britain. Immersed in the world of music, Mahler’s portrait busts of significant musical and other cultural figures, mainly in bronze, held a particular and enduring place in her work. In parallel, throughout her life Mahler worked in stone, creating mainly female figures, ‘large, heavy creatures’ in the words of her daughter, Marina, which convey intimacy and introspection, however monumental in scale. This article will follow the trajectory of her life; the circles in which she moved in London; and her contribution to various exhibitions. In her own words, the article will evaluate the feeling of ‘inner necessity’ which drove her work, and the lightness of touch she displayed, in the filmed commentary on her ‘double’ sculpture, Two Women (1954).

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930: Cityscapes Photographs Debates

Sarah Kirby. Exhibitions, Music and the British Empire (review)

The 2022 World Fair (aka ‘Expo’) held in Dubai has recently drawn to a close. The next Expo will be hosted by Buenos Aires in 2023; the one after that will be staged in Osaka in 2025. These Expos are all linked to the first Expo of them all: the Great Exhibition staged in London in 1851. To be sure, the term ‘great’ is an understatement. The 1851 event, and those that followed it, were—and remain—colossal undertakings. They take years of planning, attract millions of visitors, and serve a variety of cultural and political purposes. These Expos are built and designed to ‘dazzle’—a word that Sarah Kirby uses in her book to describe the at times overwhelming effect of Expos on the senses (p. 52). […]

The ‘roaring’ twenties and African wildlife in fashionable dress: Part 1: Zebra fur patterns and femininity

The fur and fur patterns of African animals were part of the fashion industry’s exoticization of Africa during the 1920s. Avant-garde interest in African sculpture, African textiles and African jewellery blended with the popularity of jazz music played by African Americans to create a market for fashionable clothing inspired by Africa. Using fur from African animals, and textile prints and embroideries imitating fur patterns, reflected the most consistent interest in Africa. African safaris, world fairs and colonial expositions displaying African animals contributed to African exoticism. Books for children, textile designs illustrating African elephants and examples of fabric dyed colours called ‘lioness’ were some of the resulting consumer products. The graphic fur patterns of leopards, giraffes and zebras perfectly suited the bold geometric aesthetics of the Arts Modernes design style, while the fringe-like quality of monkey fur met the trend requirements for fringed evening wear. Zebra fur and patterns played a feminizing role in mediating the increasingly masculine dress and activities for women. The graphic black-and-white stripes linked the wearer to the exotics and adventure of Africa, while also reflecting contemporary design aesthetics and the hard-edged, chaotic American city. Because the zebra stripe originates on the fur of a peaceful prey animal, the pattern was perceived as graceful and feminine. For the modern women who wanted to participate in the adventures of the era, wearing zebra stripes tempered the interpretation of her wild life in the American urban jungle without compromising her femininity.

