Human zoos (also called "ethnological expositions" or "
NegroNegro is a term referring to people of Black ancestry. Prior to the shift in the lexicon of American and worldwide classification of race and ethnicity in the late 1960s, the appellation was accepted as a normal, completely neutral, formal term both by those of Black African descent as well as...
Villages") were 19th and 20th century public exhibits of human beings, usually in a "natural" or "primitive" state. The displays often emphasized the cultural differences between Europeans of Western Civilization and non-European peoples. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on
unilinealismUnilineal evolution is a 19th century social theory about the evolution of societies and cultures. It was composed of many competing theories by various sociologists and anthropologists, who believed that Western culture is the contemporary pinnacle of social evolution...
,
scientific racismScientific racism is the use of scientific or ostensibly scientific findings and methods to investigate differences between races, often to support or validate racist attitudes and worldviews. It is based on belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, typically with a hierarchy...
, and a version of
Social DarwinismSocial Darwinism refers to various ideologies based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies....
. A number of them placed
indigenous peopleThe term indigenous peoples can be used to describe any ethnic group of people who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection, alongside more recent immigrants who have populated the region and may be greater in number...
(particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and human beings of European descent. For this reason, ethnographic zoos have since been criticized as highly degrading and
racistRacism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment...
.
First human zoos
In the
Western HemisphereThe Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere or western hemisphere, is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian , the other half being the eastern hemisphere...
, one of the earliest-known zoos, that of
MontezumaMoctezuma , also known by a number of variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin
in Mexico, consisted not only of a vast collection of animals, but also exhibited unusual human beings, for example, dwarves, albinos and hunchbacks.
During the
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
, the
MediciThe House of Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house who first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside, gradually rising until...
s developed a large menagerie in the Vatican.
In the 16th century, Cardinal
Hippolytus MediciIppolito de' Medici was the illegitimate only son of Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici.Ippolito was born in Urbino. His father died when he was only five , and was subsequently raised by his uncle Pope Leo X and his cousin Giulio.When Giulio de' Medici was elected pope as Clement VII, Ippolito ruled...
had a collection of
people of different races as well as exotic animals.
He is reported as having a troup of "Barbarians", speaking over twenty languages and there were also Moors, Tartars, Indians, Turks and Africans.
One of the first modern public human exhibitions was
P.T. BarnumPhineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. His successes may have made him the first "show business" millionaire...
's exhibition of
Joice HethJoice Heth was an African American slave who was exhibited by P. T. Barnum with the claim that she was 161 years old.-Biography:...
on February 25 1835 and, subsequently, the
Siamese twinsConjoined/Siamese twins are whose bodies are joined in utero. A rare phenomenon, the occurrence is estimated to range from 1 in 50,000 births to 1 in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in Southwest Asia and Africa. Approximately half are stillborn, and a smaller fraction of pairs...
Chang and Eng BunkerChang Bunker and Eng Bunker were the conjoined twin brothers whose condition and birthplace became the basis for the term "Siamese Twins".-Biography:...
. These exhibitions were common in freak shows. However, the notion of the human curiosity has a history at least as long as
colonialismThe historical phenomenon of colonisation is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British. European colonialism or Imperialism began in the fifteenth century with the "Age of Discovery", led by Spanish and...
. For instance,
ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
brought indigenous Americans from his voyages in the New World to the Spanish court in 1493. Another famous example was that of
Saartjie BaartmanSaartjie "Sarah" Baartman was the most famous of at least two Khoikhoi women who were exhibited as sideshow attractions in 19th century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" as the then-current name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term, and "Venus" in reference...
of the
NamaquaNama are an African ethnic group of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They speak the Nama language of the Khoe-Kwadi language family. The Nama are the largest group of the Khoikhoi people, most of whom have largely disappeared as a group, except for the Namas...
