Colonial Exhibitions under Salazar and Mussolini (1930-1940)
During the 1930s, Salazar‘s and Mussolini’s regimes set in motion intensive colonialist propaganda that was at work in particular in national exhibitions and the participation in international exhibitions. Even if the goals of the exhibitions differed –?economic and diplomatic objectives in the Antwerp (1930) and Paris (1931) international exhibitions and domestic political objectives for those in Porto (1934), Naples (1934, 1940) and Lisbon (1940)–? all of the exhibitions conveyed discourse and images that were typical of European colonialism between the wars. So the real specificity of these dictatorships’ colonial exhibitions is not to be sought in their attempt to reach a consensus on their colonial politics, but in an attempt to legitimize and consolidate the regimes.