James E. Talmage and the Selenite Crystals

James E. Talmage and the Selenite Crystals

Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train by Jessamyn R. Abel

Reviewed by: Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train by Jessamyn R. Abel Morris Low (bio) Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train By Jessamyn R. Abel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 289. Brad Pitt's latest film, Bullet Train (Sony, 2022), reinforces what Jessamyn Abel contends are the contradictory images of Japanese high-speed rail: futuristic but also hiding some of the social problems, power plays, and politics at work in the larger society. Pitt's film is based on Bullet Train: A Novel (2021) by Japanese author Kōtarō Isaka, who portrays the train as the thrilling site of intersecting stories. Abel in her [End Page 269] own way also examines how the idea of the bullet train was used by various actors to promote their own agendas and the affective power of the train in helping the Japanese to reimagine their sense of identity as individuals, as well as at the level of city and nation. Readers of this journal will likely know Takashi Nishiyama's Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 (2014) and Christopher Hood's Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan (2006) before it. Abel builds on these studies. Steering largely clear of the technical matters that Nishiyama and others have written about and going beyond the chronological history that Hood helps provide, she regards the bullet train not as representing a major technological leap; her interests lie elsewhere. While readers may be familiar with Abel's recent articles on the topic, versions of which are included in the book, the total is greater than the sum. Each chapter provides insights combined with thoughtful analysis and offers a range of perspectives backed up by careful archival research that provides us with some sense of official narratives and disputes. We are also introduced to the scholarly literature in both Japanese and English, as well as to relevant magazine and newspaper articles, films, novels, and art. The latter sources allow us to gain some insight into the popular imagination surrounding the train and all its social and political baggage. Those who are interested in the history of railways and know Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Railway Journey (1986) will be familiar with some aspects of what Abel covers: the ways in which trains transform the landscape, changing ideas of time and space, and regional identity (ch. 2). But Abel goes beyond this. While cultural representations of the bullet train for both domestic and international audiences are part of what she examines, we also are privy to the policy-making process surrounding the bullet train in the planning stages, the fraught decision-making and politicking around the location of stations, and the displacement of residents to make way for the train (ch. 1). The train was linked to the future in terms of Japanese aspirations to become an information society (ch. 3). It also created a moment of nostalgia for Japan's former empire during the 1930s, when the Asia Express ran through Manchuria and there were hopes for a bullet train to be built in Japan itself (ch. 4). These hopes would later be realized, just in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, changing perceptions of trains and providing the Japanese government with a symbol of Japanese technological prowess that could be showcased at the 1964–65 New York World's Fair (ch. 5). While the prospect of a superconducting maglev train running between Tokyo and Osaka has been relegated to the distant future (conclusion), the Japanese people continue to embrace high-speed rail for the many reasons that Abel outlines. She makes the simple but profound statement that "people used physical infrastructures to build conceptual ones that would help them make sense of their world and reshape it in ways they hoped would make it better" (p. 19). I [End Page 270] recommend the book to all readers interested in the history of technology. It provides a useful framework for scholars to employ when considering other technologies. We need to pay close attention to how they emerged and were contested, while acknowledging the many meanings that can...

Sacred Socialism

Sacred Socialism

Military Spending and Innovation: Learning from 19th Century World Fair Exhibition Data

Military Spending and Innovation: Learning from 19th Century World Fair Exhibition Data

Military Spending and Innovation: Learning from 19th Century World Fair Exhibition Data

Military Spending and Innovation: Learning from 19th Century World Fair Exhibition Data

EXPO`21 HATAY’ın Sürdürülebilirlik Kapsamında Ekonomik, Kültürel ve Çevresel Etkileri

EXPO, which is used as the abbreviation of the word 'exposition', which means 'World Exhibition' or 'World's Fair' in English; It is a global event that has been organized around the world since the 19th century and aims to promote the city and country in which it is held in the national and international arena, raise awareness, educate the public, share innovations, produce, support development and encourage cooperation. Our country participated in this event for the first time with the 1851 London Expo Organization during the Ottoman Empire Period. It was hosted for the first time with the Expo Organization held in Antalya in 2016, and it is the host country for the second time with the Expo organization held in Hatay on April 1, 2022. Expo 2021 Hatay, whose full name is 'International Horticulture Fair Hatay, Turkey 2021'; It was accredited as a Class B international Expo by the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) on January 23, 2017 and registered according to the decision of the AIPH Board of Directors. Within the scope of this study, the economic, cultural and environmental effects of the EXPO'21 Hatay organization, which is a very important tool for the national branding and development of Hatay, were evaluated, and suggestions were made about the correct reuse of the fairgrounds and their sustainability after the organization was over.

Book Review: Joep Leerssen & Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities. International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

Book Review of Joep Leerssen & Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities. International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

On Making Us Whole Again.

