Dossiers over vrouwengeschiedenis

Reconstructing the Fatherland
Comparative Perspectives on Women and 19th Century Exhibitions

MARIA GREVER

Dit artikel is het openingsartikel van de bundel Een Vaderland voor Vrouwen, Amsterdam, Stichting beheer IISG/VVG, 2000, 192 pag., ills., ISBN 90-6861-196-8

Whereas in the 18th century the concept of the nation was the domain of the enlightened elite, in the 19th century the word 'fatherland' became part of a national vocabulary for a larger public.[1] Through education and popular media the national community gradually developed into a meaningful framework for divergent groups and parties.[2] In this transformation process the national and international industrial and applied art exhibitions played an important role.[3] A valued and regular phenomenon of the cultural scenery during the whole of the 19th century, these exhibitions became enterprises of the fatherland par excellence. In course of time they created a strong national consciousness: exhibitions began to function as imagined communities of the visiting people who did not know each other personally but somehow experienced a sense of unity. The attracted crowds jointly watched, judged and enjoyed the innovations of industry, science, and thrilling entertainment's of the emerging modern society. Eager to buy new consumer goods the audience was itself both product and producer of modernity.[4]
Considering the strong argument for 'separate spheres' and the public character of the national and international exhibitions in the 19th century, the preponderance of male organizers, male captains of finance, and male exhibitors in this genre is hardly surprising. Apparently there was not much room for women within public politics, entangled as they were within the domestic and social sphere. Denise Riley emphasizes the width of the gulf between 'women' considered en masse and the political realm, despite feminist attempts to destabilize the opposition between 'the social/the female' and 'modern politics'.[5] However, exhibitions and other specific modern cultural phenomena of the 19th century - such as amusements parks - eroded the rigid boundaries between the public and the private spheres, between social classes, ethnic and gender groups. What Miriam Bratu Hansen has called the 'liberatory appeal of "modern" for a mass public',[6] included particularly the appeal of exhibitions because of its massive, multiple scale and the synchronism of instruction and pleasure, of visibility and invisibility, of text and image.
Hence, these exhibitions offered women interesting possibilities to taste the social and political transformations of the modern age. Women figured both as objects of the encyclopedic project and carriers of national identity, they entered the site in their capacity of consumers and visitors, and some acted as organizers of pavilions and buildings. In these women's exhibitions they could present themselves as the new agents of national and imperial culture. If they also claimed their right to citizenship, exhibitions could become a catalyst in the development of modern feminism and function as experiment gardens for their reconstruction of the fatherland. In this contribution I explore the representation of women at 19th century exhibitions and its implications for the historical antagonism of 'the female' and the political realm. After a brief history of the exhibition genre and some women's initiatives, I compare the Dutch National Exhibition of Women's Labour in 1898 with its national and international forerunners.[7]

The encyclopedic project

National industrial and applied art exhibitions originated in France and Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. Soon after, other European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Spain and Russia organized similar manifestations. They generally followed the French model: national governments and societies for the encouragement of manufactures and commerce stimulated firms and individual entrepreneurs to display all kinds of products, machines, and art in contemporary buildings.[8] The 'Temple of Industry' was the centerpiece, official ceremonies and royal visits accompanied the manifestations, catalogues of displays and walking tour guides were its characteristic text books. The exhibitions aimed at the selling of products, the promotion of competition, and the instruction of entrepreneurs and artisan classes. Apart from these economic goals, the political and cultural manifestation of the nation came to the front. National exhibitions intended to be a showcase for a specific (French, English, German or Dutch) national identity, especially for foreign visitors.[9] This development was encouraged by the world exhibitions.
After 1851, when the first 'Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations' was held in London's Crystal Palace, a discourse between Western nations emerged. Hundreds of thousands observed and compared the progress of different nations. Exhibitions became sites of cultural complexity, contradiction and struggle. For many exhibitors and politicians the international aspect of these gigantic enterprises was to emphasize national and racial difference, not similarity.[10] They exposed their fantasies on modernity, and the nation they represented. Devised as unities of time, place and action, the exhibitions remind us now of classical plays. For three or six months visitors could stroll at the exhibition grounds from one room to another, from history to the present, from foreign cultures to modern industry. People walked, watched,performed and consumed. Huge numbers of visitors felt attracted to the exposure of objects, technical inventions, human showcases, and modern pleasures (the Ferris Wheel and the Luna Park).
People also attended conferences, which were generally organized at the occasion of both national and international fairs. They listened to lectures, participated in the debates, and exchanged ideas. Conferences were held on divergent subjects such as: history of art, banking, homeopathic medicine, architecture, chess, electricity, anthropology and archeology, statistics, education, colonial issues, the Red Cross, and anti-slavery.[11] The meetings generated new groups with other political questions and cultural manners. Reformers, scientists, employers, labourers, and advocates of women's rights reconstituted national identities closely related to colonial discourse. Particularly world exhibitions contributed to the emergence of the labour movement and likewise to the rise of feminism.[12] The first international feminist conferences were held since the 'Exposition universelle de 1878, Paris', a matter which will be discussed later in this article.[13]

