Human zoo

Human zoos, also known as ethnological expositions, were public displays of people, usually in a so-called "natural" or "primitive" state.^[3] They were most prominent during the 19th and 20th centuries.^[3] These displays sometimes emphasized the supposed inferiority of the exhibits' culture, and implied the superiority of "Western society", through tropes that purported marginalized groups as "savage".^[4][5] They then developed into independent displays emphasizing the exhibits' inferiority to western culture and providing further justification for their subjugation.^[6] Such displays featured in multiple colonial exhibitions and at temporary exhibitions in animal zoos.^[7]

The term "human zoo" was not generally used by contemporaries of the shows, and was popularised by the French researcher Pascal Blanchard. The term has been criticised for denying the agency of the shows' non-European performers.^[8]

The abstract concept of human displays in zoos has been documented throughout the duration of colonial history. In the Western Hemisphere, one of the earliest-known zoos, that of Moctezuma in Mexico, consisted not only of a vast collection of animals, but also exhibited humans, for example, dwarves, albinos and hunchbacks.^[9]

One of the first modern public human exhibitions was P. T. Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth on 25 February 1835^[10] and, subsequently, the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker. These exhibitions were common in freak shows.^[11] Another famous example was that of Saartjie Baartman of the Namaqua, 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 El Salvador, were exhibited in the US and Europe under the names Aztec Children and Aztec Lilliputians.^[12] However, human zoos would become common only in the 1870s in the midst of the New Imperialism period.

From 1936 to 1943, the Canadian province of Ontario displayed five White French Canadian quintuplets, whom the provincial government had removed from their birth family, in a human zoo called Quintland.^[13]

Exhibitions would lean towards stereotyping, and projecting western superiority.^[7] Greater feeding into the Imperialist narrative, that these people's culture merited subjugation.^[14] It also promoted scientific racism, where they were classified as more or less 'civilized' on a scale, from great apes to western Europeans.^[15]

Hagenbeck would go on to launch a Nubian Exhibit in 1876, and an Inuit exhibit in 1880.^[16] These were also massively successful.

Aside from Hagenbeck, the Jardin d'Acclimatation was also a hotspot of ethnological exhibits. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation, decided in 1877 to organize two ethnological exhibits that also presented Nubians and Inuit. 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.^[17]

These displays were so successful they were incorporated into both the 1878 and the 1889 Parisian World's Fair, which presented a 'Negro Village'. Visited by 28 million people, the 1889 World's Fair displayed 400 indigenous people as the major attraction.

In Amsterdam the International Colonial and Export Exhibition had a display of people native to Suriname, in 1883.

In 1886, the Spanish displayed natives of the Philippines in an exhibition, as people whom they "civilized". This event added flame to the 1896 Philippine revolution.^[18] Queen Consort of Spain, Maria Cristina of Austria, afterwards institutionalized the business of human zoos. By 1887, indigenous Igorot people & animals were sent to Madrid and were exhibited in a human zoo at the newly constructed Palacio de Cristal del Retiro.^[19]

At both the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition^[20] Little Egypt, a bellydancer, was photographed as a catalogued "type" by Charles Dudley Arnold and Harlow Higginbotha.^[21]

At the 1895 African Exhibition in The Crystal Palace, around eighty people from Somalia were displayed in an "exotic" setting.^[22]

The Brussels International Exposition (1897) in Tervuren featured a "Congolese Village" that displayed African people in ersatz interpretations of native settings.

Ethnology studies in Germany took a new approach in the 1870s as human displays were incorporated into zoos. These exhibits were lauded as 'educational' to the general population by the scientific community. Very quickly, the exhibits were used as a way to show that Europeans had "evolved" into a 'superior', 'cosmopolitan' life.^[23]

In the late 19th century, German ethnographic museums were seen as an empirical study of human culture. They contained artifacts from cultures around the world organized by continent allowing visitors to see the similarities and differences between the groups and "form their own ideas".^[23]

Within the history of human zoos, there are patterns of overt sexual representation of displayed peoples, most frequently women. Such objectification often led to treatment that reflected a lack of privacy and respect, including the dissection and display of bodies after death without consent.

