Getting back to the human displays, why such a huge Filipino exhibit at the Fair?
For the 1904 fair, the U.S. government, with the aid of anthropologists, put on display this extraordinary exhibit of people and cultures from the Philippine Islands. All told there were about 1200 Filipinos exported from the Philippines to St. Louis for exhibition purposes in the summer of 1904. What the Roosevelt administration was desperately trying to do was fend off critics of American imperialism. There was an anti-imperialist movement and Filipino exhibits became the government’s propaganda device. People from the Philippines, who were said to be in various stages of civilization or savagery, were put on display with all sorts of accoutrements demonstrating that they would be more or less willing workers in an American empire. You have this spectrum of humanity spread out for fair-goers to see. So the idea is promotional, it is propagandistic, it is also anthropological. The overriding ambition of the U.S. government is to use this display to offset criticism that is being made
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