This article reflects on the inclusion of human beings in the colonial representationsof the great exhibitions that Portugal organised or took part in duringthe first half of the twentieth century. It analyses the role played by the natives(from the Portuguese colonies), as well as the way they were represented andtreated, based on various documents and interviews and on the study of theexhibition creation process. These exhibitions revealed some underlying tensions.On the one hand, they provided evidence of the differences between the‘civilised’ and the ‘uncivilised’, of the diversity of ‘races’ and of their places ina hierarchy of civilisation. On the other, they extolled the way colonised peoplesadopted Portuguese models. The ways those human beings have assertedtheir existence, under the power of the exhibition’s organisers, provides ameans to understand how they forged and assumed their identities in a contextof rules.
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