Fergus M. Bordewich — Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876
Historian Fergus Bordewich examines the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition — the moment America announced itself as an industrial power and tried to paper over Reconstruction's collapse.
Why we picked this
America is about to stage another round of national self-congratulation for its 250th anniversary — Bordewich's account of the 1876 Centennial reveals exactly how that genre of commemoration works and what it reliably leaves out.
Fergus M. Bordewich, whose previous books include major histories of the Underground Railroad and congressional compromise, turns to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future. The exposition was the first world’s fair held in the United States, a massive spectacle of industrial and technological achievement that drew millions of visitors and announced to the world that America had emerged from the Civil War as a modern industrial power.
Bordewich shows how the fair was also a political act: staged in the year of a bitterly contested presidential election and the effective end of Reconstruction, it was a deliberate effort to project national unity and forward momentum at a moment when the promise of racial equality was being abandoned. The objects on display — machines, inventions, the Corliss steam engine, Bell’s telephone — were the nation’s argument for its own greatness.
As the country prepares for its 250th anniversary, Bordewich’s account of how the 100th was staged offers essential historical perspective on what national commemorations do, whom they serve, and what they systematically exclude. His narrative gift makes the 1876 fair vivid rather than merely symbolic.