Expeditionary· Late 19th Century Foreign Interventions
Paris Universal Exposition 1878
The first American Marine guard ever sent to France, on ceremonial rather than fighting duty.
For the great international exhibition held in Paris in 1878, a Marine detachment was deployed from the spring of that year into the following winter to provide honors at the American pavilion, quartered at a barracks in the city. It was a wholly peaceful posting, the Marines serving as a guard of honor and a representation of American dignity at a showcase of nations, with nothing of combat about it and no casualties of any kind. The deployment was a novelty in the Corps' history, the first of its kind on French soil, and it reflected the growing reach and visibility of American interests abroad in the post-war decades. It set a small precedent that would be followed at the next Paris exposition of 1889, the Marine guard as a fixture of American ceremonial presence overseas.
Record no. 473