, often referred to as the
Hottentot Venus, who was displayed in London and France until her death in 1815. During the 1850s, Maximo and Bartola, two microcephalic children from Mexico, were exhibited in the US and Europe under the names "Aztec Children" and "Aztec Lilliputians" . However, human zoos would become common only in the 1870s in the midst of the
New ImperialismNew Imperialism refers to the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; expansion approximately took place from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I...
period.
1870s to World War II
Exhibitions of exotic
populationIn biology, a population is the collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species; in sociology, a collection of human beings. Individuals within a population share a factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything...
s became popular in various countries in the 1870s. Human zoos could be found in
HamburgHamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the sixth-largest city in the European Union...
,
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
,
BarcelonaBarcelona is the capital, most populous city of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia and the second largest city in Spain, with a population of 1,615,908 in 2008. It is the 11th-most populous municipality in the European Union and sixth-most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris,...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
,
MilanMilan in Italy, is the capital of the region of Lombardia and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while the urban area is the fifth largest in the E.U. with an estimated population of 4.3 million...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors attending each exhibition. In
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
Carl HagenbeckCarl Hagenbeck was a merchant of wild animals who supplied many European zoos, as well as P.T. Barnum. He is often considered the father of the modern zoo because he introduced "natural" animal enclosures that included recreations of animals' native habitats without bars...
, a merchant in wild animals and future
entrepreneurAn entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. ... The term is a loanword...
of many European zoos, decided in 1874 to exhibit
SamoanSamoans are a Polynesian ethnic group of the Samoan Islands. Due to colonialism, the home islands are politically and geographically divided between the country of Samoa, official name Independent State of Samoa ; and American Samoa an unincorporated territory of the United States.The Samoan...
and
Sami peopleThe Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia but also in the border area between south and middle Sweden...
as "purely natural" populations. In 1876, he sent a collaborator to the Egyptian
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
to bring back some wild beasts and
NubiansThe Nubians are an ethnic group originally from northern Sudan, now inhabiting East Africa and some parts of Northeast Africa, such as southern Egypt....
. The Nubian exhibit was very successful in Europe and toured Paris, London, and
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
. He also dispatched an agent to Labrador to secure a number of "Esquimaux" (
InuitInuit is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, and Alaska...
) from the settlement of Hopedale; these Inuit were exhibited in his Hamburg Tierpark.
Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director of the
Jardin d'acclimatationThe Jardin d'Acclimatation is a children's amusement park with a menagerie, the Exploradome museum, and other attractions located in the northern part of the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris.-History:...
, decided in 1877 to organize two ethnological spectacles that presented Nubians and
InuitInuit is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland, and Alaska...
. That year, the audience of the
Jardin d'acclimatation doubled to one million. Between 1877 and 1912, approximately thirty ethnological exhibitions were presented at the
Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation.
Both the
1878The third Paris World's Fair, called an Exposition Universelle in French, was held from May 1 though to November 10, 1878. It celebrated the recovery of France after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.-Construction:...
and the
1889 Parisian World's FairThe Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from May 6, to October 31, 1889.It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event traditionally considered as the symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution...
presented a Negro Village (
village nègre). Visited by 28 million people, the
1889 World's Fair displayed 400
indigenous peopleThe term indigenous peoples can be used to describe any ethnic group of people who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection, alongside more recent immigrants who have populated the region and may be greater in number...
as the major attraction. The
1900 World's Fair presented the famous
dioramaThe word diorama can refer either to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
living in MadagascarMadagascar, or Republic of Madagascar , is an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa. The main island, also called Madagascar, is the fourth-largest island in the world, and is home to 5% of the world's plant and animal species, of which more than 80% are endemic to...
, while the
Colonial ExhibitionsA colonial exhibition was a type of 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 the scramble for Africa....
in
MarseillesMarseille , formerly known as Massalia , is the 2nd most populous French city as well as the oldest city in France...