An example of the sexualization of ethnically diverse women in Europe is Saartje Baartman, often referred to as her anglicized name Sarah Bartmann. Bartmann was displayed both when she was alive throughout England and Ireland and after her death in the Musée de l'Homme.^[24] While alive, she participated in a traveling show depicting her as a "savage female" with a large focus on her body. The clothes she was put in were tight and close to her skin color, and spectators were encouraged to "see for themselves" if Bartmann's body, particularly her buttocks, were real through "poking and pushing".^[24] Her living display was financially compensated but there is no record of her consenting to be examined and displayed after death.

Dominika Czarnecka theorizes on the relationship between the radicalization and sexualization of black female bodies in her journal article "Black Female Bodies and the 'White' View."^[25] Czarnecka focuses on ethnographic shows that were prominent in Polish territory in the late 19th century. She argues that an essential part of why these shows were so popular is the display of the black female body. Although the women in the shows were meant to be depicting Amazon warriors, their wardrobe was not similar to amazonian dress, and there are several documentations of comments from spectators about their revealing clothes and their bodies.^[25]

Although women were most frequently objectified, there are a few instances of "exotic" men being displayed due to their favorable appearance. Angelo Solimann was brought to Italy as a slave from Central Africa in the 18th century, but ended up gaining a reputation in Viennese society for his fighting skills and vast knowledge about language and history. Upon his death in 1796, this positive association did not prevent his body being "stuffed and exhibited in the Viennese Natural History Museum" for almost a decade.^[26]

In 1896, to increase the number of visitors, the Cincinnati Zoo invited one hundred Sioux Native Americans to establish a village at the site. The Sioux lived at the zoo for three months.^[27]

The 1900 World's Fair presented the famous diorama living in Madagascar, while the Colonial exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) also displayed humans in cages, often nude or semi-nude. The 1931 exhibition in Paris 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 Party, attracted very few visitors—in the first room, it recalled Albert Londres and André Gide's critiques of forced labour in the colonies. Nomadic Senegalese Villages were also presented.^{[citation needed]}

In 1906, Madison Grant—socialite, eugenicist, amateur anthropologist, and head of the New York Zoological Society—had Congolese pygmy Ota Benga put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City alongside apes and other animals. At the behest of Grant, the zoo director William Hornaday placed Benga displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong, and a parrot, and labeled him The Missing Link, suggesting that in evolutionary terms Africans like Benga were closer to apes than were Europeans. It triggered protests from the city's clergymen, but the public reportedly flocked to see it.^[28][29]

On Monday, 8 September 1906, after just two days, Hornaday decided to close the exhibition, and Benga could be found walking the zoo grounds, often followed by a crowd "howling, jeering and yelling."^[30]

According to The New York Times, although "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."^[30]

New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. refused to meet with the clergymen, drawing the praise of Hornaday, who wrote to him: "When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form its most amusing passage."^[30]

As the controversy continued, Hornaday remained unapologetic, insisting that his only intention was to put on an ethnological exhibition. In another letter, he said that he and Grant—who ten years later would publish the racist tract The Passing of the Great Race—considered it "imperative that the society should not even seem to be dictated to" by the black clergymen.^[30]

1903 saw one of the first widespread protests against human zoos, at the "Human Pavilion" of an exposition in Osaka, Japan. The exhibition of Koreans and Okinawans in "primitive" housing incurred protests from the governments of Korea and Okinawa, and a Formosan woman wearing Chinese dress angered a group of Chinese students studying abroad in Tokyo. An Ainu schoolteacher was made to exhibit himself in the zoo to raise money for his schoolhouse, as the Japanese government refused to pay. The fact that the schoolteacher made eloquent speeches and fundraised for his school while wearing traditional dress confused the spectators. An anonymous front-page column in a Japanese magazine condemned these examples and the "Human Pavilion" in total, calling it inhumane to exhibit people as spectacles.^[31]