On Making Us Whole Again Adam Biggs (bio) As a historian of race and medicine, my first visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture was a peculiar experience. I had been meaning to go since it opened in 2016 but only managed to arrange a trip this past summer as pandemic restrictions began to wane. By all accounts, it was extraordinary. World class in every way, the museum contained an abundance of richly informative and engaging pathways, beautiful exhibits adorned with artifacts, photographs, videos, artwork, descriptive narratives, holographic images, interactive features, and meditative spaces, each and all offering a vibrant account of African American lives and experiences. The building itself was also impressive. Distinct on the National Mall, its architectural styling signaled a decidedly modern enterprise, a statement about African American communities and the contemporary relevance of their history and culture. But, while compelling, something felt off to me. Only a few weeks prior, the House Select Committee had begun its televised public hearings investigating the January 6th insurrection and, before then, the Supreme Court inadvertently signaled its intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. Radical conservative activists had also been waging a vitriolic campaign against teaching African American history and sought to ban books that examined the nation's legacy of white supremacy. Each of these occurrences was amplified by or directly influenced by the fascist-aspiring, white nationalist Trump administration elected only weeks after the museum had opened. Indeed, if America was committed to celebrating the lives, contributions, and history of its Black citizens, it had a peculiar way of showing its enthusiasm. Strange though it may seem, as I toured the museum, my thoughts turned to Henry Adams, the American historian of the late-nineteenth century whose reflections on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair have always resonated with me. After visiting the exposition, Adams sensed a peculiar disjunction with history, wondering if the image of modernity projected at the fair was "real or only apparent." Indeed, if "the new American world could take this sharp and conscious twist towards ideals," Adams pined [End Page 478] sardonically, "one's personal friends would come in, at last, as winners in the great American chariot-race for fame."1 I suspect Adams and I would have different views about which of our "personal friends" should be victorious, but, having recently completed a dissertation on Black doctors and civil rights advocacy, I had a few people in mind. Ben Carson was not one of them. Known as a pathbreaking neurosurgeon, Carson had an installation at the museum dedicated to his achievements. According to the display, he had overcome poverty and failing grades in his youth to attend college at Yale University and, later, obtain a medical degree. After serving as a resident at Johns Hopkins, Carson became the first Black practitioner to head its Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery and, later, gained international notoriety for performing multiple "unprecedented" operations to separate conjoined twins. In 2006, Carson received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and, in 2008, a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Through his "Think Big" project, the exhibit explained, Carson offered himself as a role model promoting the benefits of education as a pathway to success for disadvantaged youth. Carson's exhibit seemed designed to affirm the potential for marginalized Black communities to lift themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve in the face of America's oppressive racial order. However, doing so required a very selective accounting. Nothing was said about Carson's failed attempt to secure the 2016 Republican presidential nomination or his subsequent support of the Trump administration and appointment as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The narrative was silent about his efforts to dismantle policies designed to prevent discrimination in housing and homeownership implemented during the Obama administration and made no mention of his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he sought to undermine the very medical institutions he relied on throughout his career by promoting speculative remedies and sewing doubt about FDA approved vaccines.2 As a student of Susan Reverby and familiar with the trappings of the "Great Doctor" narrative, I found this portrait of Carson discouraging, to [End Page 479...

“Then and Now”: The Making of a Visual Frontier

Abstract This article explores the role of the visual field in establishing and expanding the frontier of Jewish settlement in pre-state Palestine. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Zionist funds, including the Jewish National Fund and the Foundation Fund, among others, produced and distributed visual material in an ideologically controlled way that was meant to resonate with American audiences deeply invested in their own frontier mythologies. Through an examination of the work of formative Zionist photographers Abraham Soskin and Zoltan Kluger, as well as visual forms found at the Jewish Palestine Pavilion in the 1939–40 World's Fair in New York, the author identifies three central tenets of frontier building that wove their way through the Zionist visual field: transformation, citizenship, and security.

