Olympism 4

Although eager to enrich and to depoliticize German physical education and popular recreation, the few German defenders of sport played very small roles in the growth of international cooperation and exchange which affected all aspects of European intellectual, social, and political life in the last half of the nineteenth century. The beginning of this internationalism might be dated from the opening in May, 1851, of the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Secure, confident Great Britain invited all the nations and their colonies to display the best of their arts and industries in London that year. This, the first world's fair, demonstrated that competition between peoples could be peaceful and progressive. Subsequent international exhibitions soon surpassed the London exhibition of 1851 in numbers of visitors, numbers of exhibitors, and variety of things desplayed. Beginning with the "Universal, International Exposition of 1867" in Paris, the ever larger and more frquent world's fairs became convenient meeting places for the world's traders, artists, and scholars. Exhibitions of industrial products or works of art were awarded gold, silver, or bronze medals and lavishly printed certificates of merit testifying to their superiority in international competition(42).

-The First Modern Olympics, Richard D. Mandell