Human zoo

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Human zoos (also called "ethnological expositions" or "negro villages") were common until at least the 1930s. Some zoos have indeed exhibited human beings, in particular coming from the colonial empires. This has of course been harshly criticized as a particularly inhumane form of racism. However, it demonstrates the popularity of racist theories in Europe until World War II. Pascal Blanchard and co. write:

"The example of the human zoos allows us to trace the entire process through which popular (and colonial) racism penetrated Western society. Theorised in the previous century when it exclusively concerned the science world, in less than fifty years, the vision of a world organised according to the hierarchy of races became the dominant ideology in the West. Its vector - or media, as we would say today - wasn't so much the popular press or literature as this fabricated "encounter" with the other.
"Human zoos, the incredible symbols of the colonial period and the transition from the nineteenth to twentieth century, have been completely suppressed in our collective history and memory. Yet they were major social events. The French, Europeans and Americans came in their tens of millions to discover the "savage" for the first time in zoos or "ethnographic" and colonial fairs. These exhibitions of the exotic (the future "native") laid the foundations on which, over an almost sixty-year period, was spun the West's progressive transition from a "scientific" racism to a colonial and "mass" racism affecting millions of "visitors" from Paris to Hamburg, London to New York, Moscow to Barcelona..."<ref> Template:Cite news;Template:Cite news;Black Deutschland, von Oliver Hardt </ref>

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The first "human zoo"

The first human zoo can be traced to Phineas Taylor Barnum's exhibition of Joice Heth on February 25 1836 and, subsequently, the siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker. However, they would become common only in the 1870s, in circumstances where colonialism had to be popularized (for example, in France it wasn't really popularized until World War I) and racialist theories getting more and more common - they would be discredited only after the Holocaust.

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1870s to World War II

The idea to exhibit a zoological exposition including exotic populations appeared simultaneously in various European countries in the 1870s. In Germany, Karl Hagenbeck, a merchant in wild animals and future entrepreneur of most Europeans zoos, decided in 1874 to exhibit Samoa and Sami people as "purely natural" populations. In 1876, he sent one of his collaborators to the Egyptian Sudan to bring back some wild beasts and Nubians. These Nubians were very successful in Europe, being presented in Paris, London and Berlin. Human zoos could be found in Hamburg, Anvers, Barcelona, London, Milan, New York, Warsaw, etc., with 200,000 to 300,000 visitors attending each exhibition.

Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, director of the Parisian Jardin d'acclimatation, decided in 1877 to organize two "ethnological spectacles", presenting Nubians and Inuit. The public of the Jardin d'acclimatation doubled, with a million paying entrances that year. Between 1877 and 1912, approximatively thirty "ethnological exhibitions" were presented at the Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation.

The 1878 and 1889 Parisian World's Fair would present a "Negro village" (village nègre) where 400 "indigenes" constituted the major attraction. 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) would also display human beings in cages, often nudes or quasi-nudes <ref> On the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris </ref>. Nomadic "Senegalese villages" were also created, thus displaying the power of the colonial empire to all the population.

In 1906, socialite and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society, had Congolese pygmy Ota Benga put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City alongside the apes and other animals. Zoo director W.H. Hornaday decided to use Ota Benga as a public attraction. At the behest of Grant, a prominent scientific racist and eugenicist, Hornaday placed Ota Benga in a cage with an orangutan and labeled him "The Missing Link" in an attempt to illustrate darwinism, and in particular that Africans like Ota Benga were closer to apes than were Europeans.

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Analysis of the "human zoo" phenomenon

According to Pascal Blanchard & Co., those human zoos must be articulated to three different if parallel phenomena: first of all, the construction of a social imaginary on the Other; then, the (pseudo)scientific theorization of a "hierarchy of races" (for example by Arthur Gobineau's 1853-55 essay on the "Inequality of human races") ; finally the construction of the colonial empire.