The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938 by Jessica L. Carr

Reviewed by: The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938 by Jessica L. Carr Zohar Segev Jessica L. Carr. The Hebrew Orient: Palestine in Jewish American Visual Culture, 1901–1938. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. 299 pp. The evolution of the Zionist movement under Herzl's leadership coincided with the mass migration of eastern European Jews to the United States that lasted from 1881 until the de facto closure of the United States borders to Jewish immigrants in 1924. American Zionist leaders worked out a unique interpretation of Zionism centered on the quest to legitimize Jewish life in the United States within the bounds of Zionism. They tried to build a Zionist movement that would provide the political, public, and ideological means for improving and bolstering the status of Jews in American immigrant society. Initially, American Zionism was an underfunded minority movement, but subsequently, most markedly following Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's Zionist activity during World War I and the Balfour Declaration, it became one of the most dominant public forces among American Jews and played a major role in the dramatic events experienced by the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s. The founding fathers of American Zionism invested considerable intellectual effort into formulating an ideological amalgam that would reconcile Herzl's philosophy with the American version of Zionism. American Zionism did indeed travel a different path from that of its European counterpart. American Zionists generally did not stress migration to Palestine as a fundamental tenet of their ideology and practice, preferring instead to cultivate Zionism as a central component in the fabric of their lives within American society rather than as a means to promote migration to the Land of Israel. Jessica L. Carr's valuable and absorbing book provides a unique and fascinating contribution toward understanding the course of the development of American Zionism and toward illuminating the complex network of relationships that existed between the Zionist movement and the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine, [End Page 458] and between the State of Israel and the American Jewish community. Orientalism and the way in which it is reflected in a wide variety of pictures and images provides the framework for the book's argument. Carr's book begins with a comprehensive discussion of its theoretical background, focusing mainly on the general concept of Orientalism while highlighting its specifically American manifestations. The use of Orientalism as a central organizing theme defining the collection of pictures presented in the book enables the author to discuss the fundamental questions concerning the place of Zionism among American Jews in general and during the first half of the twentieth century in particular. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a discussion of images connected to an organization, event, or publication, such as The Zionist Organization of America, The National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Jewish Exhibit and Jewish Day at the 1933 World's Fair, and maternalism in Hadassah's "Propaganda." We learn from the book that Orientalism was harnessed by American Jewish opinion shapers as a means to mitigate the tension between the opposition of American Jews in general and the Reform movement in particular to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and the Zionist movement, which aimed to do exactly that. The use of oriental rather than national elements was an indispensable tool in this process. Orientalism served to forge an affinity with the Land of Israel while eschewing nationalist imagery. The author correctly notes that Orientalism was also a crucial component of Christian imagery relating to the Land of Israel, and that this facilitated the use of these images in a Jewish context as well. Naturally, after the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and as the crisis of European Jewry deepened until its tragic culmination in the Holocaust, the Zionist and national elements in the pictures presented in the book came more to the fore, testifying to the growing importance of Zionism among American Jews. Throughout the book, Carr emphasizes the fact that Mizrahi Jews and Arab inhabitants of Palestine were excluded from the pictures published in the United States. Insofar as they did appear, they were portrayed as passive bystanders who...

Industrial Art, art industriel, Kunstgewerbe… Dmitry Grigorovitch et le concept de l’'art industriel' dans la Russie des années 1860

The article deals with the emergence of industrial art museums in Russia in the 1860s and anticipates some of the results of a major study on Russian decorative arts and World Fairs between 1851 and 1900. The history of these museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg between 1862 and 1870, which is very little known both in Russia and abroad, is chosen to illustrate, on the example of Russia, a common phenomenon in Europe in the 1850s-1870s, namely the appearance of industrial art museums to stimulate the development of national industries. The research is based mainly on the analysis of hitherto unexplored archival documents.