In 1904, over 1,100 Filipinos were displayed at the St. Louis World's Fair in association with the 1904 Summer Olympics. Following the Spanish-American War, the United States had just acquired new territories such as Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.^[32] The organizers of the World's Fair held "Anthropology Days" on August 12 and 13. Since the 1889 Paris Exposition, human zoos, as a key feature of world's fairs, functioned as demonstrations of anthropological notions of race, progress, and civilization. These goals were followed also at the 1904 World's Fair. Fourteen hundred indigenous people from Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America and North America were displayed in anthropological exhibits that showed them in their natural habitats. Another 1600 indigenous people displayed their culture in other areas of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (LPE), including on the fairgrounds and at the Model School, where American Indian boarding school students demonstrated their successful assimilation.^[33] The sporting event itself took place with the participation of about 100 paid indigenous men (no women participated in Anthropology Days, though some, notably the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball team, did compete in other athletic events at the LPE). Contests included "baseball throwing, shot put, running, broad jumping, weight lifting, pole climbing, and tugs-of-war before a crowd of approximately ten thousand".^[34] According to theorist Susan Brownell, world's fairs – with their inclusion of human zoos – and the Olympics were a logical fit at this time, as they "were both linked to an underlying cultural logic that gave them a natural affinity".^[35] Also, one of the original intentions of Anthropology Days was to create publicity for the official Olympic events.^[36][37]

While Anthropology Days were not officially part of the Olympics program, they were closely associated with each other at the time, and in history—Brownell notes that even today historians still debate as to which of the LPE events were the "real" Olympic Games.^[38] Additionally, almost all of the 400 athletic events were referred to as "Olympian,"^[38] and the opening ceremony was held in May^[39] with dignitaries in attendance, though the official Olympic program did not begin until July 1.^[39] Also, as previously noted, one of the original intentions of Anthropology Days was to create publicity for the official Olympic events.^[40][41]

Anthropology Days took place on August 11 and 12, 1904, with about 100 paid indigenous men (no women participated in Anthropology Days, though some, notably the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball team, did compete in other athletic events at the LPE). Contests included "baseball throwing, shot put, running, broad jumping, weight lifting, pole climbing, and tugs-of-war before a crowd of approximately ten thousand".^[42]

The exhibitions of the World's Fair inspired US military officer Truman Hunt to start his own human zoo of "Head-Hunting Igorrotes" in Brooklyn. Reports of questionable living conditions for its Filipino performers led the US Federal government to investigate Hunt's exhibition, and eventually shut it down after Hunt was found guilty of wage theft from the performers.^[43]

Between 1 May and 31 October 1908 the Scottish National Exhibition, opened by one of Queen Victoria's grandsons, Prince Arthur of Connaught, was held in Saughton Park, Edinburgh. One of the attractions was the Senegal Village with its French-speaking Senegalese residents, on show demonstrating their way of life, art and craft while living in beehive huts.^[44][45]

In 1909, the infrastructure of the 1908 Scottish National Exhibition in Edinburgh was used to construct the new Marine Gardens to the coast near Edinburgh at Portobello. A group of Somali men, women and children were shipped over to be part of the exhibition, living in thatched huts.^[46][47]

In 1925, a display at Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, England, was entitled "Cannibals" and featured black Africans in supposedly native dress.^[48]

In 1931, around 100 other New Caledonian Kanaks were put on display at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris.^[49]

By the 1930s, a new kind of human zoo appeared in America, nude shows masquerading as education. These included the Zoro Garden Nudist Colony at the Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (1935–36) and the Sally Rand Nude Ranch at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco (1939). The former was supposedly a real nudist colony, which used hired performers instead of actual nudists. The latter featured women wearing cowboy hats, gunbelts and boots, and little else. The Golden Gate fair also featured a "Greenwich Village" show, described in the Official Guide Book as "Model artists' colony and revue theatre."^[50]

As ethnogenic expositions were discontinued in Germany around 1931,^[51] there were many repercussions for the performers. Many of the people brought from their homelands to work in the exhibits had created families in Germany, and there were many children that had been born in Germany. Once they no longer worked in the zoos or for performance acts, these people were stuck living in Germany where they had no rights and were harshly discriminated against. During the rise of the Nazi party, the foreign actors in these stage shows were typically able to stay out of concentration camps because there were so few of them that the Nazis did not see them as a real threat.^[52] Although they were able to avoid concentration camps, they were not able to participate in German life as citizens of ethnically German origin could. The Hitler Youth did not allow children of foreign parents to participate, and adults were rejected as German soldiers.^[52] Many ended up working in war industry factories or foreign laborer camps.^[52]

