America's Empire at Home
Exposition artwork commemorated America's empire. In this lace medallion, one woman holds a steamship carrying goods from Asia, another gold from Alaska, and the third a locomotive bringing wealth to the American continent. Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center via the Smithsonian Institution.
Thousands of miles separated the US from its colonies. This did not stop Americans from imagining Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. They were far-away and exotic, the source of constant curiosity and excitement. Still, they were familiar, inspiring American fashion and entertainment. This section explores how American popular culture—from world's fairs to wallpaper, prose to politics—brought the nation's empire into the lives of average Americans.
Seattle, Washington held one of the largest celebrations of America's newfound international influence. Since the late 1890s, the city had been the gateway to Alaska serving as a major outpost for explorers and entrepreneurs headed north. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opened in 1909 to celebrate the city and nation's connections with Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Rim.
Among the carnival rides, souvenir stands, and ornate gardens stood a number of other, more exotic exhibitions—models of Hawaiian villages, copies of treaties with Puerto Rico, and Alaskan dog sleds. On the exposition's Pay Streak boardwalk, organizers installed a Filipino Igorotte village with fifty native peoples brought in from the Philippines. Attendees had to pay an extra fifty cents for all human exhibitions, but many purchased the ticket. With it, they could watch indigenous peoples like the Igorrote live on the boardwalk. They cooked, slept, sang, and danced, all to the delight and unrelenting demand of exposition-goers.
