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The Inglorious Arts of Peace: Exhibitions in Canadian Society during the Nineteenth Century (review)

E. A. Heaman has written an impressive book that provides the best available overview of nineteenth-century Canadian exhibitions. Heaman sees exhibitions in intellectual terms, as being rooted in Enlightenment theory defined or refined in Victorian politics and economics. Exhibitions are mounted by promoters (notably bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists), sometimes directly connected with government. They must, however, meet the needs of exhibitors and suit the predilections of audiences. The interplay of promoter, exhibitor, and spectator adds complexity to the stories Heaman tells. Exhibitions, which may have been didactic in conception, were increasingly entertaining in practice; theory and reality were at odds. “Exhibitions were about power, knowledge, influence, and money” (p. 27). The Inglorious Arts of Peace splits into three parts. In the first two, Heaman examines the history of exhibitions in central Canada (what is now Ontario and Quebec) and Canadian participation at international fairs: “Both begin with serious and earnest origins, move on to discuss the politics of knowledge and its relation to political forms, and finish with the triumph of popular culture” (p. 219). In the third section, Heaman examines the ways in which women and aboriginals interacted with national and international exhibitions. Women quite early took significant public roles in exhibitions, and were able to be self-assertive and politically active. As for Indians, the Department of Indian Affairs seems to have welcomed their participation in exhibitions as a step toward assimilation, but it provided little funding. In the twentieth century it banished Native encampments from many exhibitions, particularly international exhibitions where Canadian officials wanted to showcase technological progress and saw the Native presence as subversive. In any case, Heaman concludes, Native culture was far more than was visible to whites. Many of the conclusions are not very compelling, partly because they reflect Heaman’s assumptions and historical models. She often finds it difficult to distinguish causes and effects. Even when exhibitions worked as they ought, she concludes that they “most helped the economy where the economy could most help itself” (p. 97). Many of the ironies that emerge in this book flow from the author’s attempt to apply the assumptions of the Enlightenment, and of Gramsci and Foucault. There would be fewer ironies if the book worked from Victorian ideological constructs and situations. Given that so little money was expended by governments, it is curious to see Heaman’s concern that exhibitions concentrated, rather than redistributed, wealth. The political context of exhibitions is disputable. Heaman works B O O K R E V I E W S