Hans Massaquoi in his 1999 book Destined to Witness observed a human zoo within the Hamburg zoo Tierpark Hagenbeck during the pre-Nazi Germany period, in which an African family was placed with the animals, openly laughed at, and otherwise treated rudely by the public crowd. And then they turned upon him, a fellow spectator, due to his mixed appearance. The date, according to his book, was approximately 1930.^[53]

As part of the Portuguese World Exhibition in 1940, members of a tribe from the Bissagos Islands of Guinea-Bissau were displayed on an island in a lake in the Lisbon Tropical Botanical Garden.^[54]

A Congolese village was displayed at the Brussels 1958 World's Fair.^[55] The Congolese on display were among 598 people—including 273 men, 128 women and 197 children, a total of 183 families.^[56] Eight-month-old baby Juste Bonaventure Langa died during Expo 58; he rests in the Tervuren cemetery.^[57] In mid-July the Congolese protested the condescending treatment they were receiving from spectators and demanded to be sent home, abruptly ending the exhibit and eliciting some sympathy from European newspapers.^[58]

In April 1994, an example of an Ivory Coast village was presented as part of an African safari in Port-Saint-Père, near Nantes, in France, later called Planète Sauvage.^[59]

In July 2005, the Augsburg Zoo in Germany hosted an "African village" featuring African crafts and African cultural performances. The event was subject to widespread criticism.^[60] Defenders of the event argued that it was not racist since it did not involve exhibiting Africans in a debasing way, as had been done at zoos in the past. Critics argued that presenting African culture in the context of a zoo contributed to exoticizing and stereotyping Africans, thus laying the ground work for racial discrimination, and that solidarity and mutual understanding with African people were not primary aims of the event.^[61]

In August 2005, London Zoo displayed four human volunteers wearing fig leaves (and bathing suits) for four days.^[62]

In 2007, Adelaide Zoo ran a Human Zoo exhibition 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.^[63] The inhabitants took part in several exercises, and spectators were asked for donations towards a new ape enclosure.

In August 2014, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, South African theatre-maker Brett Bailey's show Exhibit B was performed in the Playfair Library Hall, University of Edinburgh; then in September at The Barbican in London. This explored the nature of Human Zoos and raised much controversy both amongst the performers and the audiences.^[64]

With a view to tackling the morality of Human Zoo exhibits, 2018 saw the poster exhibition, Putting People on Display, tour Glasgow School of Art, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Stirling, the University of St Andrews and the University of Aberdeen. Additional posters were added to a selection from the French ACHAC's exhibition, Human Zoos: the Invention of the Savage, in relation to the Scottish dimension in hosting such shows.^[65]

• The Couple in the Cage. 1997. Dir. Coco Fusco and Paula Eredia. 30 min.
• Régis Warnier, the film Man to Man. 2005.
• "From Bella Coola to Berlin". 2006. Dir. Barbara Hager. 48 minutes. Broadcaster – Bravo! Canada.
• "Indianer in Berlin: Hagenbeck's Volkerschau". 2006. Dir. Barbara Hager. Broadcaster – Discovery Germany Geschichte Channel.
• Alexander C. T. Geppert, Fleeting Cities. Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
• Sadiah Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2011).
• "Human zoos. The invention of the savage" Archived 18 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Dir. Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, Nanette Jacomijn Snoep – exhibition catalogue – Actes Sud (2011)
• Sauvages. Au cœur des zoos humains, Dir. Pascal Blanchard, Bruno Victor-Pujebet – 90 minutes – Bonne Pioche production & Archipel (2018)
• Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism, Dir. John G. West (2019)

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• Media related to Human zoos at Wikimedia Commons
• Human Zoos. The Invention of the Savage
• Human Zoos website
• Pascal Blanchard; Sandrine Lemaire; Nicolas Bancel (August 2000). "Human zoos – Racist theme parks for Europe's colonialists". Le Monde diplomatique.;
• "On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism", by Kurt Jonassohn, December 2000
• The Colonial Exposition of May 1931 Archived 15 December 2018 at the Wayback Machine by Michael Vann
• "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.