As Secretary to the Chinese Commission, Desire Percebois oversaw selection of items for exhibition, and authored China’s official guidebook about their World’s Fair contributions. 

Since the 1870s, the Imperial Maritime Customs Service (IMCS) staff had organized China’s participation at dozens of international exhibitions in Europe, North America, and Japan. The IMCS was technically part of the Chinese government but had a multinational staff supervised by a Briton. Percebois was one of many foreign employees at IMCS.  

The St. Louis Fair was the first time China appointed a member of the royal family, and a Chinese diplomat to the organizing commission, while still relying on non-Chinese IMCS officials.  

Percebois’s experience in this peculiar Chinese governmental institution and his role in the St. Louis Fair demonstrate the complex semi-colonial political system in China that existed during the final decades of imperial rule. 

Biography

Birth: 1859, Sedan, France 

year of death unknown

First employment with Imperial Maritime Customs Service as 3rd Class Tidewaiter, 1876.

Promoted to Clerk (1881) Second Assistant (1901) First Assistant (1903) 

Retired as Acting Deputy Commissioner, 1921.

Catalog of Collections

The catalogue Percebois compiled for the Chinese exhibits in St. Louis became a detailed supplement for visitors to learn about these objects from China, but also reflected a system of knowledge production that presented China through a perspective of foreign political and economic intervention. 

Previous catalogs described exhibits grouped by themes. Percebois added another system of categorization. In this catalogue, the Chinese exhibits were divided into several regional collections and exhibits, such as Hankow Collection, Shanghai Collection, Hupeh Provincial Exhibit. The catalogue became a display of China’s regional characteristics, so the reader learned about China overall. 

>> Read the full text of Perceboi's catalog, courtesy of the Library of Congress.