One of the main organizing principles of the world exhibitions was the idea of universality,a loose notion of unity and multitude. The universalistic claims resulted in the attempt to expose every product, object and human being from all over the world. Yet, although the official committees arranged and rearranged the endless quantities of assembled objects, the classification never fitted in an overall view. At most the planning referred to a metaphysical or approaching synthesis.[14] To avoid confusion the architects created a maximum of transparency. They tried to catch important exhibits within a single vast building, the famous examples being Crystal Palace of Joseph Paxton in 1851 and the exhibition palace of Frédérique Le Play and Jean-Baptiste Krantz at the 'Exposition universelle de Paris' in 1867. This architecture illustrates how much world exhibitions were imbued with the 18th century vision of the panopticum (total control through the interiorisation of spectatorship) and the panorama (total overview from a distant perspective).
The 'colosseum-structure' of Le Play with its seven concentric galleries embodied the panoptical idea in a remarkable way. If the visitors walked along the length of one of the radial passageways, they would pass through a country's display in all its aspects and diversity (from machinery, weapons, household equipments, paintings to the inner court yard). If they followed one of the encircling rings, they were able to compare the state of development of different countries in a field. A spacious park on the Champs de Mars with different types of buildings from all over the world surrounded the 'colosseum'.[15] The Eiffel tower of the Paris 'Exposition universelle' in 1889 expressed the panoramic concept. The tower of the daring engineer Gustav Eiffel could be 'conquered' by foot or by one of the eight elevators, with the highest platform for the public at a height of 276 metres.
Although world exhibitions were the culmination of new ways of seeing, at the same time they transmuted modern spectatorship and gradually created its Desintegration.[16] The infinite quantities of objects and inventions, the moving platforms and stairways for the public, and its overstimulation caused by new bodily sensations and mobile spectatorship, led to disorientated experiences of the visitors. Illustrative for this desintegration process was the abandonment of the idea of one panoptical concept by the organizers.[17] World exhibitions consisted of numerous halls, pavilions and parks ever since. In this form they seemed even more congenial with the encyclopedia of the Enlightenment: open systems without a specific beginning, middle or end, every pavilion and room embodying a lemma. Visitors could start everywhere,moving from one pavilion to the other, assembling a chain of meanings. Like encyclopedic readers, they could make their own parcours and narrative.[18] The diffusing and sometimes chaotic experiences of the crowd heralded the consumer culture and the development of a mass audience.[19]
But the visitor's freedom did not mean that the exhibitions were constructed without any frame or argument. They were for instance particularly constituted by the Western opposition between civilization and savagery. In spite of the fact that all nations had to be exposed, it was clear from the very outset that the 'advanced' nations had priority. Planners designed a central area featuring industrial merchandise in displays embellished by gleaming symbols of Western culture and a periphery showing the colonial dependencies of the homeland.[20] This combination of opposites, the idea of civilization opposed to negatives, such as barbarism, with derivative dualisms such as art versus culture, or historical versus timeless, was paradigmatic for all exhibitions. It naturalized the representations, transforming them into obvious truths. Visitors knew that the exhibits 'represented' a specific reality, but the presence of objects, products and people provided an undeniable urge to recognize its 'authenticity'.[21] In particular exhibits of black and coloured peoples from the colonies were popular. Complete families were transported. For the duration of the fair they lived and worked under bad conditions in 'native villages', watched by curious sightseers who considered them a lower race.[22]
In the scattered exhibition halls and pavilions civilization was represented as proceeding forward in a panoptical space in which all differences could be developed,like in a virtual expanding universe.[23] Although progress was central in this Enlightenment view, Anne McClintock points at its reverse side: traveling backward in historical time, in which colonized people exist in a permanently anterior time within the geographical space of the modern empire as anachronistic humans. They were the living embodiment of the archaic 'primitive'. She distinguishes two concepts to illuminate this imperialistic discourse: 'panoptical time' and 'anachronistic space'. 'Panoptical time' refers to images of global history, consumed at glance in a single spectacle from a point of privileged invisibility; 'anachronistic space' is the mapping of progress, the images of 'archaic' time - that is, non-European time - which systematically evoked to identify what was historically new about industrial modernity.[24] At the world exhibitions visitors could travel backwards in time by walking from the modern machinery hall to Java and Senegal (anachronistic space), watching 'authentic' African artisans and Javanese dancers - sometimes behind fences - as a point of privileged invisibility (panoptical time). White men and women from different classes witnessed the 'advancement' of the Western world in contrast with the displayed 'otherness'. They could jointly comment on these human showcases, or they could walk away indifferently.
The presence of colonized people not only stimulated feelings of white superiority but equally fascinated avant-garde Western artists and the large public. In 1889 the composer Claude Debussy felt inspired by the free structures of the Javanese gamelan music; the displays of Tahitian cabins stimulated Paul Gauguin to travel to Tahiti where he created his famous paintings of people (mostly women).[25] The theatrical performances- such as war dances and marriage ceremonies - perpetuated racial stereotypes, but were hardly static rituals. They were often transformative and sometimes allowed room for the displayed people to invent new traditions that helped to underpin the shift from colonial forms of nationalism.[26] Yet, the imperialistic dimension of these habitats cannot be ignored, especially not if we compare them with the historical quarters at world exhibitions, such as 'old-Brussels' at the 'Exposition internationale de Bruxelles' in 1897.[27] 'Old-Brussels' glorified the nation's past and represented nostalgic sentiments, compensating the expected losses of modernity. The colonial villages instead referred to 'archaic' time; the exhibits of nonwhite people as objects of entertainment imparted to the audience a civilized status. At the end of the 19th century protests from activists, journalists, and the displayed people themselves rose against the racist 'villages'. Whereas the Dutch had gained a lot of success with the Javanese 'kampong' at the Paris 'Exposition universelle de 1889', in 1900 at the 'Exposition universelle et internationale de Paris' the Dutch national committee could not arrange any Javanese dancer or musician anymore. The Javanese people refused to come.[28]
The encyclopedic striving for unity and multitude of the exhibitions implied also that women could not be disregarded. To some extent their exhibits were part of the megalomaniac project to classify and visualize the whole world. More significant,white women of the middle classes were important visitors. Their presence pushed the growing commercial goals of the exhibitions. A typical exhibition feature was the apparent liberty for these women to visit the sites without male companions. While wandering on the exhibition grounds, they challenged the male concept of the flâneur. However, according to Lauren Rabinovitz, this strolling was less connected to flânerie and a radical subjectivity, and more to the rituals of urban commodity consumption.[29] Women had become important targets for selling goods, making their husbands spend. Particularly the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago assured them a safe cultural place, while masking the social dangers of mixing classes, races and ethnic groups. The imaginary bird's-eye point of view, reproduced in maps and tourist guides,displayed the Exposition as a distant panorama, offering the illusion of mastery and comprehension. Together with department stores the exhibitions helped to teach them about their proper places within the larger visual culture.[30] But women also used the genre deliberately for political purposes. As the women's movement emerged, female activists considered the exhibitions to be powerful sites to demonstrate woman's value.

