European commercial interests engineered Ottoman participation in world exhibitions to promote cotton cultivation

Evidence

The government of Ottoman Turkey, for example, received the encouragement and assistance of local European consuls and businessmen, and of organisations such as the Manchester Cotton Association, in gathering together samples of all the marketable commodities that might be produced in the Empire and shipping them to Europe for the exhibitions. The Manchester Cotton Association even promoted local exhibitions in Istanbul and Izmir, to encourage Turkish landowners to convert their fields to cotton growing. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Suez Canal’s economic integration and the ‘exhibition as imperial economic tool’ theme that runs through late-19th-century world’s fair scholarship.