'We'll always have Paris'

A first trip to the City of Lights of yesteryear, specifically, the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, of which I have found an entire booklet filled with 24 vintage postcards (part 1)

Dear readers and viewers, today I’ll have a very special treat for you—while today’s title is taken from the 1942 movie Casablanca, we shall tour a specific area of Paris at a very specific point in time, specifically, the 1931 Colonial Expo, or Exposition coloniale internationale, held for six months for the following reasons (via Wikipedia), that “attempted to display the diverse cultures and immense resources of France’s colonial possessions”.

In the “Paris France” section of Erich Sonntag’s vintage postcard collection, I found a small booklet sold, apparently, during the Colonial Exposition of 1931, and all the pictures below and in the following dedicated posting are found in it.

As the cover shows, the booklet contains 24 detachable postcards printed by Braun & Co. in 1931.

Before we get to the “other” postcards, though, two more brief clarifications:

First, Wikipedia contains two quite detailed entries—one in English (linked above) and the other in French—and I encourage you to visit both as they contain many more photographs, pictures, and the like from the French and “foreign” colonial possessions c. 1930. The former article features postcards from the exposition, some of which are, apparently, from different sources.

Second, here’s a bit more background from the English Wikipedia page about the event (references omitted for readability):

The exposition opened on 6 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. 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 (with a pavilion designed by Armando Brasini), Japan, Portugal, and the United States.

Politically, France hoped 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 criticisms 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.

And with that established, let’s take a look at a few picture postcards, shall we?

Lest I forget, none of this content shall be misconstrued as a positive statement about colonialism, imperialism, and the like; to the contrary, Western expansionism was—and, arguably, is—a multi-facetted and pluri-dimensional phenomenon with both very bright sides (e.g., the British ban on Suti, or Satee) and, without a doubt, many very dark and inhuman aspects encompassing genocidal mass killings, exploitation, violence on a scale that is hard to comprehend.

I found one of the better recent discussions of the intricate, if not outright thorny, issues of colonialism, imperialism, and Western expansionism is by Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford, specifically his Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (Harper Collins, 2023). If you wish to listen or watch to a long-form discussion of the book, may I suggest Dr. Biggar’s conversation with Jordan Peterson:

And with that all out of the way, let’s look at some vintage postcards, shall we?

The Main, or General, Pavilions

Above, an image of the “International City of Information”; below, the “Colonial Museum”—and note that while the former looks quite “futuristic” (it reminds me of Frank Llyod Wright’s work), the below looks more “expectably” 1930s European…

The Metropole and its Dependencies

The above postcard shows the “Palace of the Metropolitan Section”, by which is meant, of course, the European parts of France; both stylistically and spatially, these areas were located in different parts of the exhibition (source for the image below):

As the above map indicates, the “City of Information” is located to the right of the main entrance (in the middle of the left-hand side of the above map) while the “metropolitan pavilion” was located on the left-hand side of the main entrance (it’s in the top-left corner of the above map).

To illustrate the replication of very different aspects, styles, and areas, pease enjoy the above “entrance to the Madagascar pavilion” and contrast them with, e.g., the below-reproduced postcard showing “the temple of Angkor-Vat”:

Of course, Cambodia, tucked away in the “French Indochina” area of the exhibition, must not be omitted:

Needless to say, these far-east Asian sections contrasted quite a bit from the pavilions and areas representing France’s African possessions, such as the below postcard showing “French West Africa” (EDIT: minutes after posting about it on Twitter/X, user DjibAhmed corrected me)

This is the pavilion of A.O.F l’Afrique Occidentale Française, i.e., Mali, Burkina Faso.

This architecture is typical of Tambouctou, Mali.

In Djibouti, we were more nomadic in those years, so no architecture.

Greetings from Djibouti!

I stand corrected—and this is just about the best thing about social media that anyone could ever say: thank you, DjibAhmed, I greatly appreciate it!

At this point in time, I suppose that we’ve walked across quite an expanse of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, hence I shall suggest a brief respite in the “Tunisian section” of the venue, specifically, a brief break in the “Cafè Maure”, the “Moorish Cafe”:

At this point, we shall briefly interrupt our casual stroll through the Bois de Vincennes, but do not fear, our visit shall continue in the next posting.

Until then—grab a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy these postcards.