First women's exhibition initiatives

Already in the 1870s Dutch women exhibited their products in women's bazaars,first in Delft in 1871, and, on a more national scale, in Leeuwarden in 1878.[31] The Pavilion of Women's Labour (Pavillon der Frauenarbeit) in Vienna in 1873 was the first attempt of this genre at a world scale. The central aim of this world exhibition was to demonstrate who was working ('Wer arbeitet'), with the gender division of labour one of the important issues. The idea was to display women's work both in a 'general' and in a separated section.[32] The integration of women's work somehow failed as the few displays in the general section were often anonymous. The women's pavilion seemed more successful. Women's associations from abroad (Germany, the Netherlands, England) responded enthusiastically. However, due to a lack of international networks, foreign participation did not succeed. In fact the women's pavilion was a pure Austrian (national) occasion. What's more, with its emphasis on the home and housework it was constructed as a kind of feminine sphere which should soften the harsh exhibits of the machinery hall and other masculine sections. Industrial work of women was only represented in some reports and pictures.[33]
Soon after the Vienna exhibition American women were asked to organize a women's section in the Main Exhibition Hall at the 'Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition' and to generally support the efforts of the Board.[34] The Centennial Board appointed thirteen women from Philadelphia to form a Women's Centennial Executive Committee with Mrs. Elizabeth D. Gillespie as president. Paul Greenhalgh assumes there was a successful lobbying from women's groups in gaining recognition from the Centennial Board. Jeanne Weimann argues that the Board members needed the active cooperation of the women because they were still far short of money. However that may be, in June 1875, after the women had raised a large sum of money, they were told there was no room for them in the main hall. The Board advised to build a separate pavilion, paid for by themselves. Despite this misfortune, within a few months the furious Mrs. Gillespie and her companions raised enough money, and all kinds of materials flowed to Philadelphia. On May 10, 1876, the Woman's Pavilion opened its doors. It was a wooden building, enclosed 12.192 square meters, housing among others a library, an art gallery, a working machinery operated by women engineers, exhibits of women inventors, a section on education demonstrated the Fröbel system with pupils from a local orphanage, and the office of the New Century for Women, the only regularly published newspaper at the Centennial. The pavilion provided also exhibits from foreign countries. From the Netherlands five women sent in needlework, wax roses, and a printed oratorio.[35]
The women's exhibitions in the 1870s offered ambiguous images of gender relations,both reaffirming 'the female' and undermining the middle-class codes of gender difference. Women displayed their abilities in needlework, spinning and weaving, butter-and-cheese making, and education;[36] at the same time the very existence of these projects with women in charge provoked the public. Some European writers found the women's pavilion in Philadelphia disturbing, and commented upon the women themselves rather than upon their work. The journalist Katharina Migerka from Vienna, one of the organizers of the Women's Pavilion in 1873, admired American women but feared they were 'domineering wives and poor homemakers'.[37] The exhibition sites also attracted female activists. For instance in Philadelphia the fourth annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Women, chaired by the famous astronomer Maria Mitchell, was held in the Women's Pavilion. This concern with the advancement of professional women pleased feminist leaders, but did not satisfy Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton and Matilda Gage. They protested over the lack of political subjects in the pavilion and organized a counter-demonstration on July 4, proclaiming 'The Declaration of Women's Rights'.[38]

It came as no surprise that the first international feminist conference was held two years later, at the Paris world exhibition of 1878. Although the meetings were too moderate in the eyes of the French suffragette Hubertine Auclert, women showed their strength in public.[39] The conferences stimulated women's movements in other countries, as foreign weekly papers and newspapers reviewed the lectures. Among the women speakers from abroad the Dutch pioneer Elise van Calcar-Schiotling lectured on the education reformer Frederik Fröbel, countering the prejudice that his education system would alter schools into 'learning factories'.[40] In 1889 the activist May Wright Sewall, involved with the founding of the American National Council of Women a year before, had been the only American delegate to the Women's Congresses of the Paris world exhibition. Together with other feminists she made plans for an International Council of Women (ICW), suggesting that the ICW should meet at the Chicago world's fair in 1893 as the 'Congress of Representative Women'.Other feminist conferences followed at the world exhibitions of Brussels 1897 and Paris 1900.
Exhibitions legitimized and enlarged women's presence in public. Closely connected with their new role as consumers in mass culture, women also acted as exhibitors, organizers, and public speakers. Particularly the Woman's Building of the Chicago world's fair and the performance of women during the crowded congresses with over 150.000 participants in one week had made an enormous impression on foreign visitors. Many felt encouraged to visualize and to discuss their cause for a national forum. After the American success, Danish women organized a women's exhibition in Copenhagen two years later. With regards to the Dutch situation, at first the Woman's Building had caused much disagreement within the women's movement. The Netherlands Board of Lady Managers - presided by the rather conservative lady Jeltje de Bosch Kemper - only displayed twelve reports on the actual situation of women in the Netherlands. There was no official delegation of Dutch women nor any product from their hands in Chicago. In 1896 disappointed female activists copied the Danish plan and decided to build a national exhibition of their 'own' in The Hague.
Although Greenhalgh argues that after Chicago women's buildings and the like were rapidly appropriated by anti-suffrage forces to construct a vision of womanhood exclusive of the vote,[41] it is clear however, that some European women's exhibitions were still accompanied with the socio-political debate.