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

Dentistry and Embroidery in 1890s Utah: The Work of Kate D. Barron Buck

An Unrealized Vision: The "American Jewish Historical Exhibition" of 1901–1902

An Unrealized Vision:The "American Jewish Historical Exhibition" of 1901–19021 Jeffrey Shandler (bio) On June 27, 1901, the New York Times reported on "A Jewish Exhibition," planned to be presented "in this city during the Winter of 1901 and 1902" by the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), founded as a learned society in 1892. The committee appointed by AJHS to oversee the planning of the exhibition included "many prominent persons," among them Oscar Straus, Max Kohler, and Joseph Jacobs, all of New York; Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia; and others based in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Galveston, and San Francisco. Presiding over the committee was Cyrus Adler, a librarian at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading figure in several American Jewish institutions, including AJHS. The New York Times article mentioned some of the items that AJHS intended to display, singling out "Columbus's earliest records of [the] discovery [of America] written to Jews in Spain" and "[George] Washington's letters to Jews." The extensive, wide-ranging scope envisioned for this exhibition was evinced by plans to show "a collection of all books written by the Jews of America or pertaining to American Judaism." Also, alongside objects relating the long history of Jews' presence in America, "it has been determined to give Jews from Germany and Russia"—that is, immigrants who would have arrived in the United States within the preceding half-century or so (and, in the case of Jews from the Russian Empire, were then coming to America at an unprecedented rate)—their "proper space." In addition to objects pertaining specifically to Jewish life in America, the display would also include "an international exhibit of things pertaining to ecclesiastical art and to Jewish antiquities."2 The proposed exhibition would be the first of its kind in the United States. Indeed, until that date, public exhibitions of Jewish material culture anywhere had been very limited. Two major exhibitions had been presented in Europe during the previous century: a display of the [End Page 367] Judaica collection of composer Isaac Strauss at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, which had been mounted in London's Royal Albert Hall for three months in 1887. Jewish ceremonial objects had also been included in larger displays on world religions at American world's fairs in several cities in the 1880s and 1890s. None of these exhibitions addressed the history of Jews in America. By the end of 1901, however, less than half a year after the announcement in the New York Times, AJHS leaders decided to postpone the exhibition for a year and to "extend the work of the society on…the question of the advisability of holding an American Jewish Historical Exhibition."3 By the end of 1902, AJHS decided to table plans for the exhibition indefinitely, and the organization never pursued the exhibition further. Despite it being an unrealized project, the proposed American Jewish Historical Exhibition offers insights into the developing notion of placing Jewish items on public view as a new Jewish cultural practice. The planned exhibition marked a threshold in identifying what might constitute American Jewish material culture and conceptualizing its significance both for Jews in the United States and for their Christian neighbors. Shortly after the first temporary displays of Jewish ceremonial objects, manuscripts, and other items had taken place in Europe and the United States during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, efforts to create institutionalized collections of these materials were inaugurated on both sides of the Atlantic. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the opening of the first Jewish museum in Europe (in Vienna, in 1895) and the beginnings of the oldest Jewish museum in the United States (what eventually became the Jewish Museum of New York, in 1904). The exhibition envisioned by AJHS drew on some of these initiatives for inspiration, while addressing a particular focus on American Jewry. The records of this proposed project include discussions of what items to put on display and how to arrange them, as well as practical concerns regarding the exhibition's venue, promotion, and costs. Moreover, these discussions redounded to larger issues: the mission of AJHS as a learned society; how...

Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving by Peter Norton (review).