(1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) also displayed human beings in cages, often nude or semi-nude. The
1931 exhibition in ParisThe Paris Colonial Expostion was a six-month colonial exhibition held in Paris, France in 1931 that attempted to display the diverse cultures and immense resources of France's colonial possessions.-History :The exposition opened on 6 May 1931 in the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of...
was so successful that 34 million people attended it in six months, while a smaller counter-exhibition entitled
The Truth on the Colonies, organized by the
Communist PartyThe French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, it is the forth french party and remains the largest party in France advocating communist views, and retains a large membership The...
, attracted very few visitors—in the first room, it recalled
Albert LondresAlbert Londres was a French journalist and writer. One of the inventors of investigative journalism, he criticized abuses of colonialism such as forced labour. Albert Londres gave his name to a journalism prize for French journalists.- Biography :Londres was born in Vichy in 1884...
and
André GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
's critics of
forced labourUnfree labour is a generic or collective term for those work relations, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence , or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families.Many of...
in the colonies. Nomadic
Senegalese VillagesSenegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and it also encircles The Gambia on its three sides,...
were also presented.
Native people of
SurinameSuriname , officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America....
were displayed in the
International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam held behind the
RijksmuseumThe Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history...
in 1883.
Similar human displays had been seen at the 1901
Pan-American ExpositionThe Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 through November 2, 1901.-History:It was organized by the Pan-American Exposition Company, formed in 1897. Cayuga Island was initially chosen as the place to hold the Exposition because of the...
and at the 1893
World's Columbian ExpositionThe World's Columbian Exposition — also known as The Chicago World's Fair — was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of...
, where
Little EgyptLittle Egypt was the stage name for two popular belly dancers. They had so many imitators, the name became synonymous with belly dancers generally.Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, Little Egypt was the stage name for two popular belly dancers. They had so many imitators, the name became synonymous with...
performed bellydance, and where the photographs Charles Dudley Arnold and Harlow Higginbotham took depreciative photos, presenting indigenous people as catalogue of "types," along with sarcastic legends .
To increase the number of visitors, the
Cincinnati zooThe Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, is the second-oldest zoo in the United States and is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It opened in 1875, just 14 months after the Philadelphia Zoo on July 1, 1874. The Reptile House is the oldest zoo building in America, dating from 1875.The Cincinnati Zoo is...
invited one hundred Sioux Native Americans to establish a village at the site in 1896. The Sioux lived at the zoo for three months .
In 1904,
ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the American Southwest. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, and are related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
s,
IgorotIgorot name for the people of the Cordillera region, in the Philippines island of Luzon. The Igorot form two subgroups: the larger group lives in the south, central and western areas, and is very adept at rice-terrace farming; the smaller group lives in the east and north...
s (from the Philippines) and the famous
Ota BengaOta Benga was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo. Benga came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner...
were displayed, dubbed as "primitive", at the
Saint Louis World FairThe Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the Saint Louis World's Fair, was an international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.-Background:...
. The USA had just acquired, following the
Spanish-American WarThe Spanish–American War was an armed military conflict between Spain and the United States that took place between April and August 1898, over the issues of the liberation of Cuba. The war began after American demands for the resolution of the Cuban fight for independence were rejected by Spain...
, new territories such as
GuamGuam is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. The island's capital is Hagåtña...
, the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, and
Puerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is a self-governing unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of the Virgin Islands...
, allowing them to "display" some of the native inhabitants . According to the Rev. Sequoyah Ade,
To further illustrate the indignities heaped upon the PhilippineThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
people following their eventual loss to the Americans, the United States made the Philippine campaign the centrepoint of the 1904 World's Fair held that year in St. Louis, MI [sic]. In what was enthusiastically termed a "parade of evolutionary progress," visitors could inspect the "primitives" that represented the counterbalance to "Civilisation" justifying KiplingRudyard Kipling was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book , Kim , many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King ; and his poems, including...
's poem "The White Man's Burden"The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands...
". PygmiesPygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually low; anthropologists define pygmy as any group whose adult males grow to less than 150 cm in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed pygmoid. The best known pygmies are the Aka,...
from New Guinea and Africa, who were later displayed in the Primate section of the Bronx Zoo, were paraded next to American Indians such as Apache warrior GeronimoGeronimo was a prominent Native American leader and medicine man of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States and their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades.-Biography:Goyahkla was...