The Dutch Board of Lady Managers for the Chicago World Exposition in 1893.

Despite socialist criticism and obstruction within their ranks, Dutch feminists and other active women managed to organize a National Exhibition of Women's Labour .This 19th century genre afforded the woman's issue a national and political status. After the failure of a tangible display of Dutch women's issues in the Woman's Building in Chicago and inspired by the Danish success, a small group planned a women's exhibition in the year of queen Wilhelmina's inauguration as the first female head of state in the Netherlands.[42] This event would offer an outstanding opportunity to advocate the broadening of schooling and labour opportunities for Dutch women, and to make visible the different aspects of their lives and activities. On the outskirts of The Hague, in the Scheveningen dunes, wooden pavilions - reminiscent of Philadelphia - were set up. Just before the opening on the 9th of July, the white painted buildings rose proudly above the yellow dunes.
During the summer some 94.000 visitors (including the queen and her mother) came to take notice of objects on display and visualizations of labour conditions ofwomen, from agricultural labour and sweat shops to modern industry and science. Exhibits came from factories, workshops, farm-houses, hospitals, schools, associations and individuals. Live-demonstrations were organized inside and outside the building. For instance in the Hall of Industry sixty factory girls daily demonstrated modern production methods. Similar to the (inter)national exhibitions this celebration of technical achievements symbolized rationalism, functionalism and belief in progress, and contrasted with the 'Javanese village' in the open air. In this 'exotic part' 37 Javanese men and women lived and worked in different small pavilions, representing 'authentic life' in the East Indies. In the conference-hall ten conferences and separate lectures were held around topics, such as professional training, social work, domestic servants, public morality, colonies, suffrage, feminism and socialism, motherhood and education. May Wright Sewall was one of the few foreign speakers. Members of women's associations, intellectuals, journalists, scientists and politicians came to participate in the debates. At some meetings - for instance when the socialists attacked women's suffrage - the exchange of opinion could lead to fierce debate. The 1898 Exhibition formed a watershed in the emerging Dutch women's movement and embodied a crucial moment for the reflection on gender, citizenship and the nation. Because of its explicit national character and its broad scope the Exhibition can be interpreted as one of the first deliberate collective attempts of Dutch women to bring about their involvement with the fatherland. A vanguard took the initiative and mobilized some five hundred other women after intensive propaganda tours in every province of the country.[43] Men were excluded from the organization. For three months this women's community ruled the Exhibition grounds in Scheveningen.
Although the rhetoric of unity dominated the speeches, brochures and articles in the newspapers, tensions within the organization started to build up from the very start of the enterprise. Moreover, the Exhibition was overtly built on asymmetries of class and race. Apart from one servant girl and one woman worker, the majority of the organizers came from a middle class, Protestant and intellectual background; almost 10% belonged to the aristocracy. The actual display of factory-girls, woman farmers and people from the colonies manifested class and ethnic differences. The organizers took a tremendous risk by contracting girls and women from the workingclasses to show a variety of labour. Apart from some dangerous and noisy machines, the exploitation of this labour (wages and working hours) had to be continued up to a point. Class boundaries between working girls and the organizing women were strengthened at the Exhibition, the more so as female supervisors had to serve as rolemodels. Especially the Committee for Industry had consistently pleaded for the appointment of trained female supervisors in Dutch factories with working girls. In the three-days conference on professional training several speakers pointed at, what we call today, the sexual harassment of women and girls by foremen.[44] Female supervisors from the 'civilized' classes would preserve morality on the work-floor,and the girls would not be considered indecent. The profile of the female superintendent for the Exhibition expressed this ideal, which referred to the discourse of socialliberalism: she should be a tactful, self-restrained and responsible Dutch woman from the 'civilized classes', who should carefully guard public morality; she had to inform the visitors, to supervise female guards and women cleaners, and to watch for thieves and people who might disturb demonstrations of women's work.[45] Together with the police female guards also monitored the artificial Javanese village. Here they even controlled a small colonial territory.

