The Postcard
A carte postale bearing no publisher's name. The photography was by Dufresne of Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse
Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse is a commune in the Landes department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.
The card was posted in Capbreton, Landes on Friday the 14th. August 1931, using a 40c and a 50c stamp. Both stamps featured the Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris 1931.
The card was sent to:
A. MacWilliam Esq.,
Whitehall Court,
London,
Angleterre.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"A recollection of a happy
day, and hoping for a
repetition at no distant
date."
The Paris Colonial Exposition
The Paris Colonial Exhibition was a six-month colonial exhibition held in Paris in 1931. It attempted to display the diverse cultures and immense resources of France's colonial possessions.
The exposition opened on the 6th. May 1931 in the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris. The scale was enormous. It is estimated that from 7 to 9 million visitors came from over the world to view it.
The French government brought people from the colonies to Paris and had them create native arts and crafts and perform in grandly scaled reproductions of their native architectural styles such as huts or temples.
Other nations participated in the event, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the United States.
Politically, France hoped that the exposition would paint its colonial empire in a beneficial light, showing the mutual exchange of cultures and the benefit of France's efforts overseas.
This would thus negate German criticism that France was the exploiter of colonial societies and the agent of miscegenation and decadence.
The exposition highlighted the endemic cultures of the colonies, and downplayed French efforts to spread its own language and culture abroad, thus advancing the notion that France was associating with colonised societies, not assimilating them.
The Colonial Exposition provided a forum for the discussion of colonialism in general and of French colonies specifically.
French authorities published over 3,000 reports during the six-month period, and held over 100 congresses.
-- Subsidiary Benefits of the Exposition
The exposition served as a vehicle for colonial writers to publicise their works, and it created a market in Paris for various ethnic cuisines, particularly North African and Vietnamese.
Filmmakers chose French colonies as the subjects of their works, and the colonial service experienced a boost in applications.
The Permanent Colonial Museum (today the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration) opened at the end of the exposition.
-- The Dutch Colonial Pavilion Fire Incident
As one of the important colonial powers at that time, the Dutch Empire participated in the Exhibition. The Netherlands presented a cultural synthesis from their colony, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).
However the Dutch colonial pavilion burned down in a fire on the 28th. June 1931, destroying virtually all of the cultural objects displayed inside.
Only a few artefacts could be salvaged, including an ancient Javanese bronze Shiva statue, which is now kept in the National Museum of Indonesia.
The cause of this massive fire was never identified, and there was speculation at the time that it may have been caused by a short circuit, by flammable building materials that were a fire hazard, or by arsonist sabotage.
The material and cultural losses were estimated to be around almost 80 million francs. The French government paid the Netherlands Indies colonial government for its losses. The money was then used for an expansion of the Bataviaasch Genootschap museum.
-- The Communist Counter-Exhibition
At the request of the Communist International (Comintern), a smaller counter-exhibition entitled The Truth About the Colonies, organized by the Communist Party and the CGTU, attracted very few visitors (5,000 in 8 months).
The first section was dedicated to abuses committed during the colonial conquests, and quoted Albert Londres and André Gide's criticisms of forced labour in the colonies, while the second one made a comparison of Soviet "nationalities policy" to "imperialist colonialism".
Capitulation in Cuba
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 14th. August 1931, Cuban revolutionary leaders Mario García Menocal and Carlos Mendieta surrendered to authorities in Pinar del Río Province.
Commotio
Also on that day, Carl Nielsen's Commotio was performed in public for the first time, at Aarhus Cathedral in Denmark.
