Human Zoos Science and Spectacle in the Age of Empire

by Blanchard, Pascal; Bancel, Nicolas; Deroo, Eric; Lemaire, Sandrine

• ISBN13: 9781846311741
• ISBN10: 1846311748
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: MAJORS J.A. COMPANY * DALLAS

Summary

One of the first modern exhibitions of living humans was produced by the great American showman and charlatan P. T. Barnum who infamously introduced the public to Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker and George Washington's supposed "mammy," Joice Heth, in 1835. Human zoo exhibits like Barnum'sforgotten symbols of the colonial area predicated on a vague scientific racismhave been largely repressed in our collective memory.Human Zoos, which begins with the early nineteenth-century exhibition of the Hottentot Venus and proceeds through a history of showcasing "savages" and "peoples of the world"in New York, Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo, among other placesin a chronicle of our cultural effort to present the Other as a spectacle, unearths the men, women, and children who became extras in an imaginary history that was by no means their own. A bestseller on its original publication in France, with the addition of newly commissioned chapters and a contemporary translation, this unique and remarkable volume discusses a crucial phenomenon at the heart of Western fantasies, allowing us to understand anew the genesis of popular racism and cultural identity that fueled our fascination with colonial and imperial cultures.

Author Biography

Nicholas Bancel is professor of history at the Marc Bloch University of Strasbourg II in Austria. Pascal Blanchard is a historian and the founder of the Association Connaissance de l’histoire de l’Afrique contemporaine. Giles Boëtsch is director of research at the Centre national de la recherché scientifique. Eric Deroo is a historian and filmmaker. Sandrine Lemaire is a historian and author. Charles Forsdick is the James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. ix
Human Zoos: The Greatest Exotic Shows in the West: Introduction	p. 1
The Specificity of the Human Zoo: Histories and Definitions
From Wonder to Error: Monsters from Antiquity to Modernity	p. 52
The Hottentot Venus: Birth of a 'Freak' (1815)	p. 62
Barnum and Joice Heth: The Birth of Ethnic Shows in the United States (1836)	p. 73
London, Capital of Exotic Exhibitions from 1830 to 1860	p. 81
When the Exotic Becomes a Show	p. 89
Ethnographic Showcases: Account and Vision	p. 95
From Scientific Racism to Popular and Colonial Racism in France and the West	p. 104
Human Zoos: The 'Savage' and the Anthropologist	p. 114
The Cinema as Zoo-keeper	p. 123
Models of the Human Zoo: Populations On Display
American Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West	p. 134
The Ethnographic Exhibitions of the Jardin Zoologique d'Acclimatation	p. 142
The Onas Exhibited in the Musee du Nord, Brussels: Reconstruction of a Lost File	p. 151
Meeting the Amazons	p. 159
Hagenbeck's European Tours: The Development of the Human Zoo	p. 165
Africa Meets the Great Farini	p. 174
India and Ceylon in Colonial and World Fairs (1851-1931)	p. 195
Seeing the Imaginary: On the Popular Reception of Wild West Shows in Germany, 1885-1910	p. 205
Billy the Australian in the Anthropological Laboratory	p. 220
Dr Kahn and the Niam-Niams	p. 229
Photography and the Making of the Other	p. 239
National Identities: The Human Zoo in Context
Colonial Expositions and Ethnic Hierarchies in Modern Japan	p. 248
The Imperial Exhibitions of Great Britain	p. 259
The Congolese in 'Imperial' Belgium	p. 269
Freaks and Geeks: Coney Island Sideshow Performers and Long Island Eugenicists, 1910-1935	p. 276
Africans in America: African Villages at America's World's Fairs (1893-1901)	p. 286
The 1904 St Louis Anthropological Games	p. 294
From the Diorama to the Dialogic: A Century of Exhibiting Africa at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History	p. 307
Human Zoos in Switzerland	p. 328
Living Ethnological and Colonial Exhibitions in Liberal and Fascist Italy	p. 341
Exhibiting People in Spain: Colonialism and Mass Culture	p. 353
The Zoos of the Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris 1931	p. 369
Postface: Situating Human Zoos	p. 377
General Bibliography	p. 393
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