Walking tour
What could visitors actually see and experience at the 1898 Exhibition? The entrance of the white and symmetrical building brought them into the Hall of Industry. Justlike in other national industrial exhibitions, this section was the centre-piece of the Exhibition. There they saw neatly dressed working girls, controlled by 'decent' female guards. With the white, life-size statue of a female brick porter in the same hall the organizers deliberately wanted to revalue the dirty and low valued work of these women.[46] Beyond the Hall of Industry the public walked through galleries from which they could visit the inner-garden, the exhibit rooms, and the conference-hall. The building's construction enabled the public to view what they wanted, to form their own opinions and stories.
In the right wing the visitor could enter for instance a pharmacy-room with a female pharmaceutical chemist, a restaurant with a bust of queen Wilhelmina, or a library with valuable manuscripts and books written by learned women. Only in the room of social work misery and poverty in the Netherlands were exhibited; for instance lists with low wages of seamstresses were meant to impress the female public. Next to this department, in the West-Indies room, a black servant from the Dutch colony Surinam, Louise Yda, was supposed to be explaining and selling indigenous products. However, she often self-consciously transgressed the threshold. According to a feministreporter, 'Sasa' - as she was called (probably the name of a former slave woman) -cheerfully showed herself, walked around, talked and laughed with everybody. Shewore colourful clothes, and always smiled; to the surprise of the public she spoke perfectly Dutch. The fact that she was the daughter of a slave woman, liberated in1858, was not mentioned. She wore the koto (dress with many layers to hide the female forms for the slave-holders) and the angisa (tied head-shawl). In the eyes ofthe organizers Louise Yda represented the 'primitive' world of the 'good-natured' blacks in the West Indies, gazed upon by Western visitors.
In the left wing of the galleries, next to a room with (Dutch) domestic industry, the East Indies room offered examples of art and handicraft. Here a christianized native woman distributed brochures about mission work in the East Indies; dummies represented 'deaconesses', and pictures of hospitals and schools were displayed. Not striking the eye directly, but unmistakably present in the same room were traces of colonial violence with which in the last ten years great parts of Indonesia were subjected. A so-called 'Seroetoe or Sirih basket' was exhibited, found at the battle field near the defence of Sjeck Daoed. These baskets were made by mothers, wives or fiancées of the Atjeh warriors as a kind of amulet against danger.[47] These objects suggested that colonial wars of conquest were a by-product of colonial politics. The fact that Atjeh women fought with their husbands against the Dutch army was neglected, as was the appeal of the feminist Nellie van Kol, a year before, to stop this war in Atjeh.[48] Protests like hers were often overruled. Sensitive political issues had to be ignored, they would disturb this 'peaceful' exhibition of Indonesian industry. Via the exit of the East Indies room the visitor could step outside and find some relaxation in the Javanese village. Here, watched over by a statue of the Dutch conqueror of the East Indies J.P. Coen, 'kampong Insulinde' with its winding roads formed the exotic part of the Exhibition.[49] From the total surface of the terrain (31.200 square meters) 20 % was reserved for this village. People tasted Indonesian food, observed marriage ceremonies and Javanese women doing batik-work, and came under the spell of the gamelan music. The thinly dressed, elegant Javanese musicians and dancers, sometimes shivering from the Dutch cold, appealed to the imagination of the Dutch. Visitors finished their walking tour in the left wing of the galleries. They could watch in separate rooms products of art needle work, school books and education reports, pass the wash and ironing section, and enter the Hall of Industry again for the exit.

After-effects
The 1898 National Exhibition affected Dutch women in several ways. Firstly, this audio-visual event had functioned as a kind of training course for the organizers. These bourgeois women learned to speak in public, to chair meetings, to raise money, and to deal with conflicts. The set-up of different displays, conferences and performances within a confined space and time resulted into a broadening of their horizon. Most women had visited factories, sweatshops, and hospitals for the first time in their life; they had corresponded with 'the far East and the far West', worlds which were often unknown to them. The construction and the decoration of buildings and gardens, the order of the machinery, the objects and people at the Exhibition, had brought industry, art, vocational training, social misery, sport, colonies and politics within their reach. The direction of this exhibition gave them the opportunity to taste the power of management.
Secondly, the Exhibition evoked much response. The propaganda tours for the Exhibition in every Dutch province attracted a large public. Women's issues in the emancipation novel Hilda van Suylenburg (written by the Exhibition president, Cecile Goekoop -de Jong van Beek en Donk), the brochures and newsletters were eagerly discussed. For three months the exhibits and conferences were in the spot-lights, reviewed by all national and local newspapers. The public debate about the broadening of schooling and labour opportunities for women, both in the newspapers and in the parliament, often referred to the Exhibition conferences. Some manufacturers decided to appoint female guards to watch over the working girls in their factories,the Dutch government consented to assign a female adjunct-inspector of Labour,and a few vocational training systems allowed female students. Although science was not an issue at the Exhibition, there was also a remarkable increase of female students in science after 1898.
The Exhibition had generated also a large profit of 22.000 Dutch guilders, onaccount of the entrance-fee, donations and the sale of products.[50] In 1901 this money was invested into a National Bureau of Women's Labour, which functioned for forty years as the permanent office to improve the labour conditions of women.[51] All this increased the self-confidence of the organizers and stimulated the women's movement. At several places in the Netherlands women joined existing associations or founded new one's such as the Dutch Domestic Servants Association and the Association for the Improvement of Women's Clothing. Finally, the local committees of the Exhibition organization formed the basis for the Dutch National Council of Women. Although it took another twenty years before the women's vote was won in the Netherlands (in 1919), the appearance of these female managers and organizers signified the break-through of women into the public sphere in the Netherlands. This development was also possible because of some significant socio-political transformations. After 1880 the liberal elite had lost its monopoly on politics, new groups entered the public arena with other issues and stylistic devices. The Orthodox Protestants and the Socialists demanded the extension of the state's protective role in society.They used a rhetoric with a strong appeal on emotions and interests of their ranks.[52] Feminists started to intensify their actions in the 1890s as well, culminating in the organisation of their Exhibition. However, in contrast with Orthodox Protestants and Socialists the majority of the five hundred women organizers appealed only in a selective way on emotions, and they acted not in the interests of all women. The 'old-liberal' language of productive virtue (i.e. a civic and political virtue enriched by the new 19th century attribute of industriousness), ánd the appeal on responsibility together formed their argument to advocate the woman's issue.[53] In contrast with former Dutch national exhibitions, the representation of gender at the 1898 Exhibition had been explicitly reversed. During thís manifestation women could determine what and whom the visitors could watch and listen to, with the specific purpose to augment the visibility of women and femininity. In this sense they also had the opportunity to figure as role models for other women. But we must realize that this identification process seemed limited particularly to white bourgeois women. Despite the organizers claims for the improvement of labour conditions for all Dutch women, it was rather characteristic that they did not consider factory girls, domestic servants, or Javanese women as one of themselves, as their 'sisters'.[54] On the contrary, in their ephemeral fatherland, built in the Scheveningen dunes, they had learned to keep them in tutelage.
Feminists had discovered new opportunities to prove the value of their labour. Evil situations could be prevented if 'civilized' women were professionally trained. Therefore they should have access to specific occupations to serve the well-being of others: female surveyors in factories, woman inspectors of labour, wardresses in prison, and female supervisors of housing. Moreover, apart from the Dutch 'sons' who traveled to the colonies as officers, journalists, scientists, entrepreneurs,[55] Dutch 'daughters' could educate the Indies by supervising soldiers, orphans, concubines, natives, and the sick. Caring and elevating others legitimized their right to citizenship and to see themselves as part of the ruling classes in the Netherlands.[56] The reconstruction of the Dutch fatherland during the summer of 1898 by those self-restrained, middle-class bourgeois women organizers was obviously attended with notions of both class and race. Illustrative in this respect was the conflict with the Javanese workers and artists after the closing of the Exhibition. The group refused to travel with their impresario to the next show in Germany. They demanded to return to Indonesia. The impresario declined to pay their passage. Thanks to the voluntarily gifts of some rich ladies in the organization they could go home nevertheless. Although the Javanese had contributed much to the profits of the Exhibition, both the East Indies Committee and the Central Board distanced themselves from this labour conflict. This incident probably caused the refusal of the Indonesian people to come to the Paris world exhibition in 1900. It illustrates how a national women's exhibition could affect the relations between the homeland and its colony.