All of the popular press presented the exotic populations as the remnants of the first stages of human evolution, enforcing a negative perception of the "Other" necessary to the colonialist domination of other cultures. Positivism, unilineal evolution and racism were linked together in the creation of those inhumane zoos. Members of the French Anthropology Society, founded in 1859 - same year as the creation of the Jardin d'acclimatation de Paris - assisted to the exhibitions for scientifical purposes.

The various so-called "races" were hierarchically disposed in the racist discourse. For example, when the Cossacks were invited to the Jardin zoologique d'acclimatation, the Russian embassy insisted that they shouldn't be confused with the African "Negroes"; and when Buffalo Bill came with his troup, he found without any problem his place in the exhibition, thanks to the presence of "Indians". When the "Lilliputians" were displayed, they nicely fit in the frame of difference, monstruosity and bestiality represented by these exotic populations.

Social darwinism was thus represented. Physical anthropology, anthropometry and phrenology legitimized these inhumane exhibitions which also tend, retroactively, to prove these racialist theories. The exotic (and colonized) populations displayed in these zoos went along with the exhibitions of "monsters" (dwarves, hunchbacks, giants or albinos "Negroes" as in Paris in 1912). "Doubtlessly eugenics, social darwinism and racial hierarchy dialectically answer themselves together... The 'human zoos' thus find themselves in a crossroads between popular racism and scientifical objectivation of the racial hierarchy, both supported by the colonial expansion". <ref name = "Le Monde Diplomatique"> Template:Cite news (English); Template:Cite news (French, available to everyone) </ref>. Between 1890 and World War I, a sanguinary image of the "savage" is created, thus destroying the myth of the Noble savage.

Following the colonial conquests, different populations were displayed. Thus, Tuaregs were exhibited after the French conquest of Timbuktu; Malagasy after the occupation of Madagascar; Amazons of Abomey after Behanzin's mediatic defeat against the French... "Between "us" and "the others", an unsurmountable barrier is created" <ref name="Le Monde Diplomatique"/>

As long as they were displayed, the "savages" were forbidden from showing any sign of assimilation. However, being exhibited for several years, some did force their jailers to pay them (even if the wages were of course ridiculously low) ! Almost nobody was concerned at the times by the health situation of these prisoners (death of Galibis, not used to the cold climate, in 1892 in Paris). "Isn't there the will - deliberate or inconscious - of legitiming the conquerants' brutality animalizing the conquested? In this animalization, transgression of the values and norms of what constitutes, for Europe, civilization is a motor element." <ref name="Le Monde Diplomatique"/>

A fascination for the body and "vigorous sexuality" of the "savage" was also displayed, a theme related to the alleged "Occidental biological degeneration". Until the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris in Vincennes, where Kanaks were displayed, images of "anthropophagy also become very popular in the mass medias.

To further illustrate the indignities heaped upon the Philippine 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. In what was enthusiastically termed a "parade of evolutionary progress," visitors could inspect the "primitives" that represented the counterbalance to "Civilisation" justifying Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Pygmies 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 Geronimo selling 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" <ref> Template:Cite news </ref>
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The legacy of "human zoos"

The concept of the human zoo has not completely disappeared. A "Congolese village" was displayed at the Brussels 1958 World's Fair <ref> Template:Fr Cobelco. Belgium human zoo ; Template:Cite news </ref>. An "African Village" was opened in Augsburg's zoo in Germany in July 2005 <ref> Template:En icon Template:Fr Template:Cite news; Template:En icon Template:Cite news; Template:Cite news; Template:Cite news; Critical analysis of the Augsburg human zoo ("Organizers and visitors were not racist but they participated in and reflected a process that has been called racialization: the daily and often taken-for-granted means by which humans are separated into supposedly biologically based and unequal categories", etc.) </ref>. According to a June 1994 article by Le Monde diplomatique, a human zoo was present in the village of Huang-Haen in Burma, visited by most tourist agencies <ref> Template:Fr Template:Cite news </ref>. In August 2005, the London Zoo also displayed human beings wearing fig leaves (though in this case, the humans volunteered) <ref> London Zoo official website;Template:Cite news;Template:Cite news;Template:Cite news </ref>.

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References

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Bibliography

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External links

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