Reviewed by: Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving by Peter Norton Brian Ladd (bio) Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving By Peter Norton. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2021. Pp. 310. Implausible claims about the capabilities and technological maturity of safe, fast, and automated cars are neither new nor surprising, according to Peter Norton. He traces the rise and fall of these claims in the United States over nearly a century, arguing that they have never been true and, in fact, cannot be, since they are dishonest by design. This short book is a warning about the dangerous hype of self-driving cars, embedded in a broader argument about technology, capitalism, and marketing. The bulk of the book examines four waves of revved-up excitement about the imminent arrival of high-tech motoring, labeling each of them "Futuramas" after the General Motors exhibits at the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs, which marked the high points of the first two eras. Both displayed dazzling models of cities rebuilt around smoothly flowing highways filled with cars that conveyed everyone in ease and comfort. He devotes more space to the latter two waves: the mostly abortive campaign for "Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems" or "smart highways" in the 1990s, and "Autonorama" itself, the recent promotion of AVs. (Norton argues that they are not "autonomous" but merely "automated vehicles," since "autonomous mobility," after all, is better known as walking.) Each era's prophets proclaimed a future of effortless driving and free-flowing traffic, always just a few years away. Their promises remained unfulfilled because—and this is Norton's central argument—they were intended not to be accurate, but to keep us hooked. Charles Kettering's plea to "keep the customer dissatisfied" on behalf of General Motors in 1929 and the business guru Clayton Christensen's paean to "disruption" at the century's end both entailed dangling an illusory ideal before customers in order to keep them chasing new products. Norton sees parallels to other profit-driven scams: "safer" tobacco, DDT, and opioids. He maintains that an AV that actually operated safely on a city street, braking for pedestrians and all other potential obstacles, would never be fast enough to entice consumers. He extends his analysis of their inherent failure into a fifth chapter on the fallacies of "data-driven" policies and their false claims of inevitable progress. Instead, they serve the interests of companies that stand to profit from keeping people in their cars longer while harvesting reams of data from them. Two key premises underpin his analysis: car dependency and induced traffic (although he does not use the latter term, referring instead to the Jevons paradox). At every step, he explains, the tantalizing promise of automated mobility has reinforced a disastrous commitment to an ever more car-centered transportation system (an honorable exception being Walt Disney and his monorails), with all its attendant bloodshed, sprawl, and [End Page 1196] inconvenience. High-tech and data-driven "solutions" merely reinforce this dependency, and putative experts simply dismiss public transit as an alternative. Meanwhile, the decades-long failure to acknowledge the evidence that new roads encourage additional driving has promoted wasteful and never-ending investments in road expansion. History and polemic are uneasy bedfellows, the latter demanding shortcuts and simplifications. Most notable in Autonorama is the absence of politics. Norton's previous book, Fighting Traffic, a detailed study of the first of these "Futuramas," has been remarkably influential among transit advocates. In it he revived a term that the emerging constellation of automotive interests coined for themselves in the 1920s, "motordom," and Fighting Traffic's influence has singlehandedly made the word an appealing label for the bad guys in the contemporary conversation about transportation policy. Here, Norton offers only a vague definition of "motordom" while identifying it as the driving force behind car-dependent sprawl across the entire century. Readers are expected to make the (plausible) assumption that "motordom" has long held sway over government. Politics does, however, crop up in his conclusion, where he appeals to it to save us from data-driven car dependency. But a polemic cannot stop to evaluate every assumption, and sometimes it offers hope...

Motel Builders of the Modern West

Motel Builders of the Modern West

Abuse of economic dependence and its interaction with competition policy: the economics perspective

A number of jurisdictions, including in the European Union, have adopted legal provisions that ban situations in which one contractual party holds and abuses a position of economic strength relative to a counterparty. This practice, typically referred to as ‘abuse of economic dependence’, can be invoked by companies before national courts, or by or before national competition authorities if they deem that such abuse has implications for competition. A recent yet sudden increase in abuse of economic dependence decisions by national competition authorities indicates that this enforcement tool is gaining traction, possibly due to its lower evidentiary bar compared to the more established abuse of dominance under EU or national competition law. However, if competition policy is intended to protect competition and ultimately consumers, it is unclear how the relationship between two companies can affect competition, especially if the stronger negotiating party is not dominant and the weaker party is too small to make a tangible impact on consumer welfare ‒ unless the same contractual terms are imposed on a large number of weaker parties. This article sets out the principal provisions of such legislation in Belgium, France, Germany and Italy and its enforcement in France and Italy, before considering the economics of bargaining and offering some policy recommendations and conclusions. This article shows that the issues that laws prohibiting the abuse of economic dependence are intended to safeguard can be dealt with by other means, for example contract law. If it is intended to apply these legal provisions to highly innovative sectors such as digital, other regulatory tools may be better placed to bring competition and fairness in the online world, such as the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Nevertheless, it is likely that these enforcement tools will be used more often. As such, it is important to set high thresholds for when such enforcement tools can be used by competition authorities and to introduce quantitative analyses to inform their assessment.