French Indochina's Participation in Fairs and Expositions Hardcover – February 9, 2026

This exhibit provides a chronological view of French Indochina’s participation in local, French Community, and international fairs and expositions through labels and postcards. Beginning with the Hanoi Exposition of 1887 and the World Fair of 1889, the exhibit covers these fairs and expositions through the 1948 Saigon Fair.Indochina is the area of the current countries of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. It is a complicated area, and Ron unravels the complexities by clearly describing, illustrating, and explaining these fairs and expositions.From the 1880s through the 1950s, French Indochina participated in local, French Community, and international fairs and expositions. While some had specific themes of fine arts or aviation, many were more generally composed as colonial expositions. A colonial exposition was an international exhibition intended to boost trade and bolster popular support for the various colonial empires during the New Imperialism period, which started in the 1880s with European nations scrambling for footholds in Africa. Although some of these events are more widely known than others, World Fairs, for example, others are not well documented outside of this volume.Exposition officials distributed labels of all varieties to publicize their events. This book is a must-read for postal historians, students of World Fairs and other expositions, postcard collectors, and postal historians interested in commemorative postmarks.Ron Bentley has an encyclopedic knowledge of French Indochina, and with this knowledge and material acquired through decades of searching, he has prepared over five thousand exhibit pages of Indochina philately. This volume of Indochina’s Fairs and Expositions is the most comprehensive treatment of this subject ever prepared in English. This is Ron’s fourth book with Exhibitors Press and continues our plans for a series of books addressing the philately of Indochina for collectors, exhibitors, historians, and researchers in postal history so that they can study and enjoy these materials.The philatelic world is increasingly reducing its reliance on the printed page and moving to digital media. While some of Ron’s material is available online, Exhibitors Press is committed to preserving our philatelic heritage in print. Printed volumes have long lives and will remain available. Exhibitors Press and the world of philately are indebted to Ron for sharing material not previously in print. Read more