, who sold his autograph. But the main draw was the Philippine exhibit complete with full size replicas of Indigenous living quarters erected to exhibit the inherent backwardness of the Philippine people. The purpose was to highlight both the "civilising" influence of American rule and the economic potential of the island chains' natural resources on the heels of the Philippine-America War. It was, reportedly, the largest specific Aboriginal exhibit displayed in the exposition. As one pleased visitor commented, the human zoo exhibit displayed "the race narrative of odd peoples who mark time while the world advances, and of savages made, by American methods, into civilized workers."
In 1906, socialite and amateur
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
Madison GrantMadison Grant was an American lawyer, historian, and anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
, head of the
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Zoological
SocietySociety or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....
, had
Congolese pygmyPygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually low; anthropologists define pygmy as any group whose adult males grow to less than 150 cm in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed pygmoid. The best known pygmies are the Aka,...
Ota BengaOta Benga was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo. Benga came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner...
put on display at the
Bronx ZooThe Bronx Zoo is a zoo located within the Bronx Park, in The Bronx borough of New York City. The largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, the Bronx Zoo comprises of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows...
in New York City alongside
apeAn ape is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates. Due to its ambiguous nature, the term ape is less suitable as a means of describing taxonomic relationships....
s and other animals. At the behest of Grant, a prominent
eugenicistEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
, the zoo director
William HornadayWilliam Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter...
placed Ota Benga displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an
orangutanThe orangutans are two endangered species of great apes. Known for their intelligence, they live in trees and are the largest living arboreal animal. They have longer arms than other great apes, and their hair is typically reddish-brown, instead of the brown or black hair typical of other great apes...
named Dohong, and a parrot, and labeled him The Missing Link
, suggesting that in evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
ary terms Africans like Ota Benga were closer to apes than were Europeans. It triggered protests from the city's clergymen, but the public reportedly flocked to see it.
BengaOta Benga was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo. Benga came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner...
shot targets with a bow and arrow, wove twine, and wrestled with an orangutan. Although, according to the New York Times, "few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions,” controversy erupted as black clergymen in the city took great offense. “Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes,” said the Reverend James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. “We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.”
New York Mayor
George B. McClellan, Jr.George Brinton McClellan, Jr., was an American politician, statesman, and educator. The son of American Civil War general and presidential candidate George B. McClellan, he served as Mayor of New York City from 1904 to 1909.McClellan, known to his family as "Max", was born in Dresden, Kingdom of...
refused to meet with the clergymen, drawing the praise of Dr.
HornadayWilliam Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter...
, who wrote to him, “When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form its most amusing passage.”
As the controversy continued,
HornadayWilliam Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter...
remained unapologetic, insisting that his only intention was to put on an “ethnological exhibit.” In another letter, he said that he and
Madison GrantMadison Grant was an American lawyer, historian, and anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
, the secretary of the New York Zoological Society, who ten years later would publish the racist tract “
The Passing of the Great RaceThe Passing of The Great Race; or, The racial basis of European history was an influential book of scientific racism written by the American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant in 1916. The book was very influential in United States during the interwar period, going through...
,” considered it “imperative that the society should not even seem to be dictated to” by the black clergymen.
Still,
HornadayWilliam Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter...
decided to close the exhibit after just two days, and on Monday, September 8,
BengaOta Benga was a Congolese pygmy who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at New York City's Bronx Zoo. Benga came to the United States through the action of businessman and missionary Samuel Phillips Verner...
could be found walking the zoo grounds, often followed by a crowd “howling, jeering and yelling."
Legacy of human zoos
The concept of the human zoo has not completely disappeared. A
CongoThe Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and the dawn of Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Background: 1884-1908:Until the later...
lese Village was displayed at the
Brussels 1958 World's FairExpo 58, also known as the Brussels World’s Fair, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling or Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, was held from 17 April to 19 October 1958...