Comparative perspectives: concluding remarks

Since the 1870s women managed their own displays at national and international fairs. Some also had exhibitions in the major sections, but in that case they were hardly visible as women and if so, they were mere exceptions.[57] On the wings of the extending world exhibitions women directed pavilions and buildings with the deliberate ambition to demonstrate their capabilities and to legitimize their presence in the public sphere. Attracted to these sites radical women organized meetings and conferences with socio-political goals. International contacts were important for the participants; it was no coincidence that the first international feminist conferences were held at world exhibitions. The Paris meetings of 1889 actually inspired American feminists to establish the ICW.
Yet, women generally followed the national pattern for their involvement with the exhibitions. They were prompted by their governments to form a national committee of ladies related to the official national committees of the world exhibitions in Philadelphia (1876) and Chicago (1893). Thus the world exhibitions stimulated the national bonding of women. Animated by this growing national consciousness ladies committees in European monarchies asked their queen to support their exhibits for the Woman's Builing in 1893. Mary Blanchard shows how the president of the Board of Lady Managers, Mrs. Potter Palmer, skillfully utilized the symbolic role of a 'Europeanized queen' to further her own celebrity and to achieve a position of authority. This celebrity helped her during her European tour prior to the Chicago fair to get access to several courts and to discuss the cause of the Woman's Building with queens and princesses.[58] As a result the Danish queen Louise for instance explicitly sustained the 'Women's Loan Exhibition'; queen Victoria could be persuaded to sent in her own drawings as part of the British women's exhibition; the Belgian queen favoured the native women's exhibits as well.[59] Royalty had, of course, its own traditional international networks, but a queen functioned above all as a national visiting-card. Royalty also affected the national and colonial character of the Dutch 1898 exhibition. As the organizers claimed the young Wilhelmina as the figure-head of Dutch women, the decisive argument to exhibit the colonies was the probable lac kof the queen's approval if the female subjects 'from the Indies' were excluded.[60] Evidently the Women's pavilions, Woman's Building and the national women's exhibitions represented first and foremost women's history, present and future of the exhibitors homeland.

Management committee of the 1898 Exhibition (beeldarchief IIAV)

The dynamics of the exhibition genre and its national emphasis actuated the women organizers to transgress gender boundaries and to destabilize the antagonism of 'the female' and the political realm. Whereas the national displays of industry and colonies at large exhibitions formed the parameters of a modern nation, these characteristics were interpreted as part of the genre. This view-point legitimized women to set up a Hall of Industry with machinery (Philadelphia and The Hague), to display colonized people (Chicago, Copenhagen and The Hague), to lecture thousands of men and women, and to use the exhibition platform for the founding of trade unions, social welfare societies and suffrage associations (Paris, Chicago, Copenhagen, Brussels, The Hague). In a particular way the genre facilitated women to convince the public of their right to citizenship. For instance Berteke Waaldijk explains how the combination of images and didactic texts in the room of social work at the 1898 Exhibition stimulated female visitors of the Dutch bourgeois to identify with social misery and simultaneously to distance themselves from superficial emotions. The arrangement of the room prepared the discourse of the modern social welfare state, which rested on both emotional identification and detached reflection.[61] Although after the turn of the century commercial goals diminished the political implications of the genre, 19th century exhibitions directed by women had offered them the opportunity to experiment with management power, and to infuse the public debate with arguments about women's responsibility for their fatherland and its colonies: to educate and to civilize marginalized 'others'. Along with the arrival of new socio-political groups at the public arena who reconstituted gender and national identities, these unique ephemeral projects helped women to create a safe political environment where they could reformulate 'the political' and practise as citizens-to-be..

