The great thing about general background research is you find the things that should have been staring you in the face.
The Paris Exposition of 1900. Which was combined with the Summer Olympics (only the second one of the modern Olympics) and that included a motor race!
And as I'm finding, this is the turning point; where the belle époque slowly turns into the fin de siècle. This is very much another of those turning points, where a new world beckons but the new dangers are becoming visible; the motor cars and early airplanes harbingers of industrialized warfare in the trenches of the Somme. The social changes that bring a new wave of poverty and displacement...and, yes, Paris was suffering through a rise of new antisemitism and xenophobia and reactionary movements even in this moment of artistic and philosophical exploration, humanism, and feminism.
As so many times before. The revolution overthrew the monarchy and ended up putting an Emperor in charge. Who then got replaced by another king -- but at least this one was a constitutional monarch. This is the time of the Third Republic, limping even more than usual for French politics but, as always, striving for something that remains out of reach.
So...my desire to somehow conflate and compress some of the themes of Steampunk, the shock of the Great War, and the struggle of the artist, are all actually here and ready with an excuse for one young cavalry man to visit; the Paris Expo!
(And another strangely steampunk-reality bit of timing; they are currently tearing up the streets to install the Paris Metro, with those fantastic station entries that ushered in Art Nouveau).
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