.
In April 1994, an example of an
Ivory Coast' , formerly named, and often referred to as the Ivory Coast, officially the ', is a country in West Africa. The government officially discourages the use of the name Ivory Coast in English, preferring the French name to be used in all languages.With an area of 322,462 km
2 Côte...
village was presented at African safari of
Port-Saint-PèrePort-Saint-Père is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France.-See also:*Communes of the Loire-Atlantique department...
, near
NantesNantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, while its metropolitan area is the eighth with 804,833 inhabitants at a 2008 estimate....
, in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
.
An African Village was opened in
AugsburgAugsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria in Germany. It is a College town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
's zoo in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
in July 2005. In August 2005,
London ZooLondon Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on April 27 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. It was eventually opened to the public in 1847...
also displayed human beings wearing fig leaves (though in this case, the participants volunteered). In 2007,
Adelaide ZooAdelaide Zoo is Australia's second oldest zoo, located in Adelaide, South Australia and the only major metropolitan zoo in Australia to be owned and operated on a non-profit basis. The zoo also owns the Monarto open plains zoo near Murray Bridge....
ran a Human Zoo exhibit which consisted of a group of people who, as part of a study exercise, had applied to be housed in the former ape enclosure by day, but then returned home by night. The inhabitants took part in several exercises, much to the amusement of onlookers, who were asked for donations towards a new ape enclosure. In 2007,
PygmyPygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually low; anthropologists define pygmy as any group whose adult males grow to less than 150 cm in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed pygmoid. The best known pygmies are the Aka,...
performers at the Festival of Pan-African Music were housed at a zoo in
Brazzaville||-||}Brazzaville is the capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo and is located on the Congo River. As of the 2001 census, it has a population of 1,018,541 in the city proper, and about 1.5 million in total when including the suburbs located in the Pool Region...
,
CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo is a country located in Central Africa, with a small length of Atlantic coastline. It is the third largest country in Africa...
.
See also
- Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....
- Colonialism
Colonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropole...
- Freak show
A freak show is an exhibition of rarities, "freaks of nature" — such as unusually tall or short humans, and people with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics or other extraordinary diseases and conditions — and performances that are expected to be shocking to the viewers...
- New Imperialism
New Imperialism refers to the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; expansion approximately took place from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I...
- Scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa, was the result of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the First World War in 1914....
- Zoo
A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....
- Abraham Ulrikab
Abraham Ulrikab was an Inuk from Hebron, Labrador, in the present day province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, who — along with his family — was to become a zoo exhibit in Europe in 1880 as an attraction at the Hamburg, Germany public zoo.Ulrikab, along with his wife and two...
External links
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- "On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism", by Kurt Jonassohn, December 2000 (Jonassohn is known for his book with Frank Chalk, The history and sociology of genocide : analyses and case studies, 1990, Yale University Press; New Haven)
- On the construction of the African "savage" stereotype necessary to colonialism, on Africansocieties.org
- "First thoughts on the site of the Groote Schuur Zoo" by Nick Shepherd & David Van Reybrouck
- The Colonial Exposition of May 1931 by Michael Vann
- May 2003 Symposium "Human Zoos or the exhibition of the creature"
- Imperial Culture in countries without colonies : Africa and Switzerland; The Human Zoo in Switzerland: object of popular curiosity or tool of colonial propaganda? by Patrick Minder, University of Neuchâtel
Neuchâtel is the capital of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel on Lake Neuchâtel.The city has approximately 32,600 inhabitants , by and large French-speaking, although the city is sometimes referred to historically by the German name , which has the same meaning, since Prussia ruled the area until...
- Guido Abbattista, Africains en exposition (Italie XIXe siècle) entre racialisme, spectacularité et humanitarisme
- "Official site of the Adelaide Human Zoo"
- Qureshi, Sadiah (2004), 'Displaying Sara Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus', History of Science 42:233-257. Available online at Science History Publications.