1. N.C.F. van Sas, 'Het begrip "vaderland". Ter inleiding', in: N.C.F. van Sas (red.), Vaderland. Een geschiedenis vanaf de vijftiende eeuw tot 1940 (Amsterdam 1999), 5-6.
2. E. Gellner, Naties en nationalisme (transl. of Nations and nationalism) (Amsterdam 1994), 49-53; R. Aerts and H. te Velde, 'De taal van het nationaal besef, 1848-1940', in: Van Sas (red.), Vaderland, 391-454, 392; M. Grever, 'Feministen en het vaderland. De historische legitimatie van een "vrouwelijk" wij-gevoel', in: M. Bosch e.a. (red.), Feminisme en verbeelding. Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis 14 (Amsterdam 1994), 162-170.
3. P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas. The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester 1988),6; T. Eliëns, Kunst, nijverheid, kunstnijverheid. Nederlandse nijverheidstentoonstellingen in de negentiende eeuw (Zutphen 1990).
4. L. Charney and V.R. Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkely 1995), 3.
5. D. Riley, 'Am I that name? Feminism and the category of 'women' in history (London 1988), 46-47, 66 and 84. See for the relationship between the public sphere, social work, and 'women', also the articles of Annemieke van Drenth, Stefan Dudink and Berteke Waaldijk in this volume.
6. M. Bratu Hansen, 'America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on cinema and modernity',
in: Charney and Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the invention of modern life, 362-402, italics MG.
7. References to this Exhibition are based on the book I wrote together with Berteke Waaldijk. M. Grever en M.L. Waaldijk, Feministische openbaarheid. De Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid in 1898 (Amsterdam 1998); also M.L. Waaldijk, 'Colonial constructions of a Dutch women's movement: 1898', K. Rotther und H. Paul (eds.), Differenzen in der Geschlechtsdifferenz - Differences within Gender Studies. Aktuelle Perspektiven der Geschlechtsforschung (Berlin 1999), 285-299; M. Grever, 'Moral purity and whiteness. Feminist visions of the nation at the Dutch Women's Exhibition in 1898', Thamyris 7 (2000), nr. 1/2, 225-248. The International Information Centre and Archive for the Women's Movement (IIAV) in Amsterdam preserves the archives of the Exhibition. This material consists of pictures, drawings, minutes
of meetings, correspondences of committees, the magazine Vrouwenarbeid (Women's Labour), and the printed conference reports. See www.iiav.nl/arbeid for a virtual version of the Exhibition.
8. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 6-9; G. Barth-Scalmani und M. Friedrich, 'Frauen auf der Wiener Weltaufstellung von 1873. Ein Blick auf die Buhne and hinter die Kulissen', in: B. Mazohl-Wallnig (Hg.), Bürgerliche Frauenkultur im 19. Jahrhundert (Wien 1995), 175-232, 176.
9. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 9.
10. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 18; R.W. Rydell and N.E. Gwinn (eds.), Fair representations. World's fairs and the modern world (Amsterdam 1994), 'Introduction', 1-9.
11. Examples from the 1867, 1873 and 1878 world exhibitions. See B. Schroeder-Gudehus et A. Rasmussen, Les fastes du progrès. Le guide des Expositions universelles 1851-1972 (Paris 1992), 80, 87 and 100.
12. Out of fear for the emerging labour movement the bourgeois organizers of the 1855 'Expositionuniverselle des produits de l'agriculture, de l'industrie et des beaux-arts de Paris' excluded the delegations of the working classes. See L. de Cauter, Archeologie van de kick. Verhalen over moderniteit en ervaring (Z.p. 1989), 259.
13. Originally the prepration committee of the Vienna world exhibition intended to organize a international women's conference as well. This plan was cancelled. Very likely the organizers were afraid to become involved with the 'woman's question', concerning the vote, her social and legal position, the right for paid labour, issues they knew all too well from foreign newspapers. See Barth-Scalmani und Friedrich, 'Frauen auf der Wiener Weltaufstellung', 188.
14. De Cauter, Archeologie van de kick, 113; Y. Schoonjans, 'Wereldtentoonstelling en encyclopedie', Feit & fictie 4 (1999), nr. 2, 18-33.
15. W. Friebe, Buildings of the world exhibitions (Leipzig 1985), 46-47. The classification system of the1867 exhibition was not limited to the main building. Outside the building nations displayed their industrialart, machines, and products within this frame of universality. See M.-Th. van Thoor, Het gebouw van Nederland. Nederlandse paviljoens op de wereldtentoonstellingen 1910-1958 (Zutphen 1998), 18.
16. De Cauter, Archeologie van de kick, 105-107.
17. This process started with the 'Welt-Ausstellung' in Vienna in 1873. See De Cauter, Archeologie van de kick, 116; Schroeder-Gudehus et Rasmussen, Les fastes du progrès, 86.
18. M. Bal, Double exposure. The subject of cultural analysis (New York 1996), 4.
19. Charney and Schwartz (eds.), Cinema and the invention of modern life; L. Rabinovitz, For the love of pleasure. Women, movies and culture in turn-of-the-century Chicago (New Brunswick 1998).
20. J. Gilbert, 'World's Fairs as historical events', in: Rydell and Gwinn (eds.), Fair Representations, 13-27, 17.
21. Bal, Double exposure, 4-5.
22. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 109; B. Benedict, 'Rituals of representation: ethnic stereotypes and colonized peoples at World's Fairs', in: Rydell and Gwinn (eds.), Fair representations, 28-61.
23. De Cauter, Archeologie van de kick, 104-107; A. McClintock, Imperial leather. Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest (New York 1995), 30.
24. McClintock, Imperial leather, 36-42.
25. 'Wereldtentoonstelling 1889 Parijs', Kunstschrift 33 (mei/juni 1989), nr. 3; Grever en Waaldijk, Feministische openbaarheid, 146.
26. According to Burton Benedict the display of colonized people needs to be analyzed also in theatrical terms. Benedict, 'Rituals of representation', 57-58.
27. De Cauter, Archelologie van de kick, 118-119; Schroeder-Gudehus et Rasmussen, Les fastes du progrès, 128.
