California Calling - Denmark and the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition

Resumé

This article tells the story of Denmark’s participation in the Panama Pacific International Exposition which took place in San Francisco in 1915. In the international perspective world exhibitions as a subject has attracted a lot of attention from historians, but in Denmark the interest has been rather limited. Very little has been written about the Danish participation in the world exhibitions of the 20^th century. This article examines the Danish participation in San Francisco in 1915, its origin and execution. Special attention is directed to the cooperation of private and public actors in creating a Danish representation. But also to the Danish emigrants in California who collected enough money to raise a Danish pavilion as a gift to the Danish state. This initiative attracted a lot of attention in Denmark and was part of the reason that the country was represented at the PPIE at all, while parts of the Danish business community were very sceptical towards the project. In this fashion the Danish reaction resembled that towards many of previous world exhibitions, where Denmark met the invitations with hesitation and scepticism, yet often ended up participating anyway.