28. French and Dutch newspapers published about the bad conditions of the displayed people from the colonies at the Paris exhibition in 1889; see Grever en Waaldijk, Feministische openbaarheid, 171, 178-182 and 310. Frederick Douglas critized the Chicago world fair in 1893 for exhibiting 'the Negro as a repulsive savage', see Rabinovitz, For the love of pleasure, 60. On the refusal of the Indonesian people see also Verslag der Centrale Commissie tot inrichting van de afdeelingen van Nederland en zijne koloniën en tot behartiging der inzenders in die afdeelingen op de wereldtentoonstelling te Parijs in 1900 (Haarlem 1902), 192-201.
29. Rabinovitz, For the love of pleasure, 178-181. According to Rabonovitz a thorough critique of flânerie is required.
30. Rabinovitz, For the love of pleasure, 11 and 61.
31. Grever and Waaldijk, Feministische openbaarheid, 24-26. See also the annotated bibliography of M. Waldekker en M. Grever, De Nationale Vrouwententoonstellingen 1898-1948 en hun voorgeschiedenis (Nijmegen 1996).
32. Barth-Scalmani und Friedrich, 'Frauen auf der Wiener Weltaufstellung', 178. I do not agree with Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 183, that 'Europe followed the American pattern at some distance, the most important woman's buildings being erected in the early part of the twentieth century.' See also Mary Blanchard's article in the volume. Her view challenges the common assumption that the United States and Britain led and everyone else followed.
33. Barth-Scalmani und Friedrich, 'Frauen auf der Wiener Weltaufstellung', 185, 191-192 and 199.
34. The information on the Philadelphia women's pavilion is based on Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 174-178 and J.M. Weimann, The fair women. The story of the Woman's Building. World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893 (Chicago 1981), 2-6.
35. Afdeeling Nederland der internationale tentoonstelling van voortbrengselen van kunst en nijverheid en van de producten van den landbouw enz. te Philadelphia 1876, officieele catalogus, 'Vrouwenarbeid', 152. One of the exhibitors, miss C. Loke, belonged to 'Arbeid Adelt', a Dutch women's association. In the Netherlandsthe official national committee organized a pre-exhibition of the Philadelphia fair, held in The Hague in 1876, opened by the king. See the paper of Janneke Janssen, seminar gender history (University of Nijmegen 2000).
36. D. Scobey, 'What shall we do with our walls? The Philadelphia Centennial and the meaning of Household design', in: Rydell and Gwinn (eds.), Fair representations, 87-120, 95.
37. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 177. Katharina Migerka was married to Franz Migerka, one of the directors of the Vienna world exhibition. She organized the exhibits on women's labour from the textile and art industry. She also founded schools of housecrafts and courses for female labourers. See Barth-Scalmani und Friedrich, 'Frauen auf die Wiener Weltaufstellung', 188-189.
38. Weimann, The fair women, 29
39. L. Klejman et F. Rochfort, L'Egalité en marche. La féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris 1989), 54-56.
40. 'Over het vrouwen-congres te Parijs', De huisvrouw (10-8-1878); J. Berns en M. Grever, 'Eliza Carolina
Ferdinanda Fleischacker (Van Calcar-Schiotling)', Biografisch Woordenboek van het socialisme en de arbeidersbeweging in Nederland 4 (Amsterdam 1990), 45-49.
41. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral vistas, 182-183.
42. For more detailed information on the first planning of the Exhibition see Grever en Waaldijk, Feministische openbaarheid.
43. 24 committees (supported by 69 city-committees and local correspondents) worked rather independently for the lay-out of the Exhibition rooms and the organization of the conferences.
44. Arnold Kerdijk, 'Arbeids-Inspectie', Besprekingen over vakopleiding voor vrouwen (Amsterdam 1898), 132-156, esp. 150-152.
45. IIAV, NTV-71, 72 and 74. Instructions for female supervisors and superintendant.
46. This statue was made by Minca Bosch Reitz, modeled after a woman worker of a brick factory in Nieuwerkerk a/d IJssel.
47. This was the exhibit of Louise de Neve from The Hague, a friend of the feminist Johanna Naber. Catalogue of the Exhibition ('Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid') (Den Haag 1898), 353.
48. Nellie van Kol published in November 1897 an 'adress of women' with an appeal to the Parliament to stop the Atjeh-war. Her husband, member of Parliament Henri van Kol, asked for an investigation after the consequences of the war in Atjeh and the possibilities to stop it.
49. This statue appears to be a kind of tradition. Already in 1883 a gigantic J.P. Coen had watched over the colonial world fair in Amsterdam. See M. Bossenbroek, Holland op zijn breedst. Indië en Zuid-Afrika in de Nederlandse cultuur omstreeks 1900 (Amsterdam 1996), 332.
50. This profit included also the interest.
51. The head of the National Bureau was the exhibition organizer Marie Jungius. See C. van Eijl, Het werkzame verschil. Vrouwen in de slag om arbeid 1898-1940 (Hilversum 1994), 107-154.
52. I. de Haan en H. te Velde, 'Vormen van politiek. Veranderingen van de openbaarheid in Nederland 1848-1900', BMGN 111 (1996), 167-200.
53. S. Stuurman, 'The Discourse of Productive Virtue: Early Liberalism in Europe and the Netherlands', in: S. Groenveld and M. Wintle (eds.), Under the Sign of Liberalism. Varieties of Liberalism in Past and Present (Zutphen 1997), 33-45.
54. See for the same argument considering prostitutes: P. de Vries, Kuisheid voor mannen, vrijheid voor vrouwen. De reglementering en bestrijding van prostitutie in Nederland, 1850-1911 (Hilversum 1997), 267.
55. Bossenbroek, Holland, 352.
56. Waaldijk, 'Colonial constructions', 295.
57. In the Art Pavilion of the Philadelphia world exhibition 97 male and five Dutch female artists had sent in their work (such as Sientje Mesdag-van Houten and Henriëtte Ronner-Knip). See paper of Janneke Janssen, seminar gender history (University of Nijmegen 2000), 29.
58. See the article of Mary Blanchard in this volume.
59. For the Danish exhibition see the article of Eva Lous in this volume; Weimann, The fair women, 135-137; 270-271.
60. IIAV, NTV-2, minutes general meeting 17-3-1897.
61. See